My ex was here. Daniel. Or at least, an older version of the man I remembered. Back when we had dated, he could have been mistaken for a guy my age. But that had changed. In the time we had not seen each other, the way he looked had caught up with his age. And he had aged well. Time had treated him kindly. The Daniel who was striding in my direction was an attractive forty-year-old man, one who moved with the confidence only someone who walked in front of a class filled with college students every day would have.

Although he had always had that confidence, hadn’t he? Wasn’t that exactly what had led me to crush on my professor in the first place? It was during that very first lecture I attended. He walked in, cleared his throat, and flashed that dimple. It didn’t take more than that. I had been a goner.

A lame, pathetic goner, crushing on her Physics professor. Or so I had thought, but then, by some magical turn of events, he had reciprocated my attention. He did more than that. And I had believed we had something real. Something lasting, just how Gonzalo and Isabel did.

And then everything had blown up in my face. Not in our faces, no. Daniel had been spared the nightmare.

“Is that Daniel?” Aaron’s low and hushed question returned me back to the present.

I turned to him briefly, not finding my words so I just nodded.

My attention jumped back to where my ex—and the best man—was, and as I watched how he hugged and clapped his brother’s back, I felt Aaron stepping closer to me. I didn’t move. I was rooted to the floor.

Aaron closed some more of the distance between us, positioning himself to my side, right behind me. And I was shocked at the warmth that his body radiated on my back and how his side quashed some of the uneasiness. It reassured me. He did. And I didn’t understand how or why, but I didn’t have the time to pick that apart. Not with Daniel and everybody else there. So, I just held on to it.

I inhaled deeply and watched how the best man started the round of greeting everyone with kisses and hugs. Around the group he went, and I swore there was something suspended in the air as he did. As if every single person around me was holding their breath until the moment Daniel reached me.

Hating how the atmosphere seemed to thicken with every pair of eyes that turned to me, I reminded myself that I had already been expecting that kind of reaction. Everybody knew what had happened between Daniel and me. How ugly it got and how hard it was for me. And most had pitied me back then. I knew most of them did in this moment, and some always would.

Daniel took that one last step in my direction, causing a churning sensation to twist my stomach in knots.

“Lina.”

It had been ages since I had heard my name from Daniel’s mouth. It brought everything right back, the good moments we had shared—and there had been really amazing moments—all that joy that came hand in hand with a first love you foolishly thought was going to last forever, but also all the pain at having that turned into an ocean of hurt. Because, sure, Daniel had been the one to break my heart, but the real damage had been done by everybody else. By everyone who had learned of our relationship and tarnished it with stupid and poisonous rumors that—

No. Not the time to think of that.

Daniel placed a hand on my upper arm and planted a kiss on my cheek. If it hadn’t been for Aaron’s warm palm, which had somehow landed on the small of my back, I would have stumbled backward. That was how off guard that friendly kiss had caught me.

My gaze roamed around the group, confirming that every person present had their eyeballs turned on us.

Daniel seemed oblivious to all the gawking, smiling at me like we were old friends being reunited after years of not seeing each other. Which was the exact opposite of how I felt.

He looked me up and down. “Dios, Lina. Cuánto tiempo. Mírate. Estás—”

“Daniel,” I cut him off. “This is Aaron,” I blurted out, pulling away from him and nestling myself a step further into my fake boyfriend and personal human-sized shield.

Daniel’s furrowed eyebrows signaled his confusion. Probably because I had switched to English more than because I was introducing him to someone I was supposedly dating.

“Hi. I’m her boyfriend,” Aaron said politely, stretching his hand in front of him. “Su novio,” he clarified in Spanish for Daniel’s sake. Which was completely unnecessary and kind of cocky, and in some parallel reality, it would have pulled a snicker out of me. But my lips remained pressed into a tense line. “It’s nice to meet you, Daniel.”

My ex and sister’s fiancé’s best friend stared at Aaron for a brief moment and then broke into a wary but amiable smile. “Sí, claro. Nice to meet you, Aaron.” Daniel finally took Aaron’s hand and shook it. “I’m an old friend of Lina.”

Something pulled tight in my stomach at Daniel’s definition of what we had once been.

As soon as both men retrieved their arms, Daniel returned his attention to me, and Aaron’s palm returned to my back.

“How have you been, Lina? You look so … different.” Daniel’s smile widened. “Different, but good. You look amazing actually.”

His eyes kept assessing me, as if he couldn’t believe that it was me. And I wasn’t really sure how I felt about that, so I forced my lips to curl up.

“Thanks, Daniel. I have been fine, busy with work and … life.”

“That’s right.” My ex nodded his head. “You are living the life in New York City. I always knew you had the potential to do great things, to get very far in your career.”

He had been my professor for a whole year before we started properly dating, and during that time, I had been a highly motivated student. An overachiever. Things had changed after that.

“And you did.”

“Thanks,” I muttered. My mind filing away all kinds of complaints. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

Aaron cleared his throat lightly. “It is,” he said softly. So much that I thought he had said it just for me. But then he kept going, “Lina leads a considerably large team of people in one of the most successful engineering consulting companies in New York. That is, by all standards, a big deal.”

“Wow.” Daniel smiled tightly. “That’s amazing, Lina. It is.” His lips turned somewhat more relaxed. “Congratulations.”

I muttered my thanks, still feeling flushed over Aaron’s words.

There was a long and awkward moment of silence, and then Daniel’s eyes bounced quickly between Aaron and me. “So, this is him, huh? The American boyfriend.”

My head reared back, shocked by Daniel’s word choice. With my shoulders tensing, my mouth opened with the intention of asking what that had been, but I felt Aaron’s hand trailing up my back, stopping at the nook between my shoulder and my neck. His thumb brushed the skin there very gently. That touch—that thumb caressing the side of my neck—almost made me forget about who was in front of me and what he had said or if he had talked at all. His finger swiped right and left one more time, making a shiver run down my spine.

Closing my eyes briefly, I pulled myself back into the conversation and decided to ignore Daniel’s last comment. “Congratulations on the engagement.” I made my lips tug up. “I’m very happy for you, Daniel.”

Daniel’s eyes, which had been somewhere where Aaron’s palm was, met mine. He nodded and flashed that dimple I had been so familiar with in the past. “Thank you, Lina. I’m extremely grateful she said yes. It’s not that easy to deal with me sometimes. I get lost in my head a lot when I’m working,” he said, slipping his hands in his pockets. “Well, no need to explain that to you. You know that already.”

Yes, I did. Everybody here knew I did too. He hadn’t needed to point that out. Not after downgrading our past to old friends.