CHAPTER 39
THE CONSEQUENCES OF NOT TELLING THE TRUTH
Barbara
I run after Ingrid with my heart racing and the feeling that the ground is shifting beneath my feet.
I don’t know when I leave the restaurant, or if I bump into anyone as I pass.
Everything that had surrounded me up until that moment reaches me muffled, distant, as if my body had turned into an empty shell that obeys only the urgent impulse to catch up with Ingrid before she disappears from my life forever.
Before she takes with her the last chance to do something right tonight.
Even if it’s too late. Even if the damage is already done.
The humid, salty air of Ukulhas hits my face as I leave the resort behind.
The music fades away little by little behind me, and the night envelops me with its sticky heat, the constant murmur of the sea, and a moon so huge and bright it seems to be mocking me from above.
What a cruel irony. Just an hour ago I was kissing the woman of my life under this very same moon, feeling that at last the universe was granting me a second chance I didn’t deserve.
And now I’m running along the beach like a coward who’s always late for all the important truths in her life.
I see Ingrid a few meters ahead. She’s walking quickly across the sand, barefoot, her heels dangling from one hand and her back stiff with pure rage.
She walks as if she wants to leave behind not only the island, but also everything we’ve shared these past two years—years filled with lies and attempts to move forward.
“Ingrid!” I call out, gasping as the sand traps my feet and prevents me from moving quickly.
She doesn’t turn around, so I try to run faster, with a sharp pain in my chest and the hot air burning my lungs.
“Ingrid! Wait, please!”
She stops abruptly, and I’m about to crash into her back.
She turns slowly, and what I see on her face pierces my soul.
There’s not just anger in her eyes. There’s disappointment, there’s pain, there’s humiliation, and above all, there’s a sadness so deep that it reflects back to me, like a cruel mirror, the image of the damage I’ve caused.
Ingrid has always been strong. She has that tough, unyielding presence that can make you tremble.
She’s the kind of woman who made even the worst days at the club more bearable with her dark humor and strong coffee.
The friend who held me up back then when I didn’t even know how to hold myself up.
The woman who has loved me honestly and without reservation.
But no heart is strong enough when someone you love hurts you without mercy.
“What do you want now?” she spits, her voice thick with venom and exhaustion.
My heart leaps out of my chest and my throat tightens so much I can barely swallow.
“I don’t even know where to start,” I admit, my voice breaking. “But we need to talk.”
Ingrid lets out a dry, bitter laugh, devoid of any trace of humor.
“Now? How convenient and thoughtful of you to come running after me to tell me that you’ve been sleeping with your ex while I was in London, thinking that what was going on with you was that you just weren’t coping,” she retorts harshly.
“We don’t need to talk anymore, Barbara.
I think everyone in that restaurant has found out that you’ve been cheating on me. ”
I close my eyes for a second and take a deep breath, because I deserve every one of her sharp words.
“I’m sorry,” I murmur.
“Don’t tell me you’re sorry!” she snaps, her voice suddenly rising, trembling with pure outrage. “Don’t you dare sum up all that shit in two words!”
Ingrid points toward the restaurant. I look her straight in the eyes, unable to defend myself. She’s absolutely right.
“You have every right to be angry with me…”
“Angry?” She takes a step toward me, her eyes shining and brimming with tears.
“Barbara, I’ve traveled halfway around the world because I thought you needed me, because I hadn’t recognized your voice on the phone for days, because I sensed something was wrong.
And when I get here, I find my partner kissing another woman in front of fifty people as if I didn’t exist. How do you think I feel? ”
I swallow hard. It’s hard to hold her gaze, but I do.
“Ingrid…”
“No. This time I’m talking!” she interrupts me, pointing her finger at me while rage makes her hand tremble.
“Do you know what the worst part of all this is!? It’s not that you cheated on me, even though that hurts—and it hurts a lot.
The worst part is discovering that for over a year I’ve been in love with a woman who’s never been in love with me.
Who’s always had a part of her heart somewhere else, with someone else, in another country, and that I was just that rock she clung to in order to try to move forward and erase the past that you yourself created through your own stupidity. ”
Each and every one of her words hits me and cuts deep into my skin. Ingrid isn’t exaggerating; I’m aware that I was never able to fully heal, that I’ve always carried the memory of Lidia in my heart, that I never stopped loving her no matter how much I tried.
Ingrid runs a hand over her face, trembling with rage.
“Now I understand so many things… Your silences when someone asked you something about your life, the way you dodged certain conversations about the past, that absurd nostalgia that would suddenly come over you when we visited the beach. Damn it, Barbara… I was there, with you. And you let me into your life knowing you weren’t okay. ”
I’m speechless for a few seconds because it hurts to hear the truth—that truth I’ve swallowed and silenced within myself for months.
The breeze rustles the palm trees behind us and the waves come and go.
But for me, time has frozen at the exact moment Lidia pulled away when I tried to touch her.
In her broken, disappointed gaze. In her “don’t touch me.
” Oh my God. The look on her face is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, I know it.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I whisper, even though I know it sounds like an excuse.
Ingrid shakes her head and lets out an incredulous laugh.
“That line isn’t worth a damn, and you know it perfectly well.”
I lower my head, defeated.
“Nothing we went through was a game to me. What we had was real.”
She looks at me, and her blue eyes reflect so much exhaustion and pain that I can’t breathe.
“Then explain to me what’s going on. Because I don’t understand when I went from being your friend, your partner, and your lover… to becoming the emotional crutch for a woman who can’t get over her ex.”
I look up, and for the first time since I set foot in the Maldives, I decide to stop hiding or sugarcoating a truth I should never have concealed.
“When I left Valencia and finally accepted the job in London, I was broken inside,” I begin.
“I had destroyed my marriage. I’d lost the woman I’d loved most in my life…
” My voice cracks a little, but I keep going.
“I left because I couldn’t bear to keep breathing in a place where everything reminded me of her.
London was my way of running away. Of starting over.
Of punishing myself, even, for everything I’d done wrong. ”
Ingrid clenches her jaw tightly, but she keeps listening to me in silence.
“And you were there,” I continue. “You met me at my lowest point. You made my job at the club easy. You gave me back my hope, something I thought was lost forever…”
She swallows, and the anger in her eyes mixes with that sadness and disappointment that breaks my heart.
“Then why are you doing this to me?”
“I don’t know…” I say, looking away toward the moon.
“I suppose, out of pure selfishness, Ingrid…” I confess bluntly.
“I’ve loved you, Ingrid. I still do. But not the way I should.
Not the way you deserve to be loved. By your side, I found peace,” I continue, my heart in my throat.
“Routine. Care. Companionship. A life that was always my dream. And for a long time, I thought that would be enough. I thought love could be built on affection, on habit…”
Ingrid drops her shoes onto the sand with a soft thud.
“But I’m not enough for you.” She shakes her head slowly, more to herself than to me. “God… how humiliating it sounds to say that out loud.”
“No,” I reply quickly, moving a little closer to her. “You’ve given me everything. So it’s not your fault at all. What’s humiliating is what I’ve done—playing with you, with her…” I say, referring to Lidia. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to move on.”
The tears finally escape me, and I can no longer hold them back. They run hot down my cheeks.
“I never thought things would turn out this way,” I admit. “When I signed the divorce papers with Lidia, I swore to myself I’d never let anyone in again. I was convinced that the part of me capable of truly loving had died with her.”
Ingrid looks at me with eyes shining with tears.
“But it didn’t die…”
I shake my head. The image of Lidia crying hits me with unbearable force.
“No. It never died. I just buried it under a demanding job, miles away, with schedules that were too strict, and a borrowed life that was never mine…” My voice breaks completely, and the tears keep falling.
“And seeing her here… looking into her eyes again, touching her, feeling her close… has made everything come flooding back all at once.” As if my body had remembered something my mind had been trying to force itself to forget for years.
Ingrid wipes away a tear with a sigh of frustration.
“How lovely. Very poetic, all of it. Too bad you had to drag us both through the mud to realize what you truly feel.”
I don’t defend myself because she’s right. Because I’ve hurt Lidia again. Because I was incapable of being brave before everything came to light.
The moon traces a silvery path across the dark water. The sea keeps breathing beside us, immense and indifferent to our pain. I feel small, ridiculous, and empty inside. Stupid and a monster in equal measure.
“I’m sorry,” I repeat, but this time I mean it. “I’m sorry for lying to you for so long. For making you feel that our relationship… I’m sorry for failing you as a partner… and, above all, as a friend.”
Ingrid stares at me for a long time. The silence between us is filled with all those memories that no longer make sense: two years of working together until the wee hours, of spontaneous plans and trips, of soccer games on the couch screaming like crazy, of morning routines and nights filled with sex.
Of a life that wasn’t a lie… but that didn’t truly make me happy either.
Finally, Ingrid sighs. Long. Defeated. As if she were carrying the entire weight of the world on her shoulders.
“I kind of hate you right now, you know?”
Despite everything, the phrase brings a sad smile to my face.
“I understand…”
She snorts, exhausted to the bone.
“No. You don’t understand. Because if you did, you’d realize that what hurts me the most isn’t losing you. It’s knowing that the person I’ve defended and cared for the most over these past two years has been unable to trust me from the very beginning.”
And she’s right. I never told her how I felt about Lidia, how important she’d been to me. I never told her what she really meant to me. I was never honest, not even when I was trying with all my might.
“You deserved the truth from day one,” I admit, my voice breaking.
“Yes,” she nods. “And Lidia, too.”
Lidia. My Lidia. The woman who probably hates me with every fiber of her being right now. The woman to whom I confessed my love just a few hours ago and whom I asked to fight for “us.” An “us” that may very well be dead.
Ingrid picks up her shoes from the sand and hangs them from one hand. She looks more serene now. No less hurt, just calmer. More aware that there’s no turning back from this.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive you…” she says in barely a whisper.
“I’ll accept that if that’s how it is.”
Ingrid looks at me for a second. And for the first time since this nightmare began, I see something resembling compassion in her eyes.
“But I’m going to tell you one thing before I go. Stop running away from what you really want and be brave once and for all. Or you’ll lose her.”
I look toward the restaurant. In the distance, the lights are still shining among the palm trees, and somewhere in that place, she is there.
“That…” My voice comes out in pieces, “that is, if she ever forgives me.”
Ingrid smiles faintly. Sadly. But sincerely.
“You’ll make it. Whenever you set your mind to something, you achieve it. That’s one of the things I admire most about you…”
Tears blur my vision again.
“I don’t deserve your generosity.”
“No,” she replies. “But maybe one day you’ll deserve your own happiness. Even if you have to fight for it for once in your life.”
I want to say something, but before I can open my lips, she’s gone. I watch her walk away along the beach, small beneath the immense moon, her shoulders slumped slightly and her dress fluttering in the breeze.
I barely move a few inches. I don’t stop her either. This time there’s only one possible direction. The one that takes me back to the restaurant, to the pain I’ve caused, to Lidia.
I stand alone for a second, my feet sunk in the sand.
I close my eyes and take a couple of deep breaths.
Guilt chokes me, fear paralyzes me, shame burns my cheeks…
but love—that love I’ve tried to tame, postpone, cover up, and hide for years, that love that still bears the same name—beats with precision.
I open my eyes and start walking toward the restaurant, knowing that it might be too late.
That I might have lost her forever. That there might not be enough words to fix what I’ve broken.
But I also know that, if I want to win back the love of my life, this time I’m going to have to really work at it.
With everything I am, with everything I have, and with everything I’m willing to change.