CHAPTER 23 #2
Her tone isn’t defiant. It’s vulnerable, fragile, as if she were placing her heart in the palm of my hand and offering it to me unprotected.
“Yes,” I reply. “It can’t happen again. We can’t let it, Barbara. My father is getting married in a few days, and we… we already know how this ends.”
“But it happened,” she insists, leaning toward me slightly. “And it was real. We both felt it. You can’t deny that.”
I clench the towel between my fingers until my knuckles turn white, trying to hold on to something solid.
“But it doesn’t change anything,” I say, even though the words feel like a lie. “We’re still the same people who hurt each other last time. We’re still the same people who got divorced because we couldn’t find another solution.”
“It changed me,” she says without taking her eyes off mine. “It changed me because it reminded me of how I felt when I was with you. When everything clicks inside me and I don’t have to pretend to be someone I’m not.”
“Pretend to be someone you’re not?”
I look at her with interest, and for a moment I’m caught again in the sparkle of her eyes, in that intensity with which she always managed to make me give in. It pushed me to forget everything else, even my own fears and everything I truly needed.
“No,” I say, getting up from the bench. “Don’t do this. Don’t start digging up what we’ve already buried.”
“What we buried?” she asks, confused. “Wasn’t it clear to you that we didn’t bury anything, Lidia?”
“Please, Barbara. Don’t go on.”
“Stop what?” she asks innocently, though we both know there’s nothing innocent about this conversation. “Telling the truth? Admitting that I still have feelings for you?”
“Going back there,” I reply, taking a step back to put some physical distance between us. “We can’t go back there, Barbara.”
“We never left there,” she clarifies with a certainty that takes my breath away. “And maybe it took me a long time to realize it, but every time I close my damn eyes, I’m back in your hands, at your mouth, in every moan that echoed off the walls that night.”
The air grows thicker, heavier, as if the sea itself were holding its breath at what’s happening on deck.
I take another step back, feeling the boat’s railing against my calves.
“I did leave,” I say, trying to keep my voice from trembling. “And I plan to stay away. For my sake. For yours. For both of us.”
Her eyes lock onto mine with an intensity that almost hurts physically.
“Really?” she asks, her voice cracking slightly at the end. “Can you really look me in the eye and tell me you don’t feel anything when I’m near you?”
The question hangs between us like a sweet threat. And I know it isn’t just a question. It’s a challenge I don’t want to accept, because if I do, everything will come crashing down.
“Yes,” I reply, more firmly this time, though inside I’m breaking apart. “Because our marriage… wasn’t sustainable. Yes, we could burn and consume everything, but afterward all that was left were recriminations and the ashes of a love that, in the end, ended up taking over everything.”
“But it was real,” she replies, taking a step toward me. “More real than anything I’ve experienced since then. Don’t you see? Every time we try to pull away, we end up coming back to each other. Like magnets. As if the universe were constantly pushing us together.”
“That isn’t always enough,” I say, and the words come out sadder than I intended. “Sometimes wanting isn’t enough. Sometimes you have to choose to protect yourself, and when I asked you for a divorce, I did it for that very reason. Because I couldn’t go on like that.”
Silence falls over us again. And this time it really hurts, because we both know there’s truth in every word we’ve said, and in all the ones we’re keeping to ourselves.
“So what now?” she finally asks, her voice tinged with a sadness she tries unsuccessfully to hide. “Do we keep pretending we’re strangers? That nothing happens when we look at each other? That when I lie in bed, I want you more than ever?”
I take a deep breath, because this is the hardest part. The part that requires making a real choice, even if it hurts.
“Now… we just have to move on,” I say with all the conviction I can muster. “Like two adults.”
“As if nothing happened?” she insists, her eyes flashing with anger.
“No.” I shake my head, feeling a huge lump in my throat. “Like two people who shared a story and know perfectly well that going back to it would only bring pain.”
She looks down for a second at the deck, and that tiny gesture breaks me. Because there’s something about her that’s still mine. Or that was.
For a moment—a very brief and dangerous one—I want to forget everything else.
I want to let this happen again, to let her hands find me once more, to let her mouth make me moan her name, to let the world disappear so only the two of us remain on this deck under the sun.
But I don’t. I can’t. Because I already know exactly how this story ends.
With tears, with silence, with a parting that leaves the heart in pieces.
“We’d better go back to them,” I say, pointing to the water where my father and Miriam are still laughing and splashing each other, unaware of what’s happening up here.
She nods silently and says nothing more.
I turn away before my body decides for me. Before my emotions win the battle. Before I make the same mistake as always and throw myself into her arms without thinking of the consequences.
And there, after diving into the water, I realize that no matter how fast I run, no matter how hard I try to get away, or how many excuses I make up to avoid being alone with Barbara, there are things that never stop haunting you because, deep down, you never left them behind.
And a part of me—the craziest part—doesn’t want to, either.