Chapter 5
SOME THINGS CAN’T BE OVERCOME
ELENA
It’s been a few hours since my brother and Carolina visited, and I still can’t get the thought out of my head that Victoria will be at the wedding.
I’ve tried everything to keep from panicking—doing the yoga breathing exercises I’ve learned over the past two years and turning to the techniques the psychologist recommended for situations like this.
I don’t know why I didn’t think of this possibility; it never crossed my mind that she and I might see each other again, but it’s going to happen and… it’s going to be absolute madness.
The last time Victoria and I shared more than a greeting was the very day we signed our divorce papers.
We’d been apart for over six months, and when I saw her, I had to admit that I still loved her.
She remained serious, distant, and cold, as if the contents of those papers didn’t weigh on her heart.
Her signature crossed the pages with an ease that left me speechless and made me feel like a memory, something fleeting she was letting go of to put away in a trunk and forget.
Our bond broke so quickly that I didn’t realize what had happened until the boxes arrived at my mother’s house in Ibiza, and the world came crashing down on me.
Jorge and Carolina were there for me, and if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t have made it through.
Now, with the darkness of night bathing the waters of the Mediterranean, I walk along the shore of Las Salinas beach, my gaze fixed on my feet and the sound of the waves filling my ears.
This has always been one of the busiest spots in Ibiza, the favorite place for local celebrities to soak up the sun and enjoy the beauty of this paradise in the middle of the sea, but for me it’s a special corner—the place where my life changed and where I met her.
Almost twenty-two years have passed since then, and when I return here, I can’t help but remember the day she stopped a sudden wave from sweeping me away.
That morning I discovered a friend in her, and I’m afraid that so many years apart have turned us into complete strangers.
“Something that wouldn’t surprise me,” I think once I decide to sit where the water can’t reach me.
I pull my legs up to my chest; behind me, the bars have already started to buzz, and the neon lights reach all the way to where I am, turning my yellow dress into a rainbow of colors.
Vicky loved this beach, and I began to love it the day we kissed for the first time, on our first starry night as something more than friends.
I’m so scared my stomach is churning, but another part of me is happy, and that’s the part that has kept me hoping all this time that she’d come back.
I always hoped she would, that she’d turn back, quit her job, and come back to me…
but she never did, and in the end, well…
all I had left was to find something to make me happy and hold on to it every day until this moment.
I don’t know how I’m going to get through these next few weeks, or what I’m going to do once I see her, but I know I have to try my best, hide my emotions, and do everything in my power to keep my relationship with her from ruining the celebration that Carolina and my brother deserve.
I must leave everything behind, put on a suit of armor, and be strong—like the rocks on the cliffs on stormy days.