Chapter 26 #2
“You’re very successful, Simón,” I say.
Simón’s smirk melts into a soft smile. “If you say so.”
He closes his eyes again, resting his head on the side of the couch. With his throat exposed, I see his Adam’s apple bob. Outside, the streetlight flickers. He’s falling asleep. He can’t fall asleep. If he wakes up with a stiff neck, Mileidy will have my neck.
“Simón?”
“Mm?” I can see the muscles of his jaw twitch with the sound.
Go to sleep, I should say. I should assure him that I’m fine sleeping here, that I prefer it to my own bed, that there’s nothing like it. But then he’ll go. And I’ll be alone.
“Did you have fun tonight?” I ask instead.
“I did,” he breathes. “Up until Viviana kidnapped me, that is.”
I laugh, muffling the sound with my duvet. I hug my knees to my chest as Simón opens one eye to look at me.
“Did you have fun?” he asks.
Fun is not the word I would use to describe tonight. It was certainly eventful. Infuriating. Cold. But not fun. Not until now anyway, which I can’t admit to him.
“We broke up.”
Simón stills. I don’t know how it’s possible for someone who is not moving to not move more, but he manages.
“So that was fun,” I add.
Silence stretches between us; the only sound is the rustling of the leather as he shifts, sitting back up.
I swallow hard. Simón simply stares at me while I try to fix my eyes on any shadowed silhouette that isn’t him.
The confession leaves me feeling exposed.
A little embarrassed. Here I am, sitting in the dark with the man I recruited to help me get back together with the boyfriend I broke up with hours ago. Here I am, admitting I failed.
“Don’t worry, I still owe you a profile,” I say, because the silence is unbearable.
Simón leans forward, eyes wide. “Marianto, I don’t care about that.”
Then he’s a better human than I am. He practically told me I would change my mind, and I did.
I would be rubbing it in my face if I were him.
I would be livid if someone made me waste my time helping them only to throw it all away.
I could have said yes to Alejandro. Hell, I should have said yes.
We would have been back together. Eugenia wouldn’t have known the difference.
I would have gotten the promotion, an ending for my article, albeit an anticlimactic one, but still.
I would have gotten a foot in the door to give Simón what I promised him.
If he knew, he would care. I screwed things up for both of us.
“Are you okay?” Simón asks.
I hug the duvet tighter. “Well, I was the one who ended it, so I better be.”
“You can be sad about it even when you feel you did the right thing,” he says. “When I broke up with my last girlfriend, I was devastated.”
“What happened?” I whisper.
He shrugs. “She hated that I was in a band.”
“She dumped you because of the band?”
“She asked me to choose.”
Oh. “And you chose the band.”
Simón nods once, slowly.
Silence hangs heavy in the air. The only sound is the gentle rustling of sheets as we shift in the dark. Somewhere in my apartment a cricket is chirping while I try to unpack what Simón just said.
“In her defense, long distance is the only way to have a relationship with me, which is hard enough.” His statement is a needle to the small bubble of fantasies I’d been having.
“Throw in the lack of a reliable schedule, the fact that our careers are taking off so we’re spending less time at home…
It’s not for everyone. It wasn’t fair to force her into accepting a lifestyle she didn’t want. ”
The words wrap around my heart, squeezing until it hurts.
It’s good that we’re having this conversation.
It’ll help me keep my wits about me. I came second to my mother’s career my whole life.
She missed important events, milestones.
She was never available. Too busy shooting a telenovela, or closing a deal, or eloping with her co-star.
Simón’s career is his priority. Breaking up with Alejandro doesn’t change that.
I won’t put myself in a position where I have to compete for his attention.
Whenever he starts to look like a possibility for me, I’ll remember this conversation and how he told me, with his own lips, that he’s exactly what I’ve always said I don’t want.
Even if I don’t know exactly what that is anymore. This way, maybe we can be friends.
“Did you…consider it?” I ask. “Quitting the band?”
“I did,” he admits. “I loved her. We’d been together for over a year. I had a ring.” A ring. For someone. After barely a year. I swallow hard. “I almost quit. And then Juanes wanted us to open for him.”
“That was two years ago,” I say, because I can’t talk about how he was ready to marry someone after a year, and it wasn’t the right person. Meanwhile, I spent four years with Ale, and he was never sure he wanted me for forever.
Simón laughs. “The guys wanted to kill me.” He pushes his hair back, a front-row version of the motion he did by the bathroom door.
His eyelids are heavy with exhaustion. “I swore I’d keep writing for them.
They didn’t want me to write, they wanted us to live our dream together.
And when I went to her house to tell her that Juanes wanted us to open his tour, she wasn’t happy for me.
She got angry. And that’s when I knew.” He shrugs.
“If we stayed together, one of us would always resent the other. Love is not enough. People want to believe it is, but it’s not.
Your passions, your dreams, your goals…all of that matters.
Geography matters too. Time. It’s two lives, and all their parts, joined together.
For us, there wasn’t even room for compromise.
She hated the part of me I loved the most.” Simón swallows.
I want to reach out, touch him, comfort him for having to go through what he did.
I wish I could say I can’t imagine loving someone enough to want to marry them and have them not return the feeling, but I can.
My heart breaks for him. “It was the easiest decision I’ve ever made.
I’m still sure I made the right choice. But it hurt. ”
He yawns, settling deeper into his corner of the couch.
I watch him in silence as he blinks lazily, breaking the quiet of the night with a low, tired moan that I feel in every fiber of my body.
He truly is beautiful in his lanky, relaxed state.
He’s beautiful in his kindness, in his generosity.
In his friendship too. That’s where he’s the most beautiful.
In the support and help he’s offered me throughout the short time we’ve known each other. Which is why I ask:
“Do you think I made a mis—”
“No.” Simón answers before the question is fully out. His voice is firm, no room for debate. It makes my eyes sting.
“Even if I don’t get the promotion?” I whisper.
He pins me with a look from where he sits on his end of the couch. “Even if you write an article dragging Caballo de Troya through the mud and publish it in The New York Times, I will still be glad you broke up with Alejandro.”
“Why?” I ask.
Simón yawns, looking away. “Because I’m selfish.”
My heart races as soon as the words are out of his mouth. What is he saying? That he wants me to be single? Even if I don’t hold up my end of the deal?
“Marianto?”
I snap back into focus. “Yes?”
“I’m not moving from this couch, so we’ll be sharing it unless you take the bed,” Simón says, unselfishly unselfish.
With an eye roll I’m not sure he can see, I push to my feet. “Fine. But you’ll regret this in the morning.”
Simón shakes his head as he stretches both long legs on the couch. He doesn’t even fit on it. “I won’t regret any of it.”
I smile to myself on my way to the room, looking over my shoulder to find his eyes on me. “Hey.” I clear my throat. “I hope you know you deserve someone who loves all of you.”
He gives me a small smile. “So do you,” he says. “Good night, Maria Antonieta.”
“Good night, Simón Andrés.”