Chapter 31
FOR WANTING TO MAKE A DREAM COME TRUE
That afternoon, the sun streamed through the living room windows of the apartment Victoria and Elena had rented months before getting married.
Over the months, they had turned it into their home; every corner was adorned with photographs that recalled a past lived and enjoyed together.
However, over the past few months, they had struggled to keep their marriage afloat, and you could feel that painful, suffocating tension in the air.
Elena had changed her plans because her wife had asked her to stay home with her, and she’d been staring at her for over half an hour with a mixture of frustration and resignation.
Victoria, on the other hand, was completely absorbed; her eyes were glued to the laptop screen, and she wasn’t paying any attention to what Elena was saying.
“Are you listening to me? Victoria, can you put that down and look at me?”
“Yes, honey, give me a second. I’m almost done.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard while Elena, resigned, leaned back against the sofa in an attempt to calm her emotions a little. “I have to finish this before ten.”
“I don’t know why you asked me to stay home,” she said with a sigh. “You’d better tell me the truth instead of having me sit here waiting for you.”
“How about we order Chinese food? Do you feel like it?”
“I’d love to, but… will we have time to eat dinner together? Because at this rate…”
“You’ll like this news. Tourism in the city of Valencia,” her wife announced without even looking her in the face. “We should enjoy a day at the beach. What do you say?”
“Yeah, sure, as long as it’s like tonight…”
“Of course, we can take walks under the starlight,” Victoria replied, pushing Elena’s patience to the limit. Elena, who had managed to keep her cool until then, moved just enough to close the lid of her wife’s laptop, interrupting her work. “What the hell is wrong with you!?”
“What’s wrong with me?” She crossed her arms and glared at her. “What’s wrong is that you’re always more interested in that than in me. Did you even hear what I was saying?”
“You know I’m working, that I have to turn this in. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about you,” she replied, frowning, hurt by her wife’s words. “Don’t mix things up.”
“But this is about us! About our marriage! I told you!” Elena, with pain building in her chest, felt her emotions beginning to overflow. “Everything is going to hell, and you’re only focused on your work!”
“You know I can’t quit! How many times do I have to remind you!?” she sighed in frustration. “I understand what you’re saying, but… what do you want me to do? Quit everything!?”
“I don’t want you to quit anything, I just want you to understand me and realize that I’m important too, damn it!” she exclaimed, annoyed. “You always have something better to do than spend time with me.”
“It’s not fair for you to hold that against me. When I took the job, you knew full well it wasn’t going to be easy,” she pointed out, as if that were enough. “This will make our future better.”
“What future? A future where we’re separated but sharing the same house?”
“Don’t exaggerate, please. That’s not going to happen.”
“Do you really think so? Because I don’t know anymore. I have no idea what it means to be with you.” Victoria, hearing her wife’s words, set the laptop on the armchair and stood up to approach her and try to calm her down.
“Come on, honey. This isn’t going to solve anything.”
“I can’t calm down, it’s too much,” she confessed, feeling the pain suffocate her heart. “I can’t keep pretending everything’s fine when it’s really not. I’m alone, Vicky! I need you! You asked me to stay, and here I am! What more do you want from me!?”
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want it to come to this.”
“But we have…” Elena, her eyes brimming with tears, realized that no matter how much she expressed what she felt, Victoria would never react. “And I can’t fight this alone anymore. I’m tired, and you don’t seem to care at all.”
“Come on, don’t say that. I love you, and you mean so much more to me than you can imagine,” she clarified desperately.
“Love isn’t just words; it’s actions. It’s being here, now, tomorrow, with me.
” Elena swallowed hard as she received a hug from her wife.
“But for months now, you’ve been living for and through your work; you’ve forgotten important moments; you haven’t even apologized or made me feel special. How do you expect this to work, huh?”
Victoria didn’t know what to do or what to say because her wife was right. Ever since they’d arrived in Valencia after their honeymoon, her life had changed completely, and she’d let herself get swallowed up by the newspaper.
“I promise I’ll do better,” she whispered, resting her forehead against her wife’s. “For us.”
Elena pulled away from her to look into her eyes and search for some trace of the woman she’d fallen in love with. But all she saw was a stranger trapped in her own obligations and ambitions, terrified of losing her, hurt by having to live through a situation like this.
“I don’t know if I can keep believing in your promises, Victoria. You’ve broken them so many times that…” With sadness flooding her gray eyes, Elena took a couple of steps away from her wife. “You’ve already disappointed me so many times, and I don’t think I can take one more.”
“No, please. Don’t say that.”
“What we have doesn’t make sense anymore.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if I can keep fighting for something that seems destined to break apart and disappear.”
“Give me another chance. I promise I’ll do better.”
Elena no longer knew if there was any hope for them, if they could ever be happy together again, or if Victoria cared enough to make an effort to make things better. Silence filled the living room, enveloping the two of them in a pain that, this time, they truly shared.
“I think I’ll go stay with my mom for a few days. I need time to think, and that way you…” she whispered, unable to look her in the eye. “Maybe that will clear your head and help you think things through better… You need it.”
“Come on, Elena, don’t go.”
“I’m not leaving,” she replied, a lump in her throat. “But I can’t go on like this, waiting for you, begging you, fighting for you while you don’t even realize how much I’m suffering.”
“But…”
“Let me do this,” Elena pleaded.
Victoria nodded sadly, knowing there was nothing she could do to keep her wife from leaving, and so she remained silent, watching as she went into the bedroom to pack her bags.
She loved her; she always had. But in the end, it was true what they said—that love is never enough in a relationship—because she was watching it weaken and slowly fall apart right before her eyes, all because she wanted to make her dreams come true.