Chapter 37 It’s Over
It’s Over
Coco
We drop Blanca as close as we can to her house, but instead of leaving right away, we sit there dazed, watching her walk off.
I have a hollow feeling in my chest. As much as I’d like to suggest she come to my house instead of hers, that would just stretch out the waiting and the problem would follow her wherever she goes.
Plus, I need to be alone…alone but with Marín.
And I’m a little hurt by Blanca. It’s impossible not to dwell on the fact that she did everything she did with Gus believing I was still in love with him.
Falling in love with someone is one thing; embarking on a sordid sexual affair that gets out of hand is another.
The miles of silence were hard. Loren and I still exchanged a few words, but Blanca didn’t say a single one. I saw her cry a bunch of times, silently, but after she explained her thing with Gus to me, I felt distant from her.
“It kills me seeing her like this,” I say in a half voice.
“Me too. But she has to go through it. This wound will heal. It will now.”
“How could she not tell me?”
“How could you not tell anyone about how you felt about Marín?”
“I told you.” I smile at him timidly.
“That’s too bad.”
We laugh half-heartedly.
“You don’t know how sorry I am.”
“You’re a cunt.” He sighs. “But you’re my cunt.”
“We ruined your trip.”
“Well, a little, but…I don’t know how to explain this without sounding like a bad guy. It’s just that…I feel kinda liberated. I was carrying so much information, and being with my friends had started feeling like strolling through a minefield.”
“Did you know about Aroa and Gus?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “If I had, I wouldn’t have been able to keep quiet. I knew about Blanca because I caught them sucking each other’s faces. It was really gross… I couldn’t believe she would be that stupid…with the what, the how, and the who.”
“And did you know about Marín?”
“He told me before he told Aroa. He said he wanted to consider his sister moving in with you two, but there was a space issue and he didn’t want you to feel like he was kicking you out.
I gave him my opinion that the problem was going to be Aroa, not you.
He never mentioned it to me again and I swear, until she brought it up, I hadn’t even thought about it. ”
“I still can’t believe the thing about Aroa,” I mutter. “She fucked up the whole group.”
“Not really. We were already fucked, Coco. Just because you can’t see the rotten part doesn’t mean it’s not there.”
“But she was so…awful.”
“I’m not going to justify her, Coco, but…trapped animals bare their teeth.”
“You said it, not me—animals.”
“What I don’t get is how you never noticed how much she despised you.” He smiles.
“Did Marín really say all that stuff about me? What Aroa said, is that true? I mean…is it…”
“Most of it was just exaggerations. There’s nothing worse than a half-truth. Talk to Marín. Calmly. And don’t rush it.”
Loren starts up the engine, but instead of pulling out onto the road that would take us to the Camping K2 parking lot where we have to return the RV, he turns onto Plaza Espana.
“Where are you going?” I ask with a furrowed brow.
“She needed to walk a bit and think before she gets home. You need to get home as soon as possible and talk to Marín.”
“Why as soon as possible?”
“You know Marín. He’s going to put a little space between you, but remind him before he leaves why he got into this whole mess in the first place and why it’s worth it.”
I don’t understand how, after the trip we just took him on, Loren can still have any wisdom left to share.
As soon as we get there, we heave my luggage out and execute a goodbye of few words. I hug him, and he groans as he hugs me back. He doesn’t like cuddles, but he knows when we need his.
“Thanks,” I say. “Even though you’re a fucking double agent who knew everything.”
“You have no idea how much it must’ve pissed Aroa off that you didn’t give me shit about that.”
“Give you shit? I feel bad for you.”
We let go, and I take a few steps back. Loren promises he’ll call me soon, but he needs a few days to decompress with Damian, and I get it.
What he needs, and he doesn’t want to say it because he thinks it’ll hurt me, is a detox.
We’ve gotten on his nerves, and he needs a vacation from this vacation.
So the only thing left for me to do is promise that I’ll wait for him to text or call me. I won’t harass him.
“Call me if you need me,” he says through the open window. “But, please…only if you really need me,” he jokes. “Like: ‘Loren, one thing, come bail me out of jail’ or something like that.”
“You betcha, jerk.”
I turn my back to the RV with a smile that vanishes as soon as I move away. In spite of everything, I would do the whole trip over again. I feel…nostalgic.
* * *
When I get home, I’m drenched in sweat, and it’s seven in the fucking evening.
I’m tempted to dump my suitcase in the stairwell and sprint up the stairs, but I wait patiently for the little old lady who lives on the third floor to limp through the door.
She’s carrying a box of cookies, and it’s so cute I want to die.
“Where are you going without your cane, Mrs. Maria?” I scold her.
“Gorgeous, don’t tell my kids. I just can’t get along with that cane.”
“Let’s hope you don’t stumble.”
“It was just a quick walk! All I wanted to do was buy some cookies.” She smiles at me. “Hey, where are you two going up and down with so much stuff?”
“What do you mean?”
She points at my suitcase when I offer her my arm so she can lean on me on the way to the elevator.
“I’m just getting back from a trip,” I clarify. “I went with my girlfriends.”
My throat tastes bitter as I say it.
“Ah! I saw Marín come down carrying so many bags…”
“Come down? Don’t you mean ‘go up?’”
“No, no. We came down in the elevator together. He was in a hurry, he said. You’ve all given him such a strange name. What’s his real name? He’s so handsome, it must be something gallant. Rodolfo, for example. That’s such a beautiful name, Rodolfo, like Valentino.”
I don’t want to believe her (not just about the Rodolfo part).
I tell myself a hundred times that she must be confused, but inside our house the dwindling evening twilight greets me with a deathly silence.
I call his name out loud, but nobody answers.
Nobody’s here. Only the empty carcass of what we were; after everything we went through these past few days, I don’t know how to feel in here anymore.
I put my stuff in my room and look around the living room, the kitchen, his room, and even the bathroom in search of at least a note that explains why he left, without talking to me, in such a hurry.
Nothing. Finally, I look at my phone, and there it is.
I would have preferred a note, I’ll admit it:
Marín:
If I’m not home right now, it’s not because of you, it’s because I feel a little overwhelmed and I need to see Gema.
I’m not running to you this time, to your embrace, because…
there are things that you can’t heal for me anymore.
We flipped the coin and on this side it doesn’t really fit for me to take refuge in you.
I love you, Coco, but I need to figure myself out. It’s only a few days. We’ll talk, okay?
Yes. I would’ve preferred a note. Holding a piece of paper before I read it twelve times and saved it under my pillow is more romantic than doing that with a fucking WhatsApp.
I want to reply that this deserved at least a phone call, but I decide I’ll write back tomorrow.
And that today I’ll die. At least for a little while.
The melodramatic soap opera playing in my head is quickly replaced by a very real heaviness in my chest. Once I’ve unpacked my suitcase, started a load of laundry, and put my stuff back where it belongs, I sit on the couch, and…
I’m alone. But really alone. Marín’s not here, and no matter how poetic his message was, he’s not here because he ran away from me, from us, from what happened this morning…
I can’t call Loren. I can’t call Blanca. I can’t call Gus. I can’t call Aroa. Some of them need space, some time, and others will never come back. I’ve never felt so alone. Marín, this is not it.
I grab my phone out of habit, like we all do so many times a day: picking it up, unlocking it, and strolling through our social media like we’re walking gloomily through a rainstorm.
I forbid myself from posting anything bleak and depressing, but I quickly discover that someone hasn’t followed the same rules today.
Gus’s post smacks me in the forehead like a ball sack.
Normally his photos don’t actually say much for themselves; his followers know to go straight to the text, which is always the heart of the matter.
I always told him he needed to be more present in his profile, but he justified it by saying he wasn’t selling his face.
But today, the image accompanying the text says almost as much as or more than the poem, but only a few of us would know how to interpret it. It’s the palm of his open hand, in black and white, holding a few pebbles and shells.
There are songs,
little one,
that crack open the chrysalis of who we were,
make us discover the desolate landscape
of what we didn’t manage to be.
Here nobody has taken flight,
here we’re all still caterpillars;
all that’s left of the butterflies
is the bad joke of feeling them in the first place.
There are songs,
little one,
that are a hymn to falling out of love,
yours and mine,
which don’t make any sense
if they’re not being whispered into your ear
when we’ve lost.
Whispers of the beauty we knew how to make
for a minute
or two.
What a fuck up,
little one.
What a fuck up losing you so much and for forever.
There are songs,
little one,
detestable
chants of weeping and agony,
toxic lyrics we hide in
so I don’t spit in your face,
with a love you don’t deserve,
for not slapping me
with everything I lost.
Too bad,
a minute of silence
for those songs I adored
and now I can’t stand,
because they’ll always sound like you.
There are songs,
little one,
there are memories,
there are guts
and balls;
there’s fear
and rejection.
There are stories
and ours,
because we never wove it.
We didn’t weave
one line or another.
Or your name with mine.
Block me,
Little one.
I need to mourn you
and you shouldn’t be forced to read it.
Any other time I would have scrolled on to the next post, but not this time.
This time I’m carrying a heavy load on my shoulders, and I know that sincerity, truth, is not always valid in any format despite what I’ve learned about lies.
Because if you want it, say it; if you’re fed up, don’t drag it out; and if you lie, do it so as not to cause pain.
This post seems vulgar to me, dirty, an ill-timed confession disguised as something else—who knows what.
This post is a justification to make himself feel better and try to hook Blanca into trawling the lines for something about her. And no, she doesn’t deserve that.
For the first time in a long time, I write a comment under one of his posts, saying:
If you want to cry for her and she shouldn’t be forced to read it, do it in private, you fucking clown.
I regret it immediately. Of course. I’m not good at maintaining these bursts of dignity with my head held high.
I’m not good at it, and on top of that, everything stings a lot today.
The sound of the empty house, the corners full of color, the titles of the books Marín and I read together, and even the fucking cactus that we don’t know how the hell is still alive.
And when I start crying, I don’t even know if it’s because I feel disappointed or because I dreamed too much.
You have to dream big and beautifully, my mother says, but not too much, so when reality arrives you don’t lose hope and decide to just bury your head in your dreams. I’ve never agreed with her more, but maybe if I hadn’t dreamed so much, I would understand Marín more and Gus, Blanca, and even Aroa. I don’t even understand myself.
And this house… This house smells like always: The ancient parquet is still shining proudly since we re-sanded it; the paintings are still in the same place, and the same music would still be playing if I turned on the record player because Marín is obsessed with leaving a record ready.
But…it’s not the same house. It isn’t. Maybe because we finally loved each other outside its four walls, maybe because it wasn’t the scene of our first steps… but it could be for our last.
When I go back to Instagram to delete my comment, Gus has already liked it and responded “touché” and sent me a DM with one single word: “Sorry.” All I can do is block and unfollow. That’s the only thing I have courage for today. The only thing.