Chapter 36 The Truth Is Not a Salve #2
But when he made her come for the first time, with her back pressed against the bathroom door in that bar, one random Friday night when she said she was working late in the office, she let her guard down. And Gus got in.
When Blanca got into Gus’s head and made everything even more complicated is something no one knows because if you know him even a little you’ll know he’d never tell the truth.
“I think it was the first time we slept together,” Blanca cries.
“I felt bad, but I felt so good… I held him. I held him, kissed his chest, stroked his hair, and asked him if he thought I was a bad person. He looked me in the eyes and said no. And then he never looked at me the same way after that.”
And then the poems started. They were no longer just voice notes with a few hot lines or songs that seemed to make it clear that his nature was sordid and volatile. Now they seemed…confused. The first poem she considered dangerous made her try to take a step back.
“I told him we should stop seeing each other. And I’ll be honest, Coco. I decided that for my own good, so I wouldn’t get in too deep. I wasn’t thinking about him. Or you.”
And that started the least beautiful part, of course.
The part that wasn’t exciting, just frustrating, toxic, manipulative, and malevolent: exactly what I think hooked them even more.
Let’s face it. The worst parts of ourselves are the hardest to rip out.
When another person gets involved…there’s nothing more addictive or more painful.
* * *
They still had a couple of months ahead of them, each playing their role in a competition to get away from each other, to make it clear how little they cared about each other, and to pretend those months hadn’t brought them closer.
In spite of everything they shared that had nothing to do with sex.
And when they tried to stop, the pull was too strong and their thing was no longer anything but toxic.
“He doesn’t love me,” she swears, “but he doesn’t want me out of his life.
He wants me to get married, but he hates that I’m going to do it.
He’s with everyone besides me, but really he wasn’t with anyone more than he was with me.
I don’t know…Coco. I don’t know. This got out of hand a long time ago and… ”
“Do you love him?” I ask her.
As an answer, a handful of sobs that are much more vehement than a declaration of love.
You don’t cry like that about someone who isn’t so deep in your life it’s tangled around your own guts.
You don’t cry like this for someone who hasn’t gotten under your skin.
You don’t cry like that for someone you want to break up with.
“I’m so sorry, Coco. I never wanted to betray you. I don’t know how I got involved in this. It had been so long since I had…lived…like this.”
“We’ll talk later about how I feel about all of this. It’s not about me when I say that…it has to end.”
“I know.”
“But for real. It can’t happen in any way. Not as a friend or a colleague or…anything. Gus has to get out of our lives because he doesn’t know how not to hurt us.”
“Was it me?” she asks me. “Am I the one who made him lose all his friends?”
“No. It was him.”
* * *
Loren has packed up the patio. I help him with the rest in silence and leave Blanca in peace to clean the inside of the RV.
I want to get out of here, and at the same time, I want this week to start again and to stay locked in a time-space loop before any of this happened.
Before all the consequences of his actions hit Gus, before Aroa prioritized her obsession over us, before I found out what I found out about the side of Marín that I don’t know…
As we pull out, Blanca’s fidgeting with a fistful of little pebbles and shells.
I realize they’re the ones Gus gave her in Villaricos.
Now I understand that smile that passed between them, and in my stomach I feel a pang of the warmth they must have felt, the moment of connection, the relief of feeling the weight of what they’ve been dragging disappear for a second, and I feel rage.
I don’t know if it’s for her, for Marín, for Aroa, or for me.
I don’t even know how to feel, but at least I finally understand what lies can do for us: nothing good.
Marín and I are miles further apart than we were when this trip started in spite of what happened yesterday.
Loren is fed up, and he doesn’t need to say it out loud for me to know that all he wants to do is get out of this RV and get us out of his sight for a few days.
Aroa is alone, like Gus. The difference between them is that she’s leaving behind an insane obsession and he’s leaving someone who could fill all those empty spaces he thinks he has inside him…
if he wanted. And Blanca…what will she do?
“Are you okay?” I ask Blanca.
“Yeah. I will be.”
I’m surprised to see her open the window of the RV and then let the wind mess up her hair with her eyes closed, smile at me timidly, and, with her cheeks still wet, throw, one by one, each of the pebbles and shells, which disappear on the highway behind us.
Yes. She will be.