CHAPTER 9
TOO CLOSE TO BE TRUE
Barbara
When I hear my name spoken in Lidia’s voice, my mind goes blank, suspended in midair with my heart pounding against my ribs, wondering if what I’m experiencing is real or not.
It takes me a couple of seconds to realize what’s happening, as if the whole world had decided to shut down my brain for a moment.
When I turn and see her there, lit by the light from the hotel entrance, I have to blink several times.
She’s still the same, exactly as I remembered her: her green eyes, her reddish hair, her beautiful curves.
I don’t know at what point I convinced myself that I’d erased every little detail about her from my memory, because yes… our story ended, but not for my heart.
“Shit,” I think when I realize that Pablo has played a trick on us.
Well, at least on her. Because I was aware that this could happen, that sooner or later we’d run into each other and have to talk.
The problem is that I’m sure she never imagined her father would want me here, that I’d be one of those special people destined to share with him the most wonderful day of his life.
My brain, despite my exhaustion, starts to wake up, and I turn on my heels to face her despite the distance between us—a couple of meters or more.
The girl at the front desk talks and talks, but I’m not paying her any attention.
I have something far more interesting right in front of me.
Lidia looks so good… “Damn it, she looks even better than the last time you saw her,” that little voice reminds me—the one that always pops up when I’m lying.
She’s still haughty, visceral, and impulsive.
She still furrows her brow when things get out of hand.
And she’s still so attractive… “Damn it.” Time should have softened my feelings toward her, but it hasn’t, and the reality is much worse.
My phone vibrates in my pocket suddenly.
Once. Then again. And again. I frown and pull it out almost on instinct.
The screen lights up with a flood of notifications: WhatsApp, messages, missed calls.
Among them all, Ingrid’s name appears, and I feel the automatic urge to open the conversation and reply.
Today is the last league game, and I’m sure her nerves are eating her alive.
But I put the phone away and look up again.
I walk toward Lidia without taking my eyes off her, and when I’m just a couple of steps away, I stop.
The air between us is charged with electricity, with all the memories we’ve shared and everything I’ve kept hidden over the years.
I tilt my head slightly and let out a small sigh that could pass for a nervous laugh.
“Well,” I murmur at last, with a half-smile I don’t even try to soften. “The last thing I expected today was to run into you like this, right after I arrived.”
Her reaction is immediate. Her eyes narrow just a millimeter, and the corner of her mouth curves with that sharp irony I remember all too well.
“Well, if it bothers you that much, you shouldn’t have come, don’t you think?”
“There it is.” I stare at her in silence for a couple of seconds, feeling my heart lurch in my chest and the urge to argue with her—and let the sparks fly—welling up inside me.
“And miss your father’s wedding? No way,” I reply with a calmness I don’t actually feel inside. “Besides, the resort is too big for us to run into each other. If I’d known you were staying here…”
She raises an eyebrow and doesn’t let me finish:
“What?” she insists, her tone tinged with defiance. “Would you have switched islands to avoid running into me?”
“Probably.”
The silence that follows is awkward. All around us, the resort goes on as usual, but in this small space we share, everything seems suspended in time.
Lidia crosses her arms over her chest, and that simple gesture takes me on a journey back to those nights filled with arguments, to the tension that grew inside me with every fight and that ended in kisses, in sex, in passion, and in reconciliations where everything seemed possible.
“So he invited you to his wedding…” she says at last, and it’s not a question, but a statement loaded with meaning.
“Yes,” I reply, holding her gaze. “I got the invitation and accepted. It means a lot to me to be here on such an important day for him.”
“The wedding is on the thirty-first. It’s the fifteenth today. You didn’t need to come this early.”
“I thought I could lend a hand,” I confess, shrugging.
She lets out a short, dry laugh, the kind that doesn’t reach her eyes.
“Sure. Always so loyal to my father. How thoughtful of you.”
“It’s the truth, Lidia,” I insist, and my voice grows more serious, firmer. “I didn’t come here to argue with you or dredge up anything from the past.”
“You’ve chosen a rather curious time and place for that, don’t you think?”
“I came because your father is…” I pause briefly to gather my thoughts. “Because it’s important to me to be by his side right now. That’s all.”
Her eyes harden, but beneath that cold facade I sense a glimmer of the Lidia I once knew—the one who used to hide behind her coldness when things got complicated.
“How lovely,” she murmurs sarcastically. “How wonderful it all is.”
“Lidia, come on…” I begin, trying to maintain the calm I feel slipping away.
“No,” she cuts me off, raising a hand decisively. “Don’t start with that now. Not here.”
I know her well enough to realize she’s about to lose her patience, as the wall she’s built around her heart begins to crack.
“I’m just saying that,” I continue in a lower, almost pleading voice, “I hope we can get through these weeks peacefully. For his sake. He doesn’t deserve for us to turn his wedding into a battlefield.”
Lidia stares at me in silence for a few seconds, and her gaze is so cold that I feel a terrible urge to melt it away with kisses. A thought that stuns me and forces me to run a hand over my neck, uncomfortable.
“Peacefully?” she repeats slowly, savoring the word as if it tasted bitter. “What an optimistic word coming from you.”
“It doesn’t have to be complicated,” I insist, even though I know I’m lying a little, because between us, “complicated” has always been the air we breathe. “We’re two adults.”
She shakes her head gently, as if she’s just heard the most absurd thing in the world.
“You can’t be calm around the person who ruined your life, who left you with a broken heart and a feeling of inadequacy that’s still lodged deep inside me.”
The words hit me like a punch to the pit of my stomach.
For a second I don’t know what to say, because part of me wants to argue, wants to tell her that things weren’t easy for me either, that for months I was buried in a depression that was incredibly hard to crawl out of, that it wasn’t just my fault, that she also had her share of the blame in that disaster that tore us apart.
That fear, doubts, and circumstances dragged both of us down.
But I don’t get to say any of that. Because Lidia is already walking away by the time I work up the courage to open my mouth.
I watch her walk away as easily as she appeared before my eyes, and I’m left standing there in the middle of the resort’s open lobby, with the sound of the sea coming from the distance and my phone vibrating again in my pocket.
The notifications keep piling up relentlessly.
But my attention is focused on Lidia and the certainty that these next few weeks aren’t going to be easy for either of us.