Chapter Thirty-One
Days go by and nothing from him. My despair has turned to anger, and I’ve grown tired of waiting in my hotel room. Too ashamed to tell my mom what happened, and too protective of Julián’s friendship with Amara, I hide in my room for days, allowing both to think he’s here with me. But I’ve had enough. How could he abandon me and not say a word? Not answer a single fucking call or desperate text I’ve sent. I tried to wait for him to come back, to have him bang at my door and fall to his knees to apologize, but he hasn’t, and I realize now that he won’t, and I will not allow him to never have to see my face again. At least not without telling him to go to hell first.
Amara’s not behind the desk as I sneak past, rushing out of the hotel before anyone can see me. This is ridiculous. I shouldn’t be hiding. I have no reason to hide. But I am, and I continue to do so as I walk to Julián’s dock, my breath stuck in my lungs as I approach, praying to god his boat is there. It is.
That fucker.
My shoulders slouch in relief and I breathe in, breathe out. Having absolutely no plan, I march right up to his boat and knock on the door. No response.
I knock again, still no response.
Fuming, I pound harder.
“I know you’re in there!” I put my mouth as close to the cabin door as possible.
“Fucking asshole,” I groan, leaning my cheek against the old wood. I knew he would do this eventually; I was warned many, many times. Even by the commitment-phobe himself. But disappearing after everything we’ve gone through up until now? Just to run away? After showing me the home my mother lived in as a child? After telling me he can’t imagine a world where I don’t exist? After telling me he will love me in every lifetime we’re gifted? What a damn joke.
“Julián Garcia! Open the fucking door!” I scream through my burning throat, tears falling down my cheeks.
“Oriah, is that you?” A male voice behind me makes me jump.
I turn to find Mateo, Julián’s father, standing on the dock. His face is drawn and his shoulders slumped.
“He’s in there, isn’t he?” I harshly accuse.
I can’t control my emotions. There’s a hurricane inside my chest, and I’m ready to unleash it and flood everything in my path.
With a sigh he responds. “He’s been in there for days. Engine off, lights off, phone off. I know he’s in there because the boat’s rocked a little, and occasionally the light in the toilet turns on and off.” He rubs the back of his neck, the same way his son does when he’s emotional or trying to regulate said emotions.
“I’m sorry for screaming. I just… I need to talk to him. I need him to talk to me.” It comes out as a plea.
A desperate one, from a desperate woman.
I try to swallow down the anger, attempting to not make Mateo uncomfortable. He must already feel uneasy around me, with my eyes and nose reminding him of my mother. The woman ruining his life nearly since it began. The woman just days away from closing this whole dock down.
“It’s alright.” Mateo waves a hand for me to sit down next to him on the dock. “Come have a seat.”
The wood feels stable under my body, bringing in a little clarity. Just a little.
“I can go, I really didn’t mean to interrupt your day. I’m sorry,” I tell him as he sits next to me. I don’t want to leave without seeing Julián, but I will for Mateo’s sake.
“Stay for a minute. I owe you an apology.” His voice is low, his accent beautifully coating every word.
“An apology? To me?” I shake my head.
He has this backward; I owe him at least twenty thousand apologies. And then some.
“I know my son can be… hard. He doesn’t know what to do when someone cares for him. That’s my fault. I never taught him how to allow love into his heart. I closed mine off so long ago.” He looks past me, probably not wanting to look at the face of my mother.
“You raised him well,” I sigh, meaning it.
“All of our children’s struggles come from their parents.” He does a double take, noting that he’s referring to himself, too, and he clears his throat. A sympathetic look on his face, around the small crinkles of his warm eyes.
“Not meaning your… medical things.” My heart drops as he says it.
So he knows. How much he knows or what details he’s privy to is unclear, but he knows something. He’s had to have known since before I met Julián, but he didn’t tell him?
“You… why didn’t you tell him?” I wonder.
He looks back to the boat where his son is hiding out like a coward.
“It’s not for me to tell. I know you care about him, and sometimes things are better left unsaid until they need to be.” His cryptic response certainly has a double meaning.
What that is, I’m not sure. I’m not sure of much these days.
“If you can love someone through their darkness, their loss of faith, you can love them through anything,” he says, his gaze out on the open water before us.
Its quiet splashing against the wooden deck feels like a gentle caress directed at both of our struggling souls.
“Is that how you loved my mother?” I ask, my filter vanishing into thin air. Before I can apologize, he nods his head slowly.
“I loved your mother with the burn of one thousand suns. I would have gone to the ends of the earth for her, and still would.” Tears prick my eyes, and my heart feels heavy as a brick in my chest.
“But why? She’s awful to you. She’s been awful to you.”
Mateo chuckles, reminding me of Julián. “My soul burns like the sun; your mother’s like the moon. Cold, surrounded by darkness, but steadily there. I would have done anything to be just a star near her, but the moon and sun stay separated, since the beginning of time”—his eyes meet mine, and there’s decades of pain there as he finishes with—“for a reason.”
I take that in. All of it. Someone loving my mother, my cold, ambitious-to-a-fault mother, in such a way.
“Please tell me why she left here. Can you tell me? I’m sorry to ask again, but she doesn’t tell me anything. I barely know her. I sound like a broken record, but you’re the only source I have.” Sadness draws my knees to my chest, and my toes dangle over the ledge of the dock.
“It’s unfair to tell her truths, but I can tell you mine. I mentioned that she suffered, and she did. The woman I knew wanted more for her life than not knowing where the next meal was coming from, if her pare was going to break another window, punch another hole in the wall. When the house was under threat of getting taken, and your mom did everything she could, I saw something in her break. As her mare’s health got more unstable… she had the same…” He pauses, looking for a soft way to say whatever’s coming next.
“The same condition you do. But your mother didn’t know that, and here in Europe we don’t have as much research, and Iz was just a child, a teenager with the world on her shoulders and within her reach. Once her pare left and then her mare passed, she fled. I watched your mom take care of your grandma her whole life, and I think she was afraid the same thing would happen to her, that she would have the same fate. I supported it, only wanting her to be happy, even if I was in misery. I kept thinking, dreaming, that she would come back someday, once she felt she could take care of herself. But the woman I knew faded, and I couldn’t accept it. Couldn’t let go, no matter how much time passed.”
“My grandma had tuberous sclerosis?” I gape.
I had no idea. All these years and my mom never mentioned it once. Maybe she disassociated, maybe she didn’t want to make me afraid that I would end up dying young like her grandmother and mother.
He nods, his thick hair blowing in the night wind.
“No one knew what it was at the time. Your mother didn’t know either until you were diagnosed, but everyone in our barri, that’s our neighborhood, knew about the seizures, so we all kept an eye out for her, like we always did for one another. That’s how things are here, and that’s why I couldn’t leave with your mom, Oriah, even though she begged me to come with her. My family needed me. My pare was ill and I couldn’t just let the company go to some stranger. I was never going to aim to live among the stars, I was fine just admiring them from down here. Not because I didn’t love her enough, but because I love this island and I would only be holding her back. I couldn’t be at fault for dimming her bright light. She needed more than what I could give her, and I can’t hold that against her.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but my mom’s life, outside of her job, has been beyond miserable. You two should have been together through all of it, both of you would have had a chance at happiness. I’m sorry if that’s rude or too honest. But if you would have fought for each other, everything would have been different.”
His eyes watch me, a strong sense of wisdom and pain swirled together. “If we would have fought then, neither of you would be here to fight for each other now.” Mateo places something cold in the palm of my hand.
A key.
Without a thought, I jump to my feet and scramble a thank-you as I rush to Julián’s door, slide the key in, and push the wood as hard as I can.