CHAPTER 1:

“O

h, Isabella, come on!” Reyna, my roommate and long-time friend, yelled over the sound of the water from my shower.

I rolled my eyes knowing very well that she couldn't see me.

“Reyna,” I sighed. “You know, I don't do the whole 'going out' thing because it makes me so uncomfortable.”

“That's because you don't even try to have a good time.”

“I do!” I retorted.

Reyna snorted, “As if! You need to come out with Kat and I and actually try to enjoy yourself.”

I sighed. Reyna was always so damn persistent and I had a feeling I wasn't going to win this fight.

Reyna and Katrina Cazarez were sisters who were eighteen months apart, but looked almost identical. They were both gifted with long, thick black hair that had the most perfect curls. The kind that started right from their roots. Their olive skin was a blessing from their father's Spanish ancestry, and their light blue eyes were from their half-French, half-Spanish mother.

Reyna and I had been friends since the first day of high school, when she walked in and offered me gum, despite the fact that we weren't allowed to have gum during class. Her shirt's top button was undone, and her tie was pulled to the side. She couldn't care less about the rules, which terrified my control-freak tendencies, but I was fascinated by her spontaneous nature.

Her family lived in Madrid, and they had decided that sending their daughters to a posh international school in the UK would be the best option. So she was enrolled in the boarding school side of Queen's College - Somerset, one of the country's most prestigious private schools. She moved back to Spain after graduation and yet, we still managed to stay just as close.

Reyna and I were polar opposites in every conceivable way - from our personalities to our looks. My longer wavy brown hair and hazel eyes were never features I considered to be striking like hers. Reyna thrived on being the center of attention, and thanks to my introverted tendencies, I couldn't think of anything worse. We may have been opposites, but we always managed to bring out the best in each other. She was the dreamer and I was the realist. She had always been the closest person to me - not even my older sister Camila and I were half as close.

“Izzy, I know how difficult this has all been for you,” Reyna began, a sliver of her Spanish accent visible. “But you deserve at least one night to go out and have fun.”

The ache in my heart still lingered. She was referring to the latest life-altering event that I didn't see coming.My now ex-boyfriend, Nate Cameron, with whom I had spent the previous six years of my life with, dumped me. We were dubbed “high-school sweethearts” by everyone, and we had our entire lives planned out.

The perfect job, the perfect apartment, the perfect life.

Until he left me and that all went for a ball of shit.

It was one of our regularly scheduled date nights... Everything in our lives had always been meticulously planned to the last detail, but something about this night felt different.

Everyone around us had been talking about marriage for a while now and we knew they were expecting an engagement. A part of me was terrified of making such a long-term commitment, but my mother always reminded me that it was the next logical step.

Nate, a prominent architect based in London, was planning to head to Madrid to work with an old family friend who was heading up a project there. I was happy Nate was getting all these amazing opportunities but initially, the idea of leaving London riddled me with anxiety. I had a clear plan for my life, which didn't include leaving, but I had to stick by my boyfriend. We had talked about settling down there if everything went as planned. I was actually looking forward to the change, which was completely out of character for me. Change terrified me. I had to coordinate everything, but we talked about going to Madrid together, and that became part of our new plan. My mother wasn't thrilled that I was leaving London, but she was determined to make it work. She claimed that quitting my job was not an option, so after much convincing, my boss agreed that I could work remotely for the time being.

I was getting ready to meet him at our favourite Italian restaurant when Nate stumbled into our apartment.

“Are you drunk?” I asked, shocked and confused by this out-of-character behaviour. This was not Nate’s style. We were simple people who enjoyed the “finer things in life”, and he never drank or even went out. I never wanted to use the word “boring” at the time, but if I'm being honest, that's exactly what our lives were. Boring! There was no room in the plan for any distractions, which I had learned to accept. He walked over to the kitchen counter, leaning against it to keep himself upright. He undid his tie and threw it across the kitchen. He began unbuttoning the top of his shirt, avoiding direct eye contact.

“Isabella,” he slurred, “I can't do this anymore.”

I held my breath.

“What?” I asked, even though I had heard exactly what he said.

“This,” he indicated to mean him and I. “I can't do this relationship anymore. I'm sorry but this is getting way too serious for me. Everyone wants us to get engaged and get married. I can't handle this pressure. I don't want it. I haven't even lived yet and I'm not ready for that kind of commitment.”

I waited for the tears to come, but they didn’t. Instead, I went numb.

“You're breaking up with me?” I tried to remain calm, but I couldn't deny the confusion bubbling over inside of me.

He nodded, “I'm sorry, but you deserve someone who can give you what you want right now and that's isn’t me.”

“We don't have to get engaged right now, Nate,”

“I know but it's what your family wants, and I don't even know if I want to get married at all.”

Given how openly we discussed the next step in our relationship, his sudden admission of his true feelings caught me off guard. He finally met my gaze. His light blue eyes were filled with pain, and I could tell he was ashamed of what he was doing. I wish I could say I could have predicted it, but it appears we were not on the same page, and I had no idea. This came as a complete surprise to me. I watched him bury his head in his hands. I tried to feel something, but there was nothing left. No sadness. No anger. I felt nothing as the numbness spread across my body.

“Please, Nate, just let me deal with telling my family,” I murmured, my voice devoid of any emotion.

“Of course, Izzy. I'm sorry, I never wanted to hur-”

I lifted a finger to cut him off. He never wanted to hurt me and yet, here we were. I turned around and returned to our room, locking the door behind me. I was in shock. The very last thing I expected Nate to do was dump me. We had it all figured out; every step of our lives had been laid out and ready to go.

But that was the problem.

I thought my heart broke that night until I admitted to myself that once the initial shock wore off, it was actually relief that washed over me. I had always been too afraid to admit it, but I wasn't in love with Nate anymore. I loved him, but I wasn't in love with him.

I was just bored.

The blindside, on the other hand, did not make the months following our breakup any easier. My entire life had a plan, and then it was suddenly thrown out the window, leaving me unsure of what to do next.

So long story short, I moved to Barcelona with Reyna, who had already been living here for a few years. While their family still lived in Madrid, Reyna and Katrina had moved to Barcelona when they decided to attend university here. They had been sharing an apartment and opened their home up to me when I needed it. We lived just outside the city center, but everything we needed was just a train ride away.

Barcelona was rich in fascinating history and culture, right down to the architecture of the old buildings that were still standing after all these years. The apartment building's exterior was archaic, but the interior was as modern and spacious as it could be.

When I moved to Barcelona, I didn't even tell my parents the full story. There was no way I could explain to them that I had been dumped by my picture-perfect boyfriend just days before we were supposed to move to a new country together, especially since everyone was expecting an engagement. Everyone already assumed we were going to get married. I went to Spain in the end; I just left out the part about not going with Nate.

I've been told my entire life that I need to have everything together. I had grown up terrified of disappointing my parents if I didn't follow the plan laid out for me. My mother was a control freak by nature, and it didn't change when she had children; she was adamant about directing the course of our lives, as it was her way of ensuring that we were, in her words, “going to be a success.” In my 'perfect' household, there was no room for failure.

Nate dumped me and then in the very same week, the publishing company I worked for declined to promote me. After all my hard work and my mother stepping in, convincing them I could do my job from Spain. I wasn't a fan of nepotism but my mother got me the job in the first place. She didn't care about involving herself in my life, she would do whatever was necessary to ensure her children would not be failures.

How do you do that? Well, according to her, you get involved in every aspect of your children's lives and smother them with the plan you believed was best for them.

Everything in my life seemed to be falling apart and I was suffocating. Reyna welcomed me with open arms four months ago, and I haven't looked back.

Reyna brought me back to reality. “You have to admit that you could use a night out.”

I turned off the water and grabbed my towel, wrapping it around my body. Reyna had just finished applying the last of her makeup in front of the large mirror we shared. I was always envious of her beauty and the way she carried herself. I'd always wished for that level of confidence.

“You're right,” I admitted with a sigh. “I'm just the worst at it.”

“It's because you overthink it,” Katrina shouted from outside the bathroom.

She strolled in with a pair of black heels in her hand. Her beautiful dark hair hung perfectly straight over her shoulders and she was dressed in a tight red dress. She was all set to go.

“Why are you dressed already?” I asked, knowing it was still too early to head out.

“I'm meeting Sergio,” she explained, smiling as she leaned over to put on her shoes.

Katrina had been seeing Sergio for a couple of months now, and although she would never admit it, I could tell she was really starting to fall for him.

“Can we stop changing the subject here?” Reyna turned and grabbed me by the shoulders. “Izzy, you are coming out with us, okay? I'm not taking no for an answer!”

“When do you ever?” I rolled my eyes.

“Never,” she said with a smug smile.

She was right about needing to go out. I could sense it deep within me, this hidden desire to break through and do something I'd never done before. The desire to be spontaneous and live a little for the first time in my life.

“Where are we going?” I sighed, slowly building up the courage to join her.

“Mala Mía,” she said with a smirk.

Mala Mía was the hottest club in town situated in the city center of Plaza Catalunya. It was still a fairly new addition in the area when compared to the other standing businesses surrounding it. Every weekend, the place was packed with locals and tourists who came to enjoy the city's best reggaeton club. The vibrant atmosphere of the area consumed Mala Mía and made it one of the most popular clubs in town.

Reyna was a VIP there, and although she always invited me to join her, I was too caught up in my own fears to take her up on her offer.

Tonight, she wasn't giving me a choice.

“Fine,” I caved. “What should I wear?”