CHAPTER 17
INSIGNIFICANT LIES
Barbara
The sky over Ukulhas is gradually turning a wavering, purplish gray, as if it still doesn’t know whether to burst into a storm or settle for threatening one for hours on end.
The air feels heavier than usual, charged with electricity, with that sticky sensation that signals something is about to break…
or perhaps truly begin. I don’t know if the change comes from the weather or if it’s me projecting everything onto the landscape.
It’s probably me. I’ve always been good at carrying the weight of things on my own.
I walk slowly along the white sand path that connects the bungalows, feeling the fine grains slip between my toes and cling to my skin, damp from the heat.
To my left, the sea has already lost that crystalline, cheerful blue from early morning; now it’s darker, deeper, with an almost defiant character, as if it too were keeping secrets it doesn’t dare reveal.
The ocean and I understand each other all too well these days.
Exactly two days have passed since that trip to the reefs.
Two days since Lidia fixed her eyes on mine and, without needing to raise her voice much, opened a wound I thought had closed and that now bleeds again.
Since then, silence has returned. Not a greeting, not a glance; we haven’t even crossed paths in the restaurant or at the bar.
Nothing. It’s strange how two people can share the same space at all hours and yet, at the same time, stop existing for each other. Or try to, at least.
Although pretending she doesn’t exist doesn’t work for me.
Not entirely. Every time I push open the door to my bungalow in the morning, my body tenses automatically, expecting to find her on the other side of the walkway connecting them.
I’ve forced myself to walk the same paths she takes, just in case we happened to run into each other and that might prompt us to talk.
But nothing. I’ve forced myself to distract myself by going on bike rides, swimming, even taking absurd detours in this suffocating heat.
But no matter how hard I try, everything ends up bringing me back to her.
I take a deep breath and stop in front of the sea, my hands resting on the hot wooden railing.
“Ridiculous,” I whisper to myself, almost angrily. “You’re completely ridiculous, Barbara.”
I am. I’ve spent years building an orderly life, with fixed schedules, new people, and routines that protect me from this kind of collapse. But all it takes is for her to appear before me again for this whole house of cards to tremble as if it had never been solid.
My phone vibrates against my palm and pulls me out of the whirlwind of thoughts. I look at the screen. Ingrid’s name glows like a constant reminder of that life I chose and that, supposedly, makes me happy.
I swipe to answer and hold the phone to my ear.
“Hello,” I say, trying to make my voice sound steady.
“Hello, you’ve been MIA,” she replies instantly, with that warmth of hers that always envelops me and anchors me to the present. “I was starting to think the Indian Ocean had swallowed you whole and I’d never hear from you again.”
I can’t help but smile, though it comes out a little crooked.
“Never,” I reply, and I mean it.
“You better not, because if you leave me hanging, I’ll hunt you down even in hell,” she jokes, but there’s something underneath it, that tone she uses when she’s genuinely worried.
“Come on, tell me. How are things in paradise? Is it treating you well, or are you already sick of all the beach? How’s it going with… ?”
I look around: the sky is even more leaden than before, the sea is restless, and the silence around me is broken only by the murmur of the waves and the occasional distant bird.
“You can imagine,” I reply as I lean more heavily against the railing. “Very hot, very humid… but it’s beautiful, I won’t lie to you. And with her, everything is… fine.”
I’m not lying entirely. The place is incredible. What I’m not saying is that the beauty of it all is piercing my heart, just as much as Lidia and her pain.
“It sounds like you’re thinking about staying there much longer than just a few weeks,” Ingrid remarks, half-jokingly, half-testing the waters.
“Don’t exaggerate,” I reply with a short laugh. “I miss some things back there too.”
“You and your crazy routines,” I think. Not to mention the stability I found by her side, which now feels like an illusion that vanished in the blink of an eye.
“So, how’s London?” I ask quickly, changing the subject before I let something slip that I don’t want to say. “The team’s last game was incredible.”
“Did you watch it?”
“I stayed up late,” I confess. “But tell me, how are things over there?”
Ingrid launches into her usual stories: the traffic chaos, the endless post-season meetings at the club, the rain that soaks you to the bone, the supposed new signings.
I half-listen, nodding now and then, letting her voice pull me back for a moment into that routine that used to feel safe, almost comforting.
And it still does, in part. Though there’s something about all of this that doesn’t quite fit, something missing that keeps everything from feeling complete and perfect.
“Lidia,” a little voice tells me.
Just thinking her name makes my pulse quicken.
“We had a huge mess today…” Ingrid continues. “Apparently, Marta is going to terminate her contract and wants to sign with another team. And you know how these things are… it’s been a whole drama.”
“Wow…” I murmur sincerely.
“Yeah, but things have calmed down now. I’ll tell you more details as soon as I know anything.”
I nod, even though she can’t see me. And then, purely on instinct, I look up toward the path and see her.
Lidia is walking in the opposite direction, head down and shoulders tense, as if she were carrying the weight of the world on her back.
Time suddenly stretches out. Each of her steps seems to last forever; the movement of her light skirt against her legs, the strand of hair that escapes and brushes her cheek, the way she presses her lips together.
Everything becomes sharper, slower, more inevitable.
“Barbara? Are you there?” Ingrid’s voice sounds distant, muffled by the pounding of my heart echoing in my ears.
“Yeah, sure…” I reply automatically, barely catching my breath.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You sound really strange, honey.”
I swallow hard.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” I lie quickly. “It’s just… I think I’m going to go grab something to eat now.”
“Now? But it’s already the middle of the night here…”
“Yeah, well… it’s still early here,” I reply, trying to sound casual.
It doesn’t work. I can hear the tremor and hesitation in my voice, and she notices it too.
“Barbara…”
“I can’t keep talking. Not now.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?” I cut her off gently. “That way we can talk more calmly, I promise.”
There’s a brief silence on the other end, and I hear a barely audible sigh.
“Okay…” she finally concedes. “But don’t leave me hanging for too many days, okay?”
“I won’t. I love you.”
I hang up before she can say anything else.
When I look up again, Lidia is much closer. Too close. Our eyes meet, and suddenly the world shrinks to just that: her pupils, darker in the fading light, the weariness etched into them, the anger still smoldering beneath, and everything I feel piercing my chest like a cold current.
There is no sea. There is no overcast sky. There is no London, no Ingrid, nothing but her and that gaze of hers that has always been able to undo me. Too direct. Too raw. Too much of everything.
She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t greet me either. She just watches me, motionless, as if she were waiting for me to be the one to take the first step… or the one to give up once and for all.
My body acts before my mind, as it always has with her, and when she moves to keep walking, brushing past me as if I were just another obstacle on the path, something inside me snaps. Or ignites. I don’t know. I only know that I can’t let her walk away again. Not today.
I take one step. Then another. And when the distance between us is almost nonexistent, I reach out and gently grab her arm, without giving her a chance to escape.
“Wait,” I say, and my voice comes out hoarser than I expected.
She stops short, but doesn’t fully turn around.
“Let go of me, Barbara,” she replies tensely, her voice low and sharp.
I close my eyes for a moment, recognizing that tone I’ve heard so many times when I hurt her without meaning to…
“No,” I reply as I open them again.
Because I can’t. If I let her go now, I know it’ll be over. That she’ll put the wall back up, and I won’t have the strength to tear it down again.
“I don’t want to talk to you,” she insists, trying to pull away with a sudden but restrained movement.
“I’m not going to let you go,” I reply, lowering my voice so only we can hear each other. “And I think we’ve spent too many days avoiding each other. We need to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
“Of course there is.”
She finally turns around. Her closeness hits me like a wave. I smell coconut sunscreen and salty air, feel the heat radiating from her skin, hear her uneven breathing rising and falling beneath the thin fabric of her dress. Everything.
“No,” she repeats, more firmly. “What needed to be said was said years ago and at that table a few days ago.”
“No,” I insist, shaking my head slowly. “What happened the other day came from anger. A lot of anger. And I understand that. But you didn’t give me a chance to speak.”
“For what? Didn’t I tell the truth?”
“Maybe part of it,” I admit, my voice lower. “But it’s not the whole truth. And you know it.”
Silence. Around us, one of those heavy silences forms, packed with everything we buried when we got divorced.
“Let me through,” she murmurs at last, almost pleading.
But I don’t. Instead, I gently tug on her arm.
“Come with me,” I ask.
“What? No way.”
“Just for a moment. Somewhere quieter.”
“I said no.”
“And I’m asking you to listen to me,” I reply, looking her straight in the eyes. “Please.”
She looks at me as if I were a stranger.
And maybe I am. The Barbara who left years ago never would’ve stopped anyone like this.
She never would’ve admitted that she still missed her and that her heart still hurt terribly.
But this version of me—the one who’s spent two entire days with a knot in her stomach and a desperate need to see her—is capable of it.
“You can’t force me,” she says, tensing her arm beneath my hand.
“I’m not forcing you,” I reply, even though I know the line is thin. “I just… we can’t keep going like this for however long we’re here.”
Her eyes harden, but they also shine a little brighter, as if her emotions are close to spilling over.
“Always the same,” she whispers, hurt. “You always decide when to show up and when to disappear. You always set the rules.”
The words cut straight through me because she’s right. And because I don’t know how to explain that, after so much time away from her, I don’t want to disappear. That I’m terrified of everything waking up inside me.
“I’m not going to disappear,” I say softly.
“No,” she replies, her voice barely breaking. “You already did once before. And it hurt. A lot.”
The silence that follows is harsher, rawer, more real. I feel something crack inside my chest, but I don’t let go of her hand. I can’t. If I let go, she’ll leave. And I’m not ready to go through that again.
“Just…” I begin, searching for words that won’t come out awkwardly. “Just listen to me. Really. Give me one minute.”
She hesitates. I can see it in the way her gaze wavers, in how she presses her lips together as if trying to contain everything swirling inside her. I feel it in the slight relaxation of her arm beneath my fingers.
The wind picks up a little more, carrying the metallic scent of the approaching storm, ruffling her hair and pressing it against her cheek.
She doesn’t pull away, she doesn’t let go, but she doesn’t say yes either.
She just stands there, still, caught between the urge to stay and the fear of reopening the door she worked so hard to close on me.