99 Days

By Jessica Galera Andreu

When Claudia agreed to attend the anniversary dinner of her high school promotion, little could she have imagined what would change her life. Delighted to be reunited with those friends with whom she has never lost contact despite living and working in the United States, Claudia misses the presence of Marcos, her platonic love at the time.
Barely half a year after marrying her fiancé, she accepts the madness that occurs to her friends to look for Marcos and carry out a 'bachelorette party' at the height, settling that particular pending matter, something she laughs at.
Reencountering Marcos, however, places her in a scene impossible to imagine and despite how rational and sensible she has always been, she decides to abandon herself to a madness with an expiration date.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BadPress
• Release date: Dec 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9781071516324

Book preview

Dedicated to all those who persevere in the struggle to achieve their dreams.

And to Vanessa Puig for being my inspiration to retake this novel, which was one day unfinished, and finish it; for being the first to read it and give me her most sincere opinion.

For helping me.

Knowing you has been one of those little gifts life gives you. That you don't lack to live, princess.  Marcos.

CHAPTER 1

The taxi dropped me off at the hotel door and as soon as I put my feet on the asphalt, I felt them burning like a couple of fried eggs. Only two days had passed since I arrived in the city, and I had not even been able to stop to enjoy it at all, much less to rest. That was essentially a business trip, and from the first moment it was clear to me that enjoyment and rest would be part of the background, but the rhythm had been so stressful since landing that even I, accustomed to that frenetic coming and going, felt exhausted. I was beginning to think that my boss was trying to get rid of me without having to pay compensation; in short, he wanted to kill me.

As soon as I got out of the elevator, on my way to the room, I stripped myself of the high heels that punished my feet and snorted, relieved. Then I inserted the card into the slot in the door, and an immediate hiss gave me access to the interior of that luxurious room.

I was overwhelmed as I entered, not to say horrified. My boss spared no expense in organizing his employees' travels, but I had always thought that all that waste was unnecessary, after all, customers were not received in the hotel room, so there was no need to maintain appearances there. After all, however, I didn't pay, so there was no reason to complain any more.

As I opened the shower faucet, I stripped myself of the bobby pins that kept my ribbon on and I looked at myself mirror: a slight shadow furrowed the lower part of my eyes light. My mother's voice repeating to me that

I'd end up getting sick if I didn't start prioritizing.

my health above my work was repeated one and the other in my head. Even if I hated to admit it, I was right.

and even though I hadn't seen her in almost three months, I knew that she'd tell me again as soon as she put a foot in the house, something I thought I'd do in 24 hours, yeah. Everything was fine. The sound of my mobile phone interrupted my long-awaited entry into the shower and even though I almost ignored the call, I ended up looking for that blissful apparatus, worried that it might be my boss, hysterical and anxious to know the progress made in the operation that concerned us. However, the name on the screen was Marga. I would have discarded the call, were it not for the fact that I had already done so on three more occasions that day. I sighed, resigned and picked up the phone with feigned kindness.

Marga!

Claudia, where are you? I've been calling you all day long.

I'm sorry, I'm all over the buying and selling of that that's a blissful factory. I swear if I don't leave it closed today he's going to give me something.

Well, you better! I remind you that tomorrow we have plans.

Plans?

God, don't tell me you forgot: dinner of promotion, remember?  Institute, former classmates, losers, fat, bald, gold bachelors... there's so much fauna to see...

I laughed at the crazy occurrences of Marga.

Well, if I'm telling you the truth, I had forgotten...

Well, here I am to remind you, she said

Marga, I don't know if I'll finally go. I'm bursting and I still have a long train ride ahead of me.

Of course you will! You said that after closing the sale, you'd stay a couple more days in the country, you'd come to town.

I said it and I will, but I'm not so sure I'm going to that one happy dinner...

Let's go! You've missed the last 200.

Living in the United States doesn't make my power any easier to go to the dinners organized by Pili and company.

I know, and that's precisely why you have to come to this one. For once we caught you in Spain...

It's a round trip, you know.

I know, but since you'll be around, you can't refuse to go. Come on, we'll have a good time! You need a little leisure. You can't refuse. You can't make me this...

Don't get dramatic.

So, will you come?

I sigh reluctantly.

I'll go, I grudgingly promised him.

That's my girl. See you tomorrow, then. We'll pick you up at the station, remember.

I thank you, I settled, before I cut off the communication.

***

The rattle of the train had plunged me into a dream uneasy. I opened my eyes for the umpteenth time and closed the book that I kept uselessly open on my lap; I was too tired to keep reading. I had managed to put an end to that complex buying and selling operation that had brought me back to Spain and I felt that it had taken an enormous weight off my shoulders, but not so the exhaustion that fell upon me as a huge slab.

I looked at the spring landscape and smiled when I recognized it. In a little less than half an hour I would have reached my destination, that little village that saw me be born and also go away; the that she had abhorred as a child and that she had come to miss so much during the grey days in New York.

I pulled my reddish hair away from my face and rested my temples on the crystal, already stripped of the drowsiness that had made me head-butting during the last few hours of travel.

I took the mobile phone out of my pocket and watched the WhatsApp group that Pili had created for the promotional dinner. They had been celebrating that event for several years but I hadn't been able to attend practically any of them, as it had been a long time that I had settled my life on the other side of the puddle, as many said and although sometimes I was embarrassed to think so, I felt that less and less things were binding me to Spain.

I smiled when I read some of the crazy things that my old friends did high school classmates were conversing on the screen of my mobile phone and I couldn't help but be attentive to the waiting for an intervention that was taking too long to be given. Thinking about Marcos made me bring a hand to my forehead and smile. Marcos Saavedra. How would 14 years later? What would have become of that handsome man blue-eyed boy that I had fallen in love – without wanting to or knowing it - at 13? My first love platonic, the same one I had cried bitterly for the tears of adolescent frustration and the same with which had fantasized all sorts of crazy things, even a wedding.

Marga and the other girls had told me years ago that he was still just as handsome and that Marcos was one of the most few boys in the class who had matured, not only with dignity, but with imposing perfection.  My closest friends I had dared to confess to them that the image of Marcos flew to my memory with unusual frequency. It had long since ceased to be to ask for him and convinced of my oblivion, they too had stopped talking to me about him, so I didn't even have the remotest idea of what might have been of his life: Did he would he have married? Would he have children? What would he work for?

Ask me all that and consider the possibility of  to find answers that very night, made me feel nervous.

Shaking my head in the face of my own stupidity, I closed the WhatsApp group and I looked up another name among my contacts, James, my fiancé. The last message that I had received from him dated from the night before: Be careful and let me know when you get home from your parents. I love you.

Although at first I thought of answering to warn him of my early arrival and reassure him, finally, I ended up closing the cell phone and keeping it from new in my pocket. There would already be time to write.

I thought. In addition, I knew that the time change would have to James still sleeping, so there wasn't any Hurry up. In a little more than half an hour I had finally arrived at my destiny. I picked up the two suitcases I had carried with me and walked among the crowds until I came across the unmistakable figures of Marga and Victoria, that me they were already waiting for. The first one was very tall and her endless legs had been the object of envy of everyone since our teens. I used to think that Marga could have made a living as a model if she had proposed it, but as paradoxical as it was, she preferred to place herself on the other side of the spotlights and made photography her profession. Blonde hair and eye-catching blue eyes, Marga's physique did not go unnoticed or even among that asphyxiating tumult of people.

I could still remember her on the day of her wedding to Carlos; she looked like an angel. Something less striking in its features and body although more exuberant in his clothing he was Victoria. Quite a bit shorter than Marga, she continued wearing the short black mane with which he always had