The Suarez Myth: Chapter 2

They were five months in.

It was time to host a formal party, something intimate for a few of his associates and their wives, her first serious task as “Roman Suarez’s girlfriend”. Roman wanted it at his home in Barcelona. Saoirse had heard about this villa many times by now. It was his “family seat”, where his parents, whom she hadn’t met yet, still lived. 

The Suarez villa had been raised stone by stone by merchants who became bankers, bankers who became something more than kings in their own city. It was where tapestries aged more slowly than people, where the furniture had been commissioned when Napoleon still frightened Europe, and where (Roman once mentioned with a faint smile) the clocks were wound just because his mother liked the sound.

He wanted formal, candlelight, linen napkins and imported champagne. Of course, he had staff to handle all that. All Saoirse could think of was how it would be the first time she would meet his parents Amancio and Allegra Suarez, the first time she would see his primary home, the first time she would see Barcelona. It would be the first time she played his hostess, and she started to crumble under the pressure from his very first, very casual mention of it.

She suggested something else. What about the Madrid rooftop mezze bar she loved, plates to share, warm air, and laughter that didn’t echo against glass.

“I just think… maybe something less perfect? A little messy could be nice.”

He stared at her. “Messy?”

She laughed, backtracking, “I mean… warm.”

She didn’t expect him to bristle, but the silence that followed was just a breath too long. He stood by the window, his glass of wine untouched on the dresser. Then he turned, slowly, and crossed to where she sat on the tufted ottoman.

“Saoirse,” his voice was unexpectedly soft. “I know you think I do things to impress people. I don’t. I do things to protect our legacy.”

She blinked. Her stomach flipped. He took her hand.

“You once told me you hated chaos, that noise made you feel like you were disappearing. I listened to that. All of this? It’s not for them. It’s for you. So you don’t have to flinch or shout just to be seen.”

She looked down. Her hand was warm in his.

“I wasn’t criticizing,” she whispered. She wanted to say that she was scared to death about meeting his family, but felt too ashamed to confess that.

He smiled. “I know. But if you ever feel the urge to disrupt what keeps you safe, ask yourself why first? Or ask me.”

Their next night was in Barcelona. 

The villa was not what she expected. Saoirse had imagined grandeur, but grandeur here was hushed and old. It crouched like something carved into the hillside, its shutters green with age, its stone pale from centuries of salt air. Yet inside, every object had the weight of centuries. Frescoed ceilings dimmed with candle smoke, rugs so fine the patterns seemed whispered rather than woven, glassware so thin it was a miracle they survived generations of Suarez hands.

It was ostentation, but more than that, it was permanence, and it made her shiver as they walked across one grand hall into his wing, accompanied by house staff.

At dinner with his family, she wore the dress he had laid out for her, a bone-colored silk that whispered when she walked. She sat at the long walnut table the staff set, candles burning in silver sticks that looked older than her country, crystal bowls of blood-red roses that were theatrical in the half-light. Her job, as she understood it, was simple. Say the right things, laugh at the right pauses, be beautiful and still.

Amancio and Allegra presided at the heads of the table as though they had not moved in forty years. Their faces bore the smooth, waxen look of people who had lived without weather or worry, their conversation clipped and correct. His sisters, Bibiana and Marcela, who flew in from their respective homes, sat opposite them. They were much older than Roman, much sharper than their parents. Their jewels caught the candlelight but not their eyes.

Everyone was polite, certainly, courteous, but cold in the way of people who considered emotion provincial. Their questions, when they came, were less about curiosity than verification, like they were simply testing details Roman had already provided, confirming that Saoirse was indeed studying literature, that her parents were lost and dead respectively, that her family was from Northern Ireland and her only living sibling was really just a half-sibling, that she had indeed been in Madrid for a residency. 

Each fact was treated like a line item on a ledger already balanced. They smiled without warmth, listened without listening. Each nod felt rehearsed. Saoirse felt herself shrinking into silence, every story she might have told suffocated before it could form.

At one point, a silver serving dish slipped in a footman’s hand and clattered faintly against the table. The sound was sharp enough to make Saoirse flinch, but the Suarez family did not so much as blink. She realized then that one could die in this house, and they would still finish dessert before calling a doctor.

The food itself was nice, though she could hardly taste it. There was velvet consommé in porcelain cups, sole in a sauce so delicate it seemed transparent, lamb roasted to impossible tenderness. Each dish appeared, was praised with a single syllable, “Correcto, bien,” from Allegra, who was actually Italian, and was cleared in silence. Not a crumb misplaced, not a drop spilled.

Marcela, the younger of the two sisters, at last turned her pale gaze on Saoirse. “You write poems,” she said in clear English, as though observing a child’s hobby. “Roman tells us you are very… earnest.”

Saoirse smiled too quickly. “I suppose I am.”

Marcela gave a single nod, then lowered her eyes to her plate, her interest extinguished as abruptly as it had been lit.

Bibiana spoke only once, to correct the date of a festival Saoirse mentioned in Madrid. “It is in April,” she said coolly, cutting into her lamb. “Not March.” Then silence, the knife glinting like a definite full stop.

Roman, beside her, rested his hand lightly over hers on the tablecloth, an anchor in the icy drift. His thumb moved once, just enough to remind her of his presence. She felt it as protection, his warmth against the chill of the room, a quiet signal that even here, under his parents’ roof, she was his to manage, to reassure, to hold still. He smiled at his family with the same quiet command he used with his staff, unruffled, unreadable.

By the time dessert arrived, an almond torte so fine it melted at the fork, Saoirse’s cheeks hurt from smiling, and she had learned something essential. In this family, perfection was a requirement. Humanity was optional.

Yet, as she looked around the table, she told herself it was a kind of discipline she could learn from. More importantly, she saw room for her own tenderness to mean something, to thaw what had probably been frozen for generations. Wasn’t it beautiful, in its way, to be tested by marble and found worthy?

Perhaps she was meant to bring light into this house. Why else would Roman have walked up to her at the bar that random evening in Madrid? He had the whole world at his table, and yet he stopped for her. He clearly needed some warmth in his cold world, and she could give him that, she would give him that.

His hand lingered on hers, and she believed it was a sign that, although his family may never understand her, he did. That in a world as polished and airless as this, her warmth was precious.

And the mezze bar never came up again.

+

The night of the party for his associates, the villa glowed. Everyone was dressed like influence, wealth, and control. Saoirse wore bone silk. Her hair was tucked, her lipstick barely there. She was beautiful and quiet. She had practiced both.

The men and women came in twos. They were polished, air-kissing, wearing their status in scent and silence. Roman proudly introduced her to them all as his girlfriend.

Then Clair walked in. Clair Neumann, one of the expected guests. She was the only one not “partnered”. But Roman’s family knew her, everyone knew her, it seemed. Someone would later whisper that her mother was Amancio Suarez’s oldest counsel. 

She was very late, and she was laughing loudly about it. She wore a striking red dress, and her hair was unpinned, her bracelet clinking against her wine glass like punctuation. She kissed Saoirse on both cheeks, looked her up and down with a warm smirk.

“You’re the one Roman’s been hiding.” Saoirse blinked and smiled reflexively. “Don’t worry. I’m just nosy,” Clair said and laughed.

She poured her own wine, loudly. Mid-conversation with one of the men, she said, completely unprompted, “God, I miss being terrible at things. Remember when we were all mediocre at something and still felt okay about it?”

The room chuckled. Roman’s jaw flexed. Saoirse felt it in her spine, that shift in the room’s tone, and then, her own flinch. Clair hadn’t said anything wrong, but Saoirse had forgotten it was possible to be that unfiltered, to take up space without wrapping it in apology.

Clair sat beside her at dinner, drank too much wine, interrupted Roman twice, and laughed with her mouth wide open, like Saoirse had done that first night at the Madrid penthouse.

As the house fell back into stillness that night, Roman slid his hand onto Saoirse’s back.

“Loud women never last. You know that, right?” He said with his low voice.

“She seemed… alive,” Saoirse responded.

“So does fire, until it ruins the room.”

She told herself she was growing more refined, but later, alone in bed, face turned to the pillow, she dreamed of dancing on an ugly rooftop with plastic cups and music too loud to hear herself think.

When she woke up, she didn’t write that down like she usually would.

Three days later, she got a long SMS:

Hey porcelain girl,

I keep thinking about you from the other night. Not sure if you noticed, but I watch people the way most men watch sport. You were luminous but every time you spoke, your eyes checked his face first. Just an observation.

I’ve done it too. I once married a man who said I “sparkled too much in public” so I learned to dim. Just wanted to say you don’t have to answer this but if you ever want dinner with too much wine, all the wrong forks, and people who let you talk with your hands…

I’m in town for another week and I promise not to call you rare, fragile, or poetic.

– Clair from your dinner party

Saoirse read it in bed when Roman was in the shower. As the white noise of the distant water gushing immersed her in a brief, suspended moment, she read it again and again. She didn’t reply, not yet. She just… stared at it and felt the quiet flutter of something like recognition.

At the giant island of one of the Barcelona kitchens the next morning, Roman was slicing blood oranges into perfect rounds. The sun shone through the glass wall like gold paint, and Saoirse held her phone like something burning just beneath her skin.

She didn’t mean to show him. She just… didn’t want to keep a secret, not even a small one.

“Clair sent me a message,” she said softly.

He didn’t look up, “Mmm. Of course she did.” She slid the phone across the counter. He read it carefully, twice. “Red dress needs attention. Chocante.” He chewed on a slice and chuckled. He set the knife down, wiped his hands on a linen towel, and looked at her fully now. “Do you want to go to dinner with her?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.” 

He walked to her and touched her cheek.

“Women like Clair are threatened by stillness. They only feel real when they’re being loud.” Saoirse nodded, staring into his earnest eyes. “So when they see someone who commands presence without demanding it… they panic.” She chewed on her lower lip, processing his words. His fingers slid to her chin, gently tugging to release her lip from her teeth.

“They want you to believe you’re muted. But sweetheart… You’re composed.” He smiled and turned around. “Some people don’t know how to exist without unraveling in public. It’s not your job to become chaotic so they can feel comfortable.”

She nodded again. He put some blood orange slices into two porcelain fruit bowls and handed her one with a kiss on the temple.

That night, he was asleep beside her in their bedroom, breathing soft and steady as she lay awake.

She opened her phone and typed slowly, a draft reply to Clair:

Thank you.

I didn’t realize I was checking his face but you’re right, I do. I don’t know when that started. I think he loves me. I think I love him. But I’m starting to wonder if this love only works when I’m quiet enough not to disturb it. I miss being a little wrong. I miss the version of me who didn’t worry if her laugh landed elegantly.

Thank you for noticing. That kind of noticing feels… rare. (Ironic, right?)

She stared at the message for several minutes and realized she hadn’t spoken with Nina in too long. “Let her live her life while you live yours,” Roman had once said. 

She pressed <Back>, tucking her message into the quiet. Finally, she turned out the little light on her bedside table.

+

Roman proposed exactly ten months after they met. Long enough for it to feel serious. Short enough for it to still feel like magic.

Saoirse was newly 22, barely anchored in the world. Roman was 37, impossibly composed, impossibly sure, impossibly powerful. He’d made her feel like a singular event in his long, curated life, like choosing her was inevitable.

She said yes immediately. They were in Lisbon on a surprise three-day trip. Roman had chosen the hotel for its views and quiet.

He’d packed for her. Every dress in the suite was already pressed and hanging when they arrived. That morning, a pair of vacation-grade espadrilles she hadn’t seen before lay on the floor beneath a note that said:

On the day of the proposal, they walked through Alfama, the old quarter with its labyrinthine streets and historic architecture. It was late afternoon, golden. He held her hand like it belonged to him in a contract. They reached a rooftop overlooking the orange tiles and soft haze of the sea, and there was a table set for two with linen, lemon water, and a single silver box beside the wine. 

She smiled. “What’s this?”

“A question,” he responded with all the calm in the world. He didn’t kneel. He just opened the box, slowly, like a man offering certainty. Inside was a ring she’d once admired in a museum book. It was art deco, diamond like a blade of light. She hadn’t remembered telling him. He had remembered.

“You once told me you don’t want to be saved,” he said. “Just held in a way that lets you stay soft.” He exhaled. “Let me do that.”

She didn’t hesitate for even a second. She said yes, then cried. He kissed her hand and said, “You’ll never have to explain yourself again.”

That night, she lay in bed in his shirt, watching him sleep. She couldn’t sleep. She turned out of bed, opened her journal, and wrote with a whimsical pen he gave her in Florence.

She stopped and stared at that last line. Where did it come from? She left it and went to sleep beside a man who remembered her preferences but had never once asked what she wanted.

+

He planned everything.

The planner was someone from Milan who was elegant, discreet, and only spoke to Saoirse via email, and even then, sparingly. Every time she tried to suggest something—songs she liked, her mother’s lace veil, a family poem to read during the ceremony—it was smoothed away.

The colors were his. Ivory, bone, silver. No red. No green. Nothing that reminded her of before. The guest list? 118 people. She only knew 12, and none of them was Sinead, her only family left.

She didn’t have bridesmaids because he said she didn’t need them, and she didn’t try to argue. The way he loved her was so total, it felt selfish to want anything more.

When she saw herself in the final dress, hand-stitched silk, simple, perfect, she cried. She didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror, but she still wanted to be her.

The wedding was at a private villa in Puglia because that’s where Allegra Suarez wanted it. It was all vineyard, marble, a chapel with no ceiling, just sky. Saoirse knew she looked unreal, hair slicked into a low twist, gown whispering at the hem. She walked like someone suspended, not grounded.

Nina was invited but not treated like a close friend. The planner sat her far from the family table, didn’t give her a speech slot or more than five minutes alone with the bride, with her. Saoirse let it be the planner’s fault when it was obvious whose fault it was and how complicit she was in that decision.

Because Roman knew Nina saw too much, and Saoirse knew Nina’s presence was a tether to her old self, the version still half-wild, unpolished, full of light and contradictions.

Nina arrived late. Her flight was delayed. The car from the airport took too long. By the time she slipped into her seat (Row 6, aisle), the ceremony had already begun. She saw Saoirse walk up the aisle and felt it like a bruise. Her best friend looked perfect but not like herself.

They only spoke once at the reception, between toasts.

“You made it,” Saoirse whispered as Nina walked up to her.

“Barely. But I wasn’t going to miss it. You look…” She took Saoirse in from head to toe, and smiled a very tight, thin-lipped smile. “You’re so thin now.”

Saoirse hesitated. “Thank you for being here.”

Pause. “Is it everything you wanted?” Nina asked. Saoirse smiled.

“It’s everything he wanted for me.”

Nina nodded once and said as gently as possible, “Okay.”

She left before dessert, a note, folded and left on the bedside table of Saoirse’s bridal suite, through a kindly Suarez staff member Nina managed to waylay:

The reception reached its still point when Roman’s parents rose to present their gifts with few words, small smiles, and no embrace. For the couple, an estate deed in Galicia, thousands of acres of vineyard and forest, handed over in a slim velvet-lined folder as casually as others might give a toaster. 

For her alone, Allegra produced a necklace, 24 cabochon sapphires set in antique platinum, the kind of piece that had lived through centuries of locked vaults. 

“For permanence,” she said softly amidst loud cheers from the guests, fastening it around Saoirse’s throat with cool, perfumed fingers.

It was their one show of warmth, a molecule of inclusion, but it was warmth that weighed. The necklace sat heavy against her collarbone. The deed was passed to Roman to tuck into his silver jacket pocket before the applause was finished. Saoirse told herself it meant she was theirs now, that was why she did not shiver when she felt the invisible chain tighten.

They honeymooned in the new Galicia property, of course. The estate was carved into the cliffside, with whitewashed stone, a private plunge pool, and bougainvillea curling against every edge.

There were no TVs, no clocks, no staff unless summoned. Roman arranged everything.

They woke up with the sun. He brought her fruit on a silver tray. He read to her from Rilke in the mornings, rubbed oil into her shoulders at night. Every moment was perfect.

And yet… Saoirse started to feel a strange kind of weightlessness.

On the third day, she tried to write. She brought her notebook to the terrace, where the view was unreal, the blue sea like something invented. She stared at the page and wrote…

Stopped. She tried again…

Stopped. She tore out the page just as Roman appeared behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“That’s the trouble with want,” he murmured. “It keeps you from enjoying what you already have.”

Later that night, they had dinner by a private chef different from the one on staff, candles in glass bowls. The food was flawless. 

“I love watching you like this. No noise, no one pulling at you. Just still.”

She smiled. Have I stopped pulling at myself, too?

The next morning, she asked if they could go into town “just to wander and see things.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know. Just… to walk. Maybe find a bookstore.”

He tilted his head and smiled. “I brought all your favorites here. Why go looking for things when we’ve curated exactly what you love?”

She laughed. He kissed her neck, and she let it go. But that night, she woke up with her heart racing from a sudden awareness of just how still she’d become.

She went to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and stared at herself in the mirror. The robe hung perfectly, her skin glowed, she looked like the kind of woman who had everything.

On another night, they hadn’t spoken for a full hour. Dinner was soft, candlelit, barefoot on the terrace. Wine was ancient and from somewhere coastal. Dessert was mousse fed to her from his fingers. Her body was already humming before he even touched her.

He didn’t undress her quickly. He didn’t even undress her completely. He just unbuttoned the back of her dress and let it fall to her waist, brushed her shoulders with his mouth, tasted her collarbone like something he’d earned.

When he finally kissed her, he murmured against her lips, “Every time I touch you, I learn something new.”

She was on top at first, his hands on her hips, letting her move, lead. And then, he shifted so she was underneath again, his weight perfectly balanced. His mouth at her ear, breathing. 

“Let me hold the part of you that keeps disappearing.”

She didn’t know what that meant, but her body answered.

He made her come slowly and held her there, let her unravel in silence, kissed her through it. When she opened her eyes, dazed, undone, floating, he was looking at her like she was a cathedral he’d finished restoring.

They didn’t speak for a while after. His hand traced lazy circles on her thigh. Then, so quietly she almost missed it—

“No one will ever know you like this, not even yourself.”

She kissed his chest and let the words settle into her skin as she fell asleep.

+

It came in phases.

Phase 1 was Roman the Worshipper. This was the beginning, their relationship era. They had constant sex, all tenderness, devotion, permission. He made Saoirse feel like worship was a language only he could speak fluently. 

He touched her like she was rare. He asked for everything. He centered her pleasure, watching her face when she climaxed. His tenderness was her sexual awakening.

Phase 2 was when he started to edit. They moved into a Suarez family estate in outer Madrid after their two-week honeymoon. They did this even though Roman kept his penthouse near Salamanca, where he stayed between overnight trips and late board meetings at the family company HQ. 

Right after the honeymoon and into the first year of their marriage, there was a general shift in their relationship. Saoirse felt this most clearly during sex. He still worshipped her, but he guided the rhythm strictly and always corrected her.

“Slower. You rush when you want to impress.”

“Don’t speak, just feel.”

“You’re most beautiful when you give in.”

He kissed her after saying these things, so they sounded like intimacy, and she learned to respond the way he preferred.

Somewhere between phases two and three was the “withholder”, the version of Roman that came in every once in a while just to mess with Saoirse’s head.

The first time this happened was in the first year of their marriage. Roman was still warm, present, predictable. He never ever stopped making her coffee in the mornings or kissing her forehead. But one day, he just stopped making love to her. 

During this strange period, he even laid her notebook by the window for her, next to a vase of fresh lavender, yet he didn’t touch her for days.

It had started with a short story, a small piece, barely 1,500 words.

Months after they returned from their honeymoon in Galicia, she started to write it in the mornings before he woke, curled on the balcony with her knees tucked to her chest. It wasn’t about him, not directly. It was about a girl who talked to birds and didn’t know she was lonely until they stopped answering.

When she finished it, she printed it with the standing printer in his study and left it on his table like it didn’t matter.

That night, at dinner, he brought it up.

They ate sea bass and sipped the wine he picked. They talked about someone’s IPO, a summit he was hosting in October. Then, as the staff cleared the plates, he dropped it casually: “The story was interesting.”

Surprised, she perked up. “You read it?”

“Of course. You left it where I’d see it.”

“I didn’t mean to. I just… wanted to write again,” she whispered.

He tilted his head. “Writing is fine. I just didn’t know you’d started needing things again.”

She blinked. “Needing?”

“Space, time, privacy. You used to be so contained.” His eyes narrowed as if trying to understand her. “Now, there’s… spill.” He looked genuinely curious, like a man watching a plant grow in the wrong direction. “It’s not a problem. I’m just noticing the shift.”

He smiled, reached across the table, and touched her wrist.

“I fell in love with how little you demanded, that stillness, that openness. It let me pour into you.”

Something inside her went cold. He stood and walked into the hallway, back toward his study.

She didn’t plan to do it. She just clicked <Submit> on a literary mag’s website one morning while he was on a call in the other room. She had no cover letter, no fanfare. Just the story and her name, her former name. Saoirse Sweeney.

She stared at the submission confirmation email like it was a crime. Weeks passed, and she almost forgot about it. Then another email.

Accepted. With a short note: We loved the strange quiet of this piece. We’d love to include it in our winter issue.

She didn’t tell him, at first, because it felt too delicate. After a while, it felt too late to tell him. The piece went live on a rainy Thursday on a quiet corner of the internet. He found out within two hours.

The staff had set the table for dinner in the dining room when he entered, phone in hand. She stopped slicing her fruit and looked up at him.

“You published something,” he said as if talking about the weather.

She froze. “You saw it?”

“I see everything with your name on it.” He walked toward her. It wasn’t anger she sensed from him but something cooler and more precise. “You didn’t tell me.”

Saoirse took a deep breath. “I didn’t think I had to.”

He reached out, gently wiped a bit of juice from her wrist with his thumb.

“It’s beautiful.” She relaxed. “But it’s missing something. It’s not as clean as it used to be.” Their eyes locked. “Your writing has always been better when you let me give you notes first.”

She didn’t speak. He kissed her temple.

“Still, I’m proud. You’re returning to yourself.” He smiled. “Just don’t forget who made space for that return.”

He walked out of the room, and she looked down at the dessert bowl of fruit. There was a thin line of blood on her index finger. She hadn’t even felt the slice.

He didn’t touch her when he came to bed that night or for the rest of the week. So when she came into the study one night in a silk robe, barefoot, freshly showered, just a hint of perfume behind her ear, it was a quiet, careful invitation she’d never tried or needed to try before. She leaned against the doorframe and said, “Come to bed?”

He looked up from a flat dossier on his desk and frowned just a little. “You tired?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Not exactly.”

He studied her, then smiled too gently.

“Not tonight, mi amor.” He returned his attention to his phone. “You look beautiful, but it’s been a long week.” He grunted. “You should rest.”

Her breath caught. He made the “no” sound like a favor, and she couldn’t argue with that, so she nodded and walked away.

In bed, she lay still, hands folded, eyes open.

In the morning, he brought her black coffee with a kiss on her forehead and said, “You see? You’re glowing. I was right.”

She told herself he was, until it had been weeks of soft avoidance, gentle nos, too-tired-tonights, forehead kisses, and coffee left steaming but untouched.

Try again. Ask differently. Be soft, softer… and maybe he’d return to her the way he used to. Meanwhile, he was busier than ever with work, and she, idler than ever because she couldn’t write a word.

One night, she waited until he’d showered, towel wrapped low on his hips, hair damp, jaw clean-shaven. She lit candles in the bedroom, more for courage than for seduction. She walked to him slowly, barefoot, in a white silk nightdress she hadn’t worn in months.

“Touch me,” she whispered. She reached for his hands, placed them on her waist, and tipped her face up for a kiss.

For a moment, he did. His mouth found hers. His hand slid up the back of her neck. Their bodies pressed, heat curling between them like recognition.

Then, he pulled away and looked at her, assessing her face… or her soul.

His voice came out low and way too controlled, “I miss when you used to let me lead you.”

Saoirse froze, then said quietly, “I thought I was.”

“No. You’re asking, not waiting.” He kissed her forehead and turned away to pull on his shirt. “We need to recalibrate, mi amor. We’re too off rhythm.”

He left the room like that, and she stood there. The candles burned down. The room smelled like wax and silence. She stood there and wrapped her own arms around herself. What if he only wanted me when I didn’t know how to want myself?

When he finally made love to her, it was on the carpeted floor of their vast home library one late afternoon. He had just returned from a week-long business trip to Geneva, excited to have closed a big acquisition. She cried, wept with no sound, the tears just kept leaking out as he thrust into her, and she didn’t know why.

After, they lay on the plush carpet, hearts beating in fast tempo as he kissed her all over her face. And again and again, he repeated “I love you” between the kisses.

After that, she never wrote again, not really.