18. Chapter 18
Dom
I'm fully dressed and still catching my breath. I can't see a thing. A weight sits on my chest. It's heavy enough that the only option is to give in, and I sit on the floor with my back against the wall.
Fuck.
I close my eyes. Lift my knees up and rest my elbows on them, and drop my head to my hands. Rustling fills the silence, ending when Mariana sits by my side in the dark.
I fear replying to Mariana's question, but my thoughts slip out of me before I can inspect them.
"I don't know why we keep doing this," I say.
"Is that your secret?"
"It must be nostalgia. The memories keep tricking us."
And because we keep thinking about it, talking about it, acting on it, we're keeping it alive in our minds. It's the big irony of life. You can fight something all you want, but fighting something means holding on to it with both hands.
If I can let go of this feud I have with our past, with having her around again, I can finally open my hands and let go. If I don't, I don't know how I'll endure the rest of the season.
"Dom… We're giving in because it feels good. Right? Today happened because I panicked, and you were kind enough to help me through it. One thing led to another and… well. Now we feel better. Don't you feel better?"
I shake my head, even if she can't see me. My body may feel satiated, but my emotions? They have nowhere to go.
"Helping you when you need it is just decency." I drop my forehead to my forearms. "The way we went about it, on the other hand…"
"Twice isn't so bad."
"Twice more than we said we would."
"Being in my body like this helps. We don't have to… it doesn't have to be more than that."
"Yeah, let's say I did that because I'm generous." I snort.
Then I won't have to inspect my actions too closely. How the moment got me, so thoroughly, that I end up forgetting myself. Enjoying every second. Every touch. Every sigh.
If I do, I might have to face the truth, and I'm not sure I can handle it and keep my dignity around her again.
Cuidado hijo, my mom said when I first told her about Mariana. Relationships like this are hard to keep.
For her, it was the echo of her own story. My dad was comfortable financially— a far cry from Mariana's situation— but he quit on us. Said it wasn't the life he wanted and left her and mi abuela to scramble. She always said she wished she hadn't believed it could last.
I didn't go into things with Mariana thinking it could last, but I fell in love with her anyway. And ended up watching someone I would have spent my whole life with walking away.
"Thank you," she says. "I know I'm relying on you a lot more than either of us planned, but I can't seem to keep things roped away and maybe… maybe we shouldn't have expected to act like we have no past."
"Maybe we're stuck on the things that don't feel resolved."
"Is this when you tell me why you're angry, Dom? Is that what you think is unresolved?"
I lift my head and rest it on the handrail. "I told you why I'm angry. That first night at the party. But if you didn't get it…"
Then it may be part of what's kept us stuck here. With bodies that keep doing the opposite of what we say.
"Do you mean what you said about me not waiting for you?" she asks after a minute. "In the kitchen— you said I got engaged before you could do anything about it."
I don't confirm with words, but my silence does the work well enough.
"Dom. We always knew it would end. We broke up."
"How long after you arrived in London did you meet him?"
"Does that matter?"
"Yes. It does."
Of course it does. It says how quickly she moved on.
It would show for how long I grabbed on to my senseless hope, working my ass off to excel and get drafted in the first round, because then I'd get a good contract and maybe, just maybe, I'd get another chance. While she had already given up on us.
She doesn't respond. Her sharp breathing is the only sound for a few charged seconds.
"When did you know you loved him?" I press.
"I never loved him."
"Then why the fuck did you marry him?"
"I hoped I would love him one day."
"You hoped you would fall in love with your fiancé?"
Somehow this helps. A couple of well-aimed stitches close a puncture hole in my heart. Mariana and I loved each other three months into our relationship. However long she was with Henry before they got engaged, she still didn't love him.
Anger may be dissolving like old snow on a spring day, but it's only being replaced by a hell of a lot of confusion. Especially when I hear her sniffle. I hear her move but can't see a damn thing.
"Fuck," I mutter barely loud enough to make a sound.
I grab my phone and turn on the flashlight again. Not much light comes out, but I see her drying a tear.
"You married him even though you didn't love him?" I ask.
She doesn't look at me.
"You were smiling in that picture," I insist. "You looked happy."
"I thought maybe love would grow, okay?" She sniffles again.
"That's how it was for my parents, but it didn't happen for me.
I failed at that too. I thought being married could be the way the relationship lasted.
That common goals and paperwork were the missing piece, because love for sure wasn't enough, when you and I had broken up.
It worked for my parents. Maybe it could work for me. Except… it didn't."
Pain mars her face. I want to bring her close, kiss her temple, but I don't.
"You said that I was selfish to call you," I say.
It could have been her escape. She could have ended things with him and come back to me, but she chose him anyway. Despite the doubts she had back then.
She gives me a long stare and dries another tear.
"You called me because you wanted another try, and you didn't like that I was getting married to someone else.
From the first time we met. Counting on getting another chance.
Remember how you asked me out on two dates, in case things didn't feel good enough the first time around? "
She's right. And I remember.
This is why she's hurt by everything. She never knew I had kept hoping. Counting on another chance, like she said. Only without ever bothering to tell her, so that all she knew was that our love was in the past.
"Your call devastated me, Dom. I crashed— hard.
I kept going in circles in my head, spun by every lesson my family ever gave me about life.
The assumptions I was meant to hold about us, about my future, while wondering why you called.
How many mistakes did I make to cause it?
At the end, I realized that for you to pick up the phone, you must have not believed me.
You didn't stop me when I left, but you either didn't mean it when you agreed we'd break up, or didn't accept it when the time came.
And then you thought you could come back out of nowhere and you'd be granted another chance. "
I sigh and hang my head. "I guess that's what I did."
Lights come back to the panel. Static breaks through the round, small grill at the bottom of it.
"Anyone there?" Someone asks. "Press the speaker button to reply."
I'm the closest. I press the button. "Yes. We're here."
"How many people? Everyone okay?"
"Two. We're okay… now. It's been some time since we got here."
"Yep, sorry. It happens once in a while. We're fixing it. Should be less than thirty minutes."
"Okay."
The static sound comes through again. There's enough light now with the panel on. I turn off my flashlight.
I sigh. "I called you because I had to try. It's all I kept hearing in my head. Maybe your family would accept me with a good contract. And shouldn't I tell you I would fight for us? That I still wanted to? I had to try. Even if I was too late."
"My family didn't dislike you, Dom." She presses her lips. "We broke up because long before I met you, I had designed my future and felt like I couldn't change it. I'm my parents daughter in so many ways and I'm just now figuring out who I want to be and what I want. A little late, I know."
I snort.
She smirks. "It doesn't mean I'm not goal-oriented like they are. It only means I'm parsing through the million rules they gave me about fighting for what I want. What that looks like, and what really matters in life. Especially with the kind of privilege we have."
A long, deep breath makes its way through her lips. I can't do the same. The weight in my chest has not moved. If only, it has intensified.
She gazes at me with tears building on her lashes. The view cuts through me, blending tenderness and hurt of my own.
"See?" she continues. "Romantic love isn't part of what my parents value in any way.
It's not a goal you can control and it's not measurable.
Love is something that may or may not happen, that may come from the time you spend together with someone or not, but which can't compare to how quantifiable success is.
A career. And you know my parents' story.
Both of them come from families who lost everything.
Nothing compares to the security of what you have achieved. "
"It's so sad," I admit.
Mariana didn't tell me every detail, but she told me her dad's family had its roots in Scotland, and suffered a lot through the years of English ruling, until his family moved to London during the Industrial Revolution.
Her mom, on the other hand, had to escape Chile with her parents after the military coup in the seventies.
But if I'm honest, my sadness is also for Mariana and me, and how all of this still affects us today, so many generations later.
She shakes her head. "It's all about that sense of safety, I think.
Now that we have so much, it's also about the work you can do for others, when you have all your ducks in a row.
But, romance? That's just some extra decoration on a cake.
Nice to have, but you can do without. Especially compared to the promise of everything you can seize in life, when you never stop reaching for the moon. "