Chapter 33 #2
I turn to find my mother, but that’s not the worst part. Beside her, Alejandro is holding a bouquet of roses, surrounded by mariachi. His usually imposing demeanor is reduced to dust before my eyes. His arms hang lifeless at his sides, his shoulders hunch. He’s looking at me like I’m a stranger.
Blood drains from my face so fast I feel lightheaded, nauseated. His presence here is jarring. Wrong. We broke up. I broke up with him. I’m away for work. He should not be here. He should be in Caracas, too busy saving lives to answer a text.
Next to him, my mother stares at me with a mixture of confusion and something else…regret, maybe? That’s how I know: This is her doing. The nausea and guilt evaporate, making way for anger, but I don’t have time to focus on my mother because Alejandro is here.
His emerald eyes shift from me to Simón, and back to me. “Are you serious? Him?”
My airways have shut, I can’t breathe. Ale’s expression hardens. “I never would have pegged you for vengeful, but—”
He shrugs, gesturing to us. I feel Simón straighten, feel him tense. All I can do is stare, let him accuse me of…what? We broke up.
Simón takes a step forward. “Hey, man—”
“You stay out of this,” Alejandro snaps, before turning back to me. “He’s exactly what you’ve always said you don’t want—”
“Ale, stop—” I beg.
“What was it you used to say?” he continues. “No actors, no models, no musicians. That you wanted someone you could count on. Someone who didn’t live half his life on an airplane or a bus. And now you’re with my favorite musician. Am I supposed to believe you aren’t trying to get back at me?”
“Alejandro, that’s not—” I turn to Simón. “That’s not—”
He fixes his attention on Simón. “I’d get out now. She planned this. She’s a planner. That’s what she does.”
The words land on my chest like a string of bullets, each one cutting deeper than the last. If this is what he thinks of me, of my plans, why did he put up with it for four years?
Why not save me the trouble, set me free?
Maybe I would have found someone who appreciated it.
But it seems even the one thing we had in common was an inconvenience to him.
Alejandro shakes his head with a bitter laugh. He turns his back on us and tosses the bouquet of roses through the open windows and into the sea. The sound of his heavy footsteps on the wood is loud as thunder.
I start toward him but halt. I have to go after him. I know I do. I have to…I don’t know, explain, talk, make sure he’s okay?
I turn to Simón, heaving, panicked. What Alejandro said to him was horrible. I need to talk to him as well. Explain. Make sure he’s okay. But…“I have to go.”
“I know,” he says. His voice is barely more than a whisper. “It’s okay.”
My eyes mist. Burn. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he repeats.
I hesitate for an everlasting second in which my heart breaks.
My carelessness falls heavy on my shoulders.
I could have avoided this. If I hadn’t been so blinded by what I wanted, if I hadn’t been selfish with him.
I knew better. The first tear falls. I wipe it away and take off running after Alejandro.
I reach him when he’s rounding the pool.
People turn their heads in my direction when I rush past them.
“Alejandro!” I call out, panting.
He doesn’t stop. “Congrats on your conquest!”
“Would you please stop for one second?” I say. “Please.”
He whirls toward me, a tornado of fury and hurt. “Why? So you can make me look like an even bigger fool than I already do?”
“No.” I reach for him, but he takes a step back, keeping the distance.
“Entonces, qué?” He throws his arms up. “What is it you want? You got your revenge. Congratulations.”
“This isn’t about revenge.” Does he really have such a sour opinion of me that he thinks I would date someone in order to hurt him?
Alejandro’s snicker tells me he does, his humorless laugh drips venom. “No, you’re right. What do you have to get revenge for, anyway? All I did was try to make us the best we could be before we jumped into a lifelong commitment—”
I stagger back like he punched me. My voice is barely a whisper. “Excuse me?”
He doesn’t hear me. Or he ignores me. “—trying to fix our relationship, while you—”
“Trying to fix our relationship?” I think of him telling me he’s not sure he wants to marry me, of him calling me to ask for a favor after he broke my heart.
I think of him deciding he wanted me back only because he didn’t want someone else to have me.
And I’m supposed to believe all that was for my benefit?
I’m too aware of the people trying to enjoy their pool time, who are now getting a spectacle they didn’t ask for.
I grab Alejandro’s hand and lead him far from the prying eyes and curious ears of hotel guests.
I’m surprised he doesn’t shake out of my grip the second I touch him.
His breathing is heavy, like he can’t get air into his lungs fast enough.
I whisper while we walk. “You told me you needed time, you told me you weren’t sure about me. I gave you the space you needed.”
Alejandro does step away then, facing me. “And what’s so bad about that?”
“You broke my heart!” I sob. I can’t contain it anymore.
I made a fool of myself over and over, trying to get him to love me again.
I dragged Simón into this. I lost every shred of dignity I had chasing after him over the past few months.
“You hurt me. You only changed your mind when I’d had enough of living in your purgatory, when I’d had enough of waiting around to finally be good enough. ”
Alejandro’s fight leaves his body at once.
He simply stares. I never thought I’d be telling him all this.
When I broke up with him, I figured we would go our separate ways.
I would not see him again, I would forget about the four years we spent together, like I’d done with every other relationship that hurt me.
Be it a boyfriend, a friend, my mother…I’m not used to talking.
I’m used to nursing myself back to health, picking up my own pieces and rearranging them into something that resembles a whole person.
But I’m talking now. And it’s…freeing.
“Listen,” I say. “Maybe I shouldn’t have left the restaurant the way I did.
Maybe I should have stayed and talked like you asked me to.
That’s on me.” I put both hands over my chest, looking him straight in the eyes so he knows I mean every word.
“But you don’t get to stand here and tell me the pain you put me through was for us.
” Alejandro looks away. I don’t stop. “I wanted us to work, Ale. I did everything I could think of. I modeled myself into the woman I thought you wanted, the woman your family wanted, and it was still not enough. I was never going to be enough.”
I wipe the tears streaming down my face, the weight I’ve been carrying for the past two months lifting with every piece of truth that tumbles out of my mouth. It’s messy and it’s ugly, but it’s out now. I can’t take it back, and I don’t want to.
“We were together four years, Alejandro,” I continue. “Four years. Do you really think I would use Simón to hurt you? That I’m not heartbroken things went down like this between us?”
The realization hits me as soon as I say it.
It was always going to end. I tried so hard to grasp the ashes of our burning relationship.
I clung to the skeleton, tried to bring a corpse back to life, but deep down I knew there was nothing left to do.
Where would I be, had I loved myself enough to accept his “break”?
Where would I be if I’d ended things when he gave me the first sign that we had run our course?
It was all for nothing—the list, the humiliation.
I was always going to end up here. We were always going to end up here, kneeling in front of our lifeless relationship, me declaring the time of death and zipping the bag closed.
Alejandro wouldn’t have done it. He would have gladly kept us in a coma for eternity.
I expect Alejandro to yell some more, to blame me, to wash his hands of the responsibility, because I’m learning that’s just what he does. But what he says surprises me.
“Of course not.”
My eyes sting again and for a fraction of a second I allow the Marianto that fell in love with him when she was twenty-three to come out, to look at him one last time.
She was young and she was hurt and she was angry and she wanted the security she lacked all her life.
She did love him, but she loved him for all the wrong reasons.
I take a step closer to him. “I’m sorry I hurt you.
And I’m sorry you felt like you couldn’t talk to me or be yourself.
I’m mostly sorry I never gave you the chance to love the real me because I was trying too hard to be exactly what you wanted.
That’s what I should have said at the restaurant, but…
” I breathe in, then out. “I don’t think what worked between us four years ago works now. And I think you know it too.”
Alejandro swallows, nodding. “I’m sorry I hurt you too.”
A moment passes between us where we remain like that, staring at each other, knowing there is nothing else to be said.
Alejandro sighs. “I’m going to—”
He gestures vaguely to the hotel and beyond.
I nod. I don’t trust my voice to speak.
“Goodbye, Marianto,” he says.
I nod again.
People at the pool have forgotten about us. When Ale crosses the revolving glass doors to the lobby, no one pays attention to him. No one pays attention to the lonely girl by the bushes, hugging herself against the cold breeze.
Our last night in Margarita is one for the books. This island has a lot of making up to do.