Chapter 40 Putting Things Back Where They Belong
Putting Things Back Where They Belong
Coco
The colorful stones calm me. Sinking my hand in the plastic bins labeled with the names and properties of each one and toying with them, so shiny, polished, vibrant.
I don’t care that the woman in the store is looking at me funny or whether she thinks I’m going to steal something.
I just want to keep touching them…a little more.
“Can I help you?”
I give her a slightly bewildered look, but before I can answer that I’m just browsing, my phone rings.
I know it’s not him. That’s why I smile at the shop assistant and answer reluctantly without even checking who it is.
“Hello?”
“You remember those vacation days you forced me to take when I started pulling out my eyelashes?”
It’s Blanca.
“Yeah. We went to Zarautz.”
“And it snowed on us on the beach.”
“Yes,” I sigh. “Although, we drank so much txakoli that I doubt it was real.”
“It was real. It was, and there was a lot of it.”
I stay silent and turn back to the inside of the store.
“How are you?” she asks.
“Fucking shitty,” I reply. “You?”
“I concur with that assessment. Listen, Coco… I know I have no right to ask you this, but…do you have plans today?”
“Is feeling like fucking shit a plan?”
“More of a backdrop, I guess.”
“Well, then, I have a backdrop.”
“Do you mind if we feel fucking shitty together? I don’t know what stage of your disappointment in me you’re in, that’s why I said I have no right to ask you this, but…I’m going to do something important tonight, and I’d like to be with you today. I promise I won’t spiral.”
I suck my teeth. I take a deep breath. “Shit, Blanca, it’s all so shitty.”
“I know,” she squeaks.
“Half an hour at El Café de Alejandría, okay?”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. You’re paying for lunch, and I’m hungry.”
We say goodbye grumpily, but there’s laughter in our voices. I think we’re both pretty over all the drama.
“Hiya,” I say to the shop assistant. “Could you please help me?”
“Of course. What were you looking for?”
“The truth. Do you have any crystals for that?”
* * *
El Café de Alejandría is full even though it’s August. It never closes; Marín always calls it “the funeral home” because it’s always open to soothe the soul.
Behind the bar, Sofia, the bartender with lips painted red, is smiling at Hector, and I’m not surprised.
He has always been one of our platonic loves.
Blanca is sitting at one of the tables in the back, peering out the picture window. She’s wearing a red-and-white-striped dress and matching sandals. She looks pretty but a little gaunt. It’s only been five days since we last saw each other, but I could swear she’s lost weight.
“Hector gets cuter every day,” I say to break the ice when I sit down.
“Who?” she asks absentmindedly.
“Hector.”
“Oh, yeah, right.” She nods. “Did you order?”
“What can I get you two?” Standing next to us, Sofia smiles with a little notepad in her hand.
“Two of those iced teas you make with lime,” I order. I remember that Blanca loves them. “And to eat I’ll have a sandwich, Sofi, with loads of stuff.”
“Like bursting with stuff?”
“Exactly.”
I look at Blanca, but she doesn’t want anything else. Love sometimes opens the stomach, other times it closes it, and sometimes it even stabs it.
When Sofia goes back behind the bar, Blanca looks at me and asks about Marín.
“He’s on a trip with his sister, avoiding me, slowly assassinating the person I thought he was and…chilling, I guess.”
“He still hasn’t wanted to talk about it?”
“Not about that or anything else. When I got home on Sunday, he was already gone. If that’s not fleeing like a rat, you’ll have to tell me what is.”
“Marín always needs time and space to accept things, to make decisions.”
“Yeah…you know what’s happening? I’ve never really bought into the whole discourse that complicated love is the most romantic kind. I know not everything can work out right away, but if someone thinks loving me is a problem…I’m not into that.”
“How can it be a problem, Coco, if you’ve loved each other for a long time?”
“Yeah, of course, but not like that. He fucked it up, Blanqui. He got overwhelmed, and I don’t know if it’s because of all the shit Aroa was throwing around, because we live together and he feels like getting into a relationship with me would move too fast, or because he regrets it.
I don’t know, but I wasn’t expecting any of those options from him. ”
“Yeah…” Blanca smiles at me and clutches my wrist, fidgeting with a bracelet.
“But he’s not responsible for your expectations.
” I open my mouth to express my annoyance, but she hushes me and hurries to explain.
“What I mean is, before you kill me, Aroa was kinda right when she said that you fell in love with an idealized version of Marín. He’s human, Coco.
Before you became a lover, you were his best friend. ”
“I hate the word ‘lover.’” I squeeze the bridge of my nose.
“Well, you know what I mean. It’s unforgivably spineless on his part.”
“As unforgivable as…”
“Have you thought about what he would have to do to make you forgive him? What’s your level of disappointment right now?”
“It goes up and down all the time, but it all depends on if he comes back, sits with me, and says what he has to say to my face. He hasn’t even called me! We’re only communicating through texts. Come on, dude!”
“That sounds logical, to tell the truth. Marín will come back. Of course he will. He can’t just keep circling Spain forever with his sister as a copilot.”
“I know that. All that really matters…is that he comes back. But the when… The when is starting to be pretty important to me. Every day that passes I’m getting further from wanting what his silence offers me.”
She nods, and suddenly I feel completely and totally understood. Mama gives good advice, but Blanca, like Marín, has always been my safe space. I don’t know why I didn’t tell her I was in love with him sooner.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Marín earlier.”
“Don’t say sorry for that, especially not twice. I was with your ex behind your back for ten months in a torrid, toxic, and sexual affair.”
I grimace. I don’t love hearing it, but I’ll be honest—it doesn’t really hurt. It bothers me, but it doesn’t hurt; that’s the best description.
“How are you?” I ask.
“I mean”—she smiles—“awful, to be honest. I can’t sleep, my stomach is in knots, and ever since we got back, I can’t even cry, so I have this ball of disgust and hatred in my stomach that’s going to burst open and poison me.”
“Sounds fun.” I raise my eyebrows.
“I saw you unfollowed him,” she says.
“Unfollowed and blocked.”
“After the poem you commented on, right?”
“Yeah. You should do the same. It’s freeing.”
“I know. That’s…my next challenge.”
“What’s he posting?”
“He’s going through different phases.” She sighs and looks out the window again.
“One second he sounds melancholy, and in the next post his tone is raging. Then sad or fired up or vile… He’s smashed all our memories into tiny pieces and turned them into things that aren’t always pretty, but…
I guess I should have seen that coming.”
“You shouldn’t read it.”
“I know. And I tell myself that it’s okay, that I can take things one step at a time, but the truth is its harder this way. It’s a detox. If I’m serious this time, and I have to be serious, I have to stop following him. I’m waiting to get over the sad phase.”
“What’s the part that hurt you the most?”
“It’s hard to explain.” And in the pause created by Sofia bringing over our order, Blanca takes out her phone, unlocks it, opens Instagram, and searches for Gus’s profile.
Once it’s on the screen, she turns the device and holds it out to me.
“Maybe this is the best way to answer you. Go to December…in the middle. Every post is a chapter. A novella about who we were. He didn’t leave anything out. ”
December. Surprise. Coincidence. Connection.
January. Thrilling, horny, forbidden. Poems about a woman, a real woman, who wonders what his skin tastes like. Passionate texts that get more explicit as they approach February.
February. There’s a hint of farewell, followed by a touch of cockiness, a wisp of bragging, and suddenly…the promise of sex. Gus is talking, in a lot of these posts, to a woman who he promises feelings she’s never felt before.
March is the month where everything changes forever. It’s the first time he talks about skin… Skin as a link, skin as a portal, skin as a ticket for a journey that has to do with much more than bodies.
April gets confused again. It lurches around. He talks about a lot of women, about a life jumping from one bed to the next. He paints himself as an irresistible sleazebag and fuckboy but then talks about emptiness, disappointment.
May is devastating. Very toxic. Cuddles one day, a punch the next. He alternates between “I told you this is what it was” with “I have to accept that you’re abandoning me.” But every once in a while, it tastes like discovery, hope, the occasional argument, but makeup kisses too.
June and July are hard. They are for me because even though I’ve read all these poems before, they finally make sense now.
I was missing something I needed to understand them…
like a hieroglyphic I never identified that always meant Blanca.
In June and July this story turns into a love story that’s not beautiful or tortuous anymore—it’s bad.
Toxic. Unhealthy. Needy. Manipulative. Dry mouths locked in excruciating kisses.
Cracked hands that hurt to caress. The rest I know.
I hand back her phone with a lump in my throat.
“I’m sorry, Blanca.”
“Why?” she asks with a smile.
“Because all that love is good for nothing when it’s the wrong kind of love. And I’m sorry. You don’t deserve that.”