Chapter 45 Echo
Echo
Marín
I have an echo inside me. Every sound in my body ends up producing it, and I feel it all the time, everywhere, reverberating inside me, constantly reminding me how empty I am.
Because…there’s only an echo in empty places, and ever since she’s been gone, that’s what I am. I’m an empty space. Nothing more.
A few days ago I met up with Blanca; she invited me to go see the couple who booked her original wedding day, but I know she was just being polite. She knew I would decline the invitation. Coco and I are not ready to see each other, of course. It’s only been a month.
“You look like shit, you know?” she asked me.
“What were you expecting? I was trying not to lose my best friend, and I ended up alone.”
“It wasn’t about not losing your best friend, Marín. Don’t be like him—you’re not Gus. You’re perfectly aware that you fucked it all up and you seized the first excuse that sounded convincing.”
“I wasn’t ready. I’m still not.” I’m aware that she’s right and that my answer is an excuse that exonerates my guilt.
I know, from Blanca and Loren, that she’s doing well.
She must be climbing the walls at her parents’ house, but Coco is one of those people who find a comfort zone wherever they are.
Like my chest—my chest was her comfort zone for one night.
If I think about it, my hands unconsciously start patting myself, as if to make sure I still have organs, bones, muscles, and skin. She took all the nerve endings.
The house is so empty that I’ve decided I’ll only spend time between its four walls when it’s absolutely necessary: to sleep and shower.
The rest of the time I live at work. I asked for more projects, making up an excuse that Noa, her accident, left a bad taste in my mouth.
I don’t want to have even a minute to think about how buried deep in my desk there’s a mug with Coco’s face on it cropped from a picture we took with Gema.
We were a fucking family. What was I thinking? Am I an idiot? Yes.
I can’t stop thinking about what could have been.
The other day I met up with a girl. It grosses me out just thinking about it, but I did it.
I downloaded one of those hookup apps, and I jumped on the first match to meet up with someone.
It was Saturday, the office was closed, everyone had plans, my sister’s not talking to me, and if she does, she just answers in monosyllabic grunts or with a speech about the twenty thousand reasons she thinks I’m useless and I fucked up her life.
Hers. Blessed adolescence, where we only see our own belly buttons.
The girl was very pretty. I liked her when I saw her come into the bar where we planned to meet.
She greeted me with two kisses on the cheek, and when I asked her, without beating around the bush, if she liked what she saw or she’d rather pass, she ordered a glass of wine and sat down next to me.
We had made a pact not to waste time if we didn’t like each other and also…
that it wasn’t a date. It was a meeting between two people who didn’t have plans and felt like spending a little time together with no pretensions of getting to know each other any better than that.
She gave me a blow job in my doorway. A good blow job, I have to admit.
I brought her up to my house, and I couldn’t even let her into my bedroom.
We fucked on a chair. On a fucking chair.
With her on top. I didn’t go down on her, and I didn’t even come.
I told her this happens to me a lot with strangers, but it was the first time it ever happened to me—and the last because I swear I’m never going to fuck anyone again in my goddamn life.
I’m so disgusted with myself. I don’t even know what my intention was.
Of course I’ve thought about calling her.
About waiting at the door of her parents’ house if she doesn’t pick up.
Even about sending her flowers, for the love of God—flowers that I know would end up in the kitchen because her mother would rescue them from the trash.
There’s not enough fauna or flora in the world to make up for it.
Well, maybe if I sent her an otter—she always thought they were adorable.
Okay, I’m driving myself crazy. So why don’t I face it head-on, call her, say to her, I don’t know, that she needs to come show me how to use the hair dryer or how she folds fitted sheets?
Any excuse, for fuck’s sake. Well, I don’t because I have her request branded in my brain.
To tell the truth, I’ve read the letter so many times, I have it memorized.
Come only if the reasons I’m leaving no longer exist, because you have to understand that as a friend you really hurt me and it was even worse because I felt like you were mine.
I’m still scared. I still doubt whether I can give her what she wants. I still don’t know if she’s the only woman I’ll ever love in my fucking life or just the best friend I’ll ever have. Why doesn’t anyone teach us how to discern between emotions? Why doesn’t anyone educate us from the outside in?
Come on, Marín… If she was just your best friend, if you felt nothing…why would sleeping with someone else make you feel so disgusted with yourself?
The weather app on my phone says it’s going to be cooler today, so before I leave the house, I grab my black denim jacket and I throw on my black sweater, which could fit two of me in it.
Head-to-toe black, Coco would say if I hadn’t been an idiot and she was coming out of her room right now and heading into the bathroom.
I’ve never felt more like dressing all in black. I want to disappear. From everything.
I go down the stairs carefully; the wooden steps are so polished by time and use that they can turn into a slide, and judging by the drops on the landings, it’s starting to rain.
Great. I don’t even know where we keep the umbrellas at home because Coco was the one who made me use them.
Without Coco but with pneumonia—cool, good prognosis.
On the other side of the door, someone is sitting on the stoop.
Their hood is pulled all the way up, and at this hour, I’d guess it’s some drunk person who passed out there.
I’ll have to be the one to wake him up and gently tell him that more than two octogenarians live in this building and if they see him, they’ll have to double up on today’s dose of Warfarin.
I open the door. “Hey, buddy…it’s seven thirty. Time to go to bed.”
“I’d like that if I could actually sleep.” He stands up nimbly and pulls off his hood as he turns toward me.
“Fuck… No fucking way.” It’s the first thing that comes out of my mouth, but if I had time to think, the result wouldn’t be much better.
“I’m not in the mood, Gus,” I say. “Go home and to hell.”
“Is this all about Aroa or because I’m the ghost of Christmas Yet to Come?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let me buy you a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t want to have coffee with you,” I point out. “Not now or tomorrow or the next day or in 2035.”
“Well, that’s too bad because I’m not here to ask for forgiveness, like you’re probably thinking. I came to talk about you and Coco. That’s it. It’s free advice, and I’m giving it to you even after you punched me.”
I lean against the wall and look him up and down. He’s a fucking mess. “You look pretty scary, you know that?”
“I’m not in a great place.” He zips up his sweatshirt and pulls the hood back on. “I’ve been better.”
“What’s that about?”
“What’s that about? Look, dude, if you don’t want to talk to me I’ll go back where I came from, but you don’t have to start laughing your ass off because I have no friends, no girl, and no shame.”
“You never had any shame.”
“Okay.” He turns around and starts walking. I whistle at him.
“What?” he says gruffly without turning around.
“The only place that’s open at this hour is Starbucks. Does that work for you?”
“I wasn’t planning on spending five bucks on coffee, but I’m not going to argue about that right now.”
The Starbucks next to what used to be the Fuencarral Market doesn’t have tables and it’s tiny, but we didn’t come to have some hours-long catch-up.
I still want to bash his nose in with my fist. So, with cardboard cups in hand, we sit on a wall, in silence.
He seems to be waiting for me to finish typing on my phone to tell my boss that something unexpected came up and I’ll be getting in a little late today.
“Talk,” I say, putting my phone in my pocket and taking a sip of coffee.
“How is she?”
“Who?”
“Who else? Her.”
“Your her or mine?”
“You have a her, Marín?” he asks ironically.
“Look, this wasn’t the deal. You said you were going to tell me something about Coco.”
“No shit.” He laughs mirthlessly. “And you’re going to deny me even knowing if—?”
“She’s fine. What do you want me to tell you? She’s been fucking great without you. I swear she’s actually even prettier since you disappeared.”
“Did she…get married?”
“No,” I reply, like it’s obvious. “But that was as easy as…”
“As going to the door of a church to find out? Of course, but what if I had seen her there in a white dress? What would I do with the vomit? Swallow it back down?”
“If you loved her, you wouldn’t have done any of what you did.”
“The thing is I don’t love her. Well, not like she loved me. It’s…” He rubs his few-days-old stubble. “It’s complicated, and I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Of course,” I say self-deprecatingly. “Jeez, dude, you have nothing to lose at this point. You’re still saying you don’t love her?”
“It was special,” he says. “It always was. It wasn’t just another fling; I never treated her like all the rest. With her it was…different. It was intimate. But it wasn’t love.”
“Just like I said, you’re going to keep denying it to yourself.”