Chapter 32
LET ME EXPLAIN
VICTORIA
Watching Elena leave a little over twenty minutes ago brought back a memory I didn’t even know I had.
She and I argued a lot, but of all our disagreements, that specific moment stuck with me because it was the one that opened my eyes.
Until that day, I hadn’t paid attention to her emotional state, and seeing her so broken, so disappointed and hurt by me, really shook me up.
That night, I had a hard time sleeping; I slept on the living room couch, and when I woke up the next morning, I was alone in a house full of memories we’d shared.
I broke into a thousand pieces when I realized it was all my fault, and when I pulled myself together, I looked for a solution.
I did it alone; I didn’t even sit down with her—I excluded her, just as I’d apparently been doing ever since we got married.
After we separated, it took me months to adjust to the emptiness she left behind; I had to move and fight against my emotions while working at a newspaper that absorbed and destroyed everything good I had.
The only thing I can salvage from that time is that after so much suffering, I landed a position in the section I wanted, and that very thing took me straight to Madrid, where I achieved all my dreams. Now, as I walk toward her office, I wonder if all of that was worth it.
Elena is so right to be upset with me that I even feel ashamed of myself.
I’ve made the same mistake again, and if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t even have realized it.
My relationship with Joana is still there, and in the meantime, I’m trying to salvage a marriage that I myself ended.
I know my attitude hasn’t been the best, and although I don’t know if it will do any good, I can’t let the day end without explaining myself and confessing why I’m doing things this way.
At this time of day, the hotel is bustling with people coming and going; so are the pool, the restaurant, and the front desk.
It takes me over fifteen minutes to reach the top floor, and once I’m standing in front of the door, I close my eyes and let out a sigh.
I don’t know what I want to say to her, because there’s so much weighing on me that I don’t know where to start.
Still, I decide to knock and wait for her to let me in.
“Elena, it’s me, Vicky,” I say from the other side, hoping she’ll hear me. “Can I come in? We can’t leave this like this; we need to talk.” Her hollow silence worries me, and that pushes me to open the door. “Elena?”
The office is empty, and I wonder where she could be.
Maybe a lot of time has passed, but we’re still the same, and that leads me to follow my heart’s impulses and go look for her where she always hid whenever we had to part ways at the end of summer.
The rooftop was that special spot, witness to important conversations, confessions, and many kisses.
And when I arrive, I open the door and bump into Elena; I feel that if I let this opportunity slip away, I’ll never be able to make things right with her.
“I knew you’d be here.” She turns as soon as she hears me, a mixture of surprise and sadness in her eyes. “This place was always your favorite hiding spot.”
“What are you doing here?”
“What do you think?” I reply, standing a few feet away from her.
“I know you have every right to be upset with me—I’m still the same idiot who made those mistakes—but please, let me speak and explain myself,” I plead, clasping my hands together.
“Things have moved too fast between us, and we need to talk.”
“I can’t deny it. We went from not knowing how to say hello to not being able to stop kissing.” She wraps her arms around herself and relaxes her posture. “We’re pretty good at doing things backward.”
With the atmosphere much more relaxed between us, I decide to walk.
I can see the disappointment in her eyes because I’ve seen it there many times before, and that’s why I look out toward the silhouette of the sea on the horizon.
I need to think carefully about everything I want to say to her because one wrong word or phrase could ruin everything, and I refuse to let that happen.
So I take a deep breath and look at her.
“I’m sorry I made the decision to break up without considering how you felt,” I say sincerely.
“After that fight when you went back to Ibiza, you opened my eyes and made me see that you were exhausted, that you were suffering, that you couldn’t take it anymore.
I didn’t want to hurt you, and I couldn’t quit my job either, so it was the only way out I could find. ”
“The easiest one, you’d say.” She turns around and stands next to me.
I take a few seconds to look at her, to see how the sun’s rays turn her gray eyes a shade of blue.
“But I have things to apologize for, too. I was really harsh, I didn’t put myself in your shoes, I demanded more from you than you could give, and well…
” She shrugs. “I know it was hard for you and…”
“I guess it just wasn’t the right time for us,” I say, catching her immediate attention. “Maybe we should have thought more with our heads and not so much with our hearts. I don’t know.”
“It’s pointless to dwell on it now,” she says with a nod, knowing it’s true. “All I want is for us to do the right thing. We can’t be together while you’re in a relationship with someone else. And I can’t be with you without…”
“Without what?”
“Without wanting to kiss you, to touch you, to…”
“To make love to me,” I cut her off, and her eyes shine with an intensity that makes my skin crawl. “I want that too. Ever since I saw the wedding invitation in my mailbox, I haven’t stopped thinking about you, about us. I swear I never thought this would happen. I was about to not come, and now…”
“Do you regret doing it?”
“No. I regret being so foolish as to let you go the way I did,” I confess, and I move closer to her to hold her in my arms. “We should have spent all these years together, supported each other, lived…” I whisper, my voice hoarse with emotion.
“We were so much more than a couple, and… God…” I bury my face in her neck, intoxicated by the scent of her skin.
“Right now, I’d like to erase the past and have the chance to show you that I truly loved you. ”
“That’s impossible,” she murmurs, clutching my clothes tightly, pushing me away while making sure I won’t move from there. “Besides, I never doubted that. The day we signed our divorce papers, I knew you still loved me. That’s why I asked you—don’t you remember?”
“Then why did you sign it?”
“Because I was hoping you’d realize your mistake and come looking for me. But…”
“I didn’t,” Elena says as I lose myself in her beautiful gray eyes. “I know there are things I can’t fix, but there are others I still have time to make better.”
“Which ones?”
“These…”
Without thinking twice, I bridge the distance between us and press my lips to hers, initiating a kiss I’ve been wanting to give her for hours.
There are many things I’ve done wrong in my life, but the most important one was leaving her, and I don’t plan on repeating it.
I know I have to do better, that she doesn’t want me to promise her anything, but I’ll try my best so she can see that I’m not the same person anymore.
Starting with this—following my heart instead of my head and loving her the way I should have for the five years we were apart.