CHAPTER 16
THE SAME OLD MISTAKE
Lidia
The resort’s restaurant opens directly onto the sea, like almost everything on this blessed island.
The constant murmur of the waves seeps into the conversations and mingles with the laughter, becoming that unexpected guest everyone is grateful to have nearby.
The dark wooden ceiling casts soft shadows over the white-clothed tables, while the warm breeze carries that unmistakable scent of salt mixed with garlic, lemon, and freshly cooked fish that makes, for a moment, life itself seem simple, light, almost within reach.
I sit across from Miriam and my father, my skin still damp from the sea, my hair tousled and sticky with salt, and that strange, almost suffocating feeling of having experienced something too intense just a few hours ago.
A moment underwater that I still don’t know how to fit into the rest of my day, into the rest of me.
“It was incredible,” Miriam blurts out, resting her elbows on the table, her eyes still shining with excitement. “Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such spectacular reefs in my life.”
“And the school of silver fish?” my father interjects enthusiastically, leaning forward as if he were still down there. “They looked like they’d rehearsed a perfect choreography, didn’t they?”
“And the turtles,” I add almost without realizing it, my voice soft.
“The turtles!” Miriam exclaims, her eyes widening. “I could’ve floated there all day, watching them swim so calmly, without a care in the world.”
I nod slowly and force a smile that, for a few precious seconds, I manage to make real.
For a moment, I succeed. I am here. At this table. In this exact moment. Without the past or the future clawing at me from within. But then, as always, inevitably, my gaze drifts to the side, toward her, toward Barbara.
She’s sitting to my right, leaning slightly toward the table, with that serene posture she’s always had, listening attentively to the conversation, as if the morning underwater hadn’t left a single mark on her skin, not a single echo in her chest. As if that brush of fingers underwater, that moment when our gazes met through the masks and the endless blue, had never happened.
As if she hadn’t felt exactly the same as I did.
I press my lips together until it hurts a little.
“Hey, Barbara,” my father interjects suddenly, breaking a silence only I seem to notice. “Tell us a little about how things are going for you in London. You haven’t told me anything this morning.”
I don’t know why he asks her when he knows that everything to do with her—her life in London, everything she’s achieved far away from me—is going to hurt me in places that still haven’t fully healed.
Barbara takes a sip from the glass of water they’ve served us and wipes her lips with the cloth napkin in a slow motion, as if she needs to gather her thoughts before opening her mouth.
“Well…” she begins, curving her lips into a half-smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.
“The truth is, I can’t complain. The first few months were the hardest, but my teammates…
” She pauses and rubs the back of her neck with one hand.
“They helped me a lot. And the job is high-pressure; it absorbs me completely… but I’m fine. Really fine. Living the dream.”
“Living the dream.” A cursed phrase that falls onto the table like molten lead and burns as if it were crawling across my skin.
“You’re with West Ham, right?” Miriam asks with interest, tilting her head. “Pablo told me it’s one of the best teams in the women’s league.”
“Yes. He’s not lying,” Barbara nods, her voice growing a little firmer. “I run the team’s physical performance department. I’m one of the strength and conditioning coaches, basically. My job is to help the girls reach their peak physical condition.”
My father lets out a low whistle, impressed.
“That must be incredible…”
“It is,” she replies without arrogance, but with that calm confidence I’ve always admired. “The team is growing tremendously. There’s investment, there’s excitement everywhere… and you can feel it in our day-to-day work. We’ve secured good positions, so everyone’s happy.”
I’ve always sensed that excitement, that emotion, that happiness in Barbara…
Part of me is glad everything is going well for her, but the other part…
the other part recognizes things in her that I hadn’t seen in years, like that spark of excitement that used to shine in her eyes when we talked about us, about the future we wanted to build together.
“Thanks to the work of the training staff, we got a player back who’d been out for months with an injury and who ended up being the star of the last game,” she continues, and her eyes light up a little more.
“No one would’ve bet on her; they thought she’d never get back to her previous level, but within weeks she earned her spot on the team again. It’s been amazing to watch.”
“That’s impressive,” Miriam admits, nodding slowly. “It must be so rewarding to see those changes, right?”
“It is,” Barbara replies, her voice dropping slightly, almost intimate. “So much.”
“So much.” The words bounce around inside my head like an echo that won’t leave me alone and begins to fan a flame I have no way of extinguishing.
“The league there is nothing like the Spanish one,” she adds, shrugging slightly. “More resources, more professional structure… it’s another world. And honestly, I don’t regret accepting the position when they offered it to me.”
“I don’t regret accepting the position when they offered it to me,” I repeat to myself, and as I do, I feel everything split in two.
I don’t know if she realizes the exact weight those words carry.
I don’t know if she understands the impact.
But I do. Of course I do. Because that “I don’t regret it” isn’t just about an employment contract; it’s about everything she left behind, it’s about us…
and about me. It’s about how she left and abandoned everything after we signed the divorce papers; about the emptiness and void I felt when I came home to our apartment.
I feel something tighten inside my chest, as if an invisible string had been pulled to its limit and threatened to snap at any second. A lump forms in my throat, something burns in my stomach, and then I explode:
“How lovely everything is…”
My voice, strangely enough, comes out calm, steady, even though I’m nowhere near calm.
“What?” she asks, turning toward me with a slight frown.
I look her straight in the eyes.
“How nice it must be to realize that what you left behind in Valencia didn’t carry the same weight or importance as everything you found there. It must’ve been a huge relief to arrive and feel nothing weighing on your shoulders.”
Silence falls suddenly, thick and sticky. My father clears his throat uncomfortably, Miriam looks down at her half-eaten plate, and Barbara… well, Barbara remains motionless, the napkin still between her fingers.
As if she doesn’t know what expression to make.
And for some reason, that bothers me even more.
“Lidia…” my father begins in a conciliatory tone, raising a hand.
“No,” I cut him off without taking my eyes off her. “It’s okay. Really. It’s good to know.”
My pulse quickens, I feel the blood pounding in my temples, that familiar buzzing that signals I’m slipping back into the same damn loop I can’t seem to escape.
“I guess it’s easier that way,” I continue without stopping. “Leaving, starting over in another city, in another life… and slowly convincing yourself that everything that came before wasn’t that important, right?”
“That’s not what I said,” Barbara finally replies, her voice low, restrained, but firm as stone. “It wasn’t easy starting over there…”
“No, of course not,” I reply with a bitter smile. “But your new teammates, the team…” I say, dragging out the words to make them loom larger. “They helped you forget everything and live that great dream you wanted so badly—the one I kept you from achieving.”
“Lidia…”
“What?” I interrupt her, leaning slightly toward her. “Does it bother you that I interpret it my own way? Because believe me, I’ve had more than enough years to think it over again and again.”
I notice Miriam watching me with concern, my father shifting restlessly in his chair, but I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. Because this is part of me too: the pent-up rage, the words that used to choke me and now spill out on their own.
“You have no idea what you’re saying,” Barbara murmurs, and there’s a new edge to her tone that makes me tense up even more.
“Oh, really?” I smile without a trace of joy. “Well, enlighten me, please. I can’t wait to hear it.”
“It’s not as simple as you make it sound.”
“Of course not,” I nod slowly. “It never is when it comes to justifying decisions that hurt another person.”
Silence.
“It wasn’t an easy decision,” she says, and for the first time I catch a small but real crack in her voice, a tremor of insecurity she’s trying to hide.
“But you made it,” I reply without hesitation. “And you don’t regret it.”
Silence again, but this time longer and heavier. Because we both know there isn’t much more to say.
I feel the sting in the back of my eyes, but I refuse to let the tears fall. Not here. Not in front of them.
“It’s always been like this with you,” I murmur, lowering my voice, almost as if I were talking to myself. “When something really excites you, when something new comes along that fills you up… everything else fades into the background. The rest stops mattering.”
“That’s not fair,” she protests quietly.
“No,” I concede. “It’s not fair. But it’s true. And you know that as well as I do.”
I slide back my chair and stand up, trying to take a deep breath, slowly; trying to pull myself together, even just a little. But it’s too late, and the knot has already formed in my chest.
“The damage is already done.”
“Lidia, sweetheart…” my father says gently.
“It’s okay,” I interrupt him this time, less sharply, almost wearily. “Really. I just needed to say it out loud.”
I look at Barbara one last time, and that feeling returns—that confusing mix of what we were, of what still beats beneath the skin, and of what will never, ever be again.
“Enjoy your dessert,” I say, standing up. “I… need some fresh air.”
I don’t wait for a reply. I don’t want to hear it, either. I don’t want to stay another second at that table where everything seems normal on the outside while on the inside I’m falling apart.
I walk without looking back, feeling each step grow heavier, as if the ground were pulling me down, eager to swallow me whole and make me disappear.
The sound of the sea crashes back into my ears, mingling with the frantic beating of my heart and enveloping me completely.
I step out of the restaurant and the salty breeze hits my face.
I take a deep breath. Once. And then again.
But it’s not enough. Because there are things that don’t fade away with fresh air or the sound of the waves.
Things that stay with you. That repeat themselves over and over, like a broken record.
I rest my hands on my knees, lean forward, and squeeze my eyes shut.
“Always the same…” I whisper to myself.
The same old mistake: feeling too much, expecting too much, and ending up heartbroken over someone who, at some point, decided her path lay in another direction, far from me.
I try to hold back the tears threatening to spill over, though some slide down my cheeks, and in the middle of this hurricane of emotions, I realize that, although the easy thing would be to get on the ferry and go back home—to Jota, to Alex, to my things and my life—I don’t want to do it because I’m tired of running away, of shutting myself off, of pretending I’ve moved on when it isn’t true.
Before me lies the sea, as vast as ever, unchanging, indifferent to everything happening to me as if none of this mattered, as if my emotions were just an insignificant drop of water in all that blue expanse.
And maybe they are. But at this very moment, they fill my entire chest, my every breath.
And I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to hold them back before they break me completely.