I Love You, Forever

By Mª del Mar Agulló

Do you believe in love at first sight?

Adela is a young woman with a monotonous life that will be altered when she meets a passionate, attractive and interesting man, with whom she will learn to say I love you. Adela will realize life always brings you surprises and sometimes not always pleasant.  When the concept "forever" and the word time take on a different meaning.

Adela will live an atypical love story.  After a disastrous first encounter and a series of impediments, she will initiate a relationship with the man she has fallen in love with. After a few months of the relationship, a new stage will come when she will have to face a new unexpected situation, which will lead her to make decisions thus changing her life.

Adela will understand that in love, limits don’t exist, and there are many obstacles before you can find a solution, even if it is not the desired one. She will try to preserve a love that will escape her little by little until she reaches a point where she has to decide whether to say goodbye or cling to the past in order to move forward. 

Accompany Adela through her personal journey, while her fears, desires, and priorities change course, to establish new ones leading her to a new life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mª del Mar
• Release date: Mar 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781547516698

Book preview

1. Encounter, disagreement and the first date we didn’t have

Without more, I lost it. It was the most painful moment of my life and the beginning of another very different one.

Fran and I met during the last summer days in my city, Elche. He had arrived with an important company’s contract under his arm. I had worked for this precise company for years in the IT department. He was going to be the company’s visible face. The one who represented us on company trips.  He would oversee negotiating in all the meetings and granted press interviews. Fran was publicly known for having been a well-known Spanish model, born in Barcelona whose beauty didn’t go unnoticed. He had walked the catwalk in Milan, Paris and New York for the best designers.

It was not instantaneous. It didn’t happen like in the movies. I didn’t fall in love with him as soon as I laid my eyes on him, although he did attract me. One early September afternoon, I was called to the vice president's office to meet the company’s new representative.  They didn’t mention his name, although if they had I wouldn’t have known who he was anyway because let's face it, fashion was not my main interest. I always identified with the leading character played by Anne Hathaway in the movie The Devil Wears Prada.

When I arrived at the office, I was introduced to a tall, dark young man with slightly long hair, dark eyes, tanned skin and was very handsome. He, obviously, didn’t need to be told he was handsome. His words portrayed the arrogance that can only be expected from a model.

All physical attraction between us surfaced very quickly.  I trembled the first time I looked into his eyes. I liked him. I liked him a lot despite his incessant vanity. I think he noticed immediately as I lowered my gaze in a somewhat silly way, as if embarrassed (and I was). That day my hair was not styled well, my clothes were not my best and my nose was red due to a cold. It's not that those things mattered to me too much, but my feminine instinct, if I ever had one, made an appearance at that moment, reminding me I should be a little more presentable at work (just in case I met a massif). If one of my two best friends, Laura, had seen me at that moment I think she would have been ashamed of me too. She was everything I was not, not that she was especially pretty or attractive, but it did seem like it. Every day she got up two hours earlier to style her hair, dress and put on her makeup properly. Something I didn’t even think of.  Would someone really spend so much time and effort to please others or herself? Did Laura feel so unsure and dissatisfied with her body, her face?

He greeted me with a know it all look, and when he raised his hand for me to shake, I felt how he looked at me with disapproval. I supposed he was not used to dealing with women who stood less than five feet 10 inches, didn’t wear the entire makeup store on their faces, and didn’t wear clothes less than a day old. Fran spoke a little longer to the company’s vice president, the British Werry, and left. When Werry and I were alone, he informed me who he was:

It's Fran Martínez. I looked at Werry normally. It's fucking Fran Martínez and we have him all to ourselves! Is it that you don’t know who he is?

Should I? I asked without caring.

He is one of the best-known international Spanish models Werry responded excitedly.

Excuse me, I'm not into models, however, I don’t think I'm old enough to retire.

Of course, dear, it’s that after seven years of being on the top he’s decided to rise to new challenges. Werry informed me.

And leave the catwalk?

Only for a while.

And what can a model know about the sale, plantation, import, export of trees and other types of plants? I asked without understanding how they could bring an in-demand model into my company.

Maybe I know the best markets and what is fashionable in each country thanks to my travels around the world, maybe I know how finance works, thanks to my parent’s company, maybe it's a secret interested in botany, maybe my presence helps open doors, maybe my master’s degree in international trade isn’t just filler on my resume, or maybe, I’m just a pretty face that walks a couple of feet on a catwalk in front of strangers. I don’t know. What is your opinion, Miss Gonzalez? Fran had entered the room without me realizing it and said in a seductive voice, highlighting the words maybe, fashion and secret, which I must admit, excited me. He made me see that I was being slightly judgmental, and until that moment when he put his ego aside, I didn’t recognize him as a serious person who had something to contribute to the company.

For a moment the three of us remained in an uncomfortable silence inside the room, while my gaze remained fixed on Fran's eyes, and Fran's beautiful brown eyes remained fixed on my dark blue eyes waiting for my reply. 

I think Adela has expressed herself poorly. Werry apologized.

No, I would say that she said exactly what she meant to say.

Sir, would you leave us for a moment? Said Fran, visibly pissed off.

Werry looked at me to check if I seemed alright, nodded and left the room closing the door behind him. We were left alone in the room. I stared out the window, but without looking at anything.  He was staring at me, but neither of us said anything. The tension was palpable. I didn’t know why, but I liked this man.  My thoughts ranged between running away and ripping off his clothes.  I never had a reaction like this or even a thought.

When I finally decided to speak, he spoke first:

I think we got off on the wrong foot. I want to invite you to dinner he said surprising me.

What? I don’t know you. Fran's invitation caught me off guard so I reacted out of fear.

Come on woman ... We're going to work together and getting to know me is only a matter of time. Is it okay if I pick you up at your desk at the end of the day?

No! After how this relationship began, I don’t think that is the best thing to do. I didn’t know how to put him off. I didn’t care about being left with him. I didn’t care about meeting strangers, what mattered was that I wasn’t able to control myself around him.

After a few more minutes in which I invented a couple of credible excuses, I left the room leaving him tongue tied.

I returned to my desk and resumed working. Well actually I pretended like I was working.  I began searching the internet for information about my new partner. Apparently, the man had carved a career out of the most successful catwalks for all the great designers. There were a lot of photos: of catwalks, of catalogs, of social events ... Next, I looked for videos. He had also done commercials, although the majority had been made in other countries. I searched his social networks, which was a great source of information: photos of his relatives, hobbies, trips, photos with celebrities, and photos with his ex ... which I must admit, made me jealous. I focused on the latter and searched for more photographs and information. They were all beautiful, and there were a lot of them.  Maybe it was those photos, or what I had felt when I was alone with him in the same room, which prompted me to get up, enter his office and accept the dinner invitation, but I wouldn’t let him pick me up.  I would meet him at the restaurant. I wasn’t going in what I was currently wearing.  Without realizing why, the desire to impress Fran seized me.

After leaving work I ran to my car with my heart was beating fast.  The ride home wouldn’t be long if it was not rush hour, but it was. I drove as fast as I could, running two red lights (the first two of my life) and arrived home.  Luckily, I had private parking.

My house was on the outskirts of the city, right next to the Multi-adventure Park, in a new apartment building. The apartment was composed of three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, two bathrooms (one was exclusive to the master bedroom) and two tiny balconies.

As soon as I entered my apartment I threw my bag aside, and I began undressing. I didn’t have time to shower, so I hurried to my closet and put on a blue dress my other best friend, Paula, had given me. It was one of the few dresses I owned.  It’s not that I didn’t like dresses, I was too used to pants. I picked up a pair of lovely navy-blue shoes I rarely wore and headed to the standing mirror of my room. I turned around three times in front of it, like I were dancing to a slow song.  I felt like Cinderella, but there was still more to be done, makeup and hair. Make up was good for me, despite not liking too much, but my hair.  If it was something simple, I was good, but if it was something more complicated I needed help. In this case I wanted something that looked spectacular and I needed it fast, so if I ever needed an excellent hairstyle and couldn’t get to a hairdresser, I always turned to my neighbor who was quick and efficient. I rang her doorbell, at this time she would be preparing dinner. Her husband opened the door, in the background I could hear a TV set, and the noise of children, no doubt my neighbor’s children.  I explained what I wanted.  To my misfortune, he told me that my neighbor wasn’t home.  She had gone to look for some ingredients for dinner, but she would arrive soon.

I returned to my apartment.  I didn’t know what to do. I thought it would be better if I calmed down, so I sat on the sofa. The clock continued to tick, and I didn’t want to be late. I picked up my tablet and looked up the restaurant’s address.  I knew it was an expensive and exclusive place, but as soon as I saw the menu prices I was overwhelmed. At that moment I was surprised by two things: one, he invited me to such a place, and two, there were people willing to pay so much for what seemed like so little.

The minutes ticked away, and my neighbor hadn’t returned.  I thought about doing something simple that wouldn’t look too bad, however at that moment my doorbell sounded, it was her. She was surprised to see me so dressed up and asked me a few unseemly questions, which I answered kindly with a smile. In a couple of minutes my brown hair lay in a beautiful bun. I chose a nice purse, placing all the essentials in it and began to leave.  Suddenly my cell phone rang. It was my sister Celeste, she was crying on the other end.  She told me her boyfriend had dumped her and she wanted to know if she could stay with me for a few days. Ten minutes later I was in my car going to my sister's boyfriend's house, now an ex-boyfriend, in jeans and a tank top, with my hair down. Goodbye, date!

I came to the street where my sister lived, not a very nice area.

She was waiting for me on the sidewalk with a suitcase and a sports bag. I double parked, while she walked to the car, opened the back door, put her belongings in and got into the passenger seat. As soon as I looked at her, I got nervous.

Well, what happened to you? I said visibly upset.

Celeste shook her head negatively.

You're going to report it, aren’t you? I cried. You have to report it.