CHAPTER 41
THE TRUTH DOESN’T SAVE EVERYTHING
Barbara
I look at her and feel the air get stuck halfway, right between my lungs and my guilt.
The restaurant, which was buzzing just a few hours ago, now seems like a different place.
The golden lights hanging from the palm trees are still there, the flowers continue to perfume the air, and the sound of the sea drifts in through the windows, carrying that distinctive scent of salt.
Yet the magic that once burst forth is now shrouded in a thick silence that squeezes my chest.
Lidia stands before me with her arms crossed.
Her eyes are swollen from crying so much, her cheeks still damp with tears that haven’t quite dried, and her jaw is clenched in an attempt to keep from breaking down in front of me.
I know this because it’s not the first time I’ve seen that expression on her face.
An expression that doesn’t diminish the magnitude of her beauty.
“You have five minutes,” she tells me in a voice as cold and sharp as a knife.
But she doesn’t fool me for a second. Beneath that sharp, harsh tone lies that open wound that I myself have reopened.
“Five minutes to tell me something worth hearing,” she continues, her gaze piercing mine without mercy. “Because I can’t stand any more nonsense.”
I swallow, and it tastes bitter, as if all my regret had pooled in my throat.
Five minutes. Just five minutes to dismantle years of pride, of cowardice disguised as independence, of silences that lingered between us.
Five minutes to confess to the only woman I’ve ever truly loved why I’ve played with her this way.
I don’t know if there’s enough time in the world to fix something as broken as what we have, but if there’s even the slightest chance, it’s here, in this very moment.
I decide to stop thinking about myself. I steer clear of flowery phrases. I stop hiding behind excuses and finally speak:
“The first thing I want to tell you…” I begin, and my voice comes out broken, a whisper lost in the distant murmur of the sea, “is that our divorce was a mistake.”
She doesn’t even blink. She just looks at me.
The lump in my throat tightens even more, but I manage to keep going.
“I should never have let things get to that point,” I confess, and every word burns inside me.
“I should never have made you feel alone while you were married to me. I shut myself off in my obsession with work, in my schedule, in my ambitions… I convinced myself that was what we had to do, that I was fighting for both of us when, in reality, I was pushing you out of my life little by little, without even realizing it.”
Lidia looks away for a second toward the empty tables in the restaurant, as if she needs to rest her eyes on something other than my face, on something that doesn’t remind her of everything we lost.
“I was selfish until the very end,” I admit in the firmest voice I can muster.
“I was cruel many times without wanting to admit it. I demanded that you understand my silences, my absences, my sudden outbursts of anger that had no explanation… and I never really sat down to listen to you the way you deserved. I never asked you what you needed from me during those hard times. I never wanted to accept that I was losing you because that would have meant admitting I was failing as a partner, as a woman, as everything I promised to be when we got married on that beach in Cádiz.”
I see her press her lips together tightly.
“I already know that,” she says in a hoarse voice, heavy with all the weariness in the world. “I lived through it firsthand, Barbara. Every day.”
I nod slowly, because I can’t deny it.
“I know. And that’s exactly why I’m telling you this now, even if it’s too late. Because I never apologized for how badly I handled things.”
Now she looks me straight in the eyes. In hers there is pain, a great deal of accumulated pain. But there is also weariness, as if she were exhausted from suffering for me over and over again.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and this time I feel the weight of the word, as if I’d been holding it in for years.
“I’m sorry for the times I made you feel inadequate, for the absurd arguments, for turning our home into a constant battlefield.
I’m sorry for letting pride tear us apart little by little, for making you feel that choosing you was a constant sacrifice.
You were the best thing that had ever happened to me.
You were my refuge, my laughter, my peace… and I threw it all away.”
The silence that settles between us is uncomfortable. It’s a silence heavy with everything we never said to each other back then, with glances that fell short, with caresses that were cut short, with nights of love we lived only in our dreams.
Lidia swallows hard. I see the tremor return to her chin and how she struggles to maintain her composure.
“And what about London?” she asks at last, her voice breaking with the effort. “Was all that a mistake too? I still remember what you told me the day we signed the divorce papers, you know?”
London was the city I went to in order to escape from her, from us, from everything I didn’t know how to handle.
“When I said that, I…” I begin slowly, choosing each word carefully. “I was scared out of my mind and wanted to act tough. I was a coward, and it was better to be far away than close by, so you wouldn’t see the kind of woman I am.”
She frowns, confused but attentive.
“I don’t understand you,” she murmurs.
“Breaking up with you was really hard for me, but my pride wouldn’t let me show you that I was broken,” I explain, and I look at her, forcing myself not to hide this time.
“I didn’t know how to deal with my failure; I couldn’t stand seeing myself become a woman incapable of holding on to what I wanted most in the world.
And instead of staying here, I ran away like a scared little girl. ”
The wind gently sways the palm trees surrounding the restaurant.
“The job opportunity in London seemed like my salvation at the time, but in reality, it was my punishment,” I continue, my voice lower.
“I told myself a thousand times that it was an incredible professional opportunity, that I needed to start over far away from everything, that putting miles between us would help me forget you… but it was a lie. I was just running away from the guilt I was carrying.”
Lidia looks at me with such pure, deep sadness that it hurts me more than any reproach she could hurl at me.
“And did you succeed?” she asks, almost without strength. “Did you manage to forget me?”
I slowly shake my head, feeling my eyes well up.
“No. Not a single day. Not a single night.”
Her breathing trembles visibly.
“Don’t lie to me anymore, Barbara,” she pleads in a broken whisper. “Someone who can’t forget is incapable of starting a relationship with someone else.”
“I’m not lying to you,” I reply, and take a step toward her very carefully, so as not to invade her space.
“There were days in London when I worked fourteen hours straight just to get to my apartment so exhausted that I couldn’t think about anything.
Because if I did think, I thought of you.
About how you slept hugging your pillow when I got home late, about your habit of leaving dinner for me in the kitchen, about that little smile that would come over your face when I climbed into bed and hugged you from behind, about those eyes that looked like fire when you got angry. ”
Lidia closes her eyes for a moment, as if the images hurt her as much as they hurt me.
I know she’s listening to me, with all her heart, and that gives me the courage I need to say the worst part, the thing that embarrasses me the most.
“Ingrid showed up right then,” I admit bluntly.
Her eyelids snap open and the wound reopens in her gaze.
“I see,” she says simply, in a tone that sounds like surrender.
I don’t hide behind anything.
“Yes. She appeared when I was a wreck, when I didn’t even know who I was anymore.
She was my friend first and foremost. She held me up when I couldn’t hold myself up.
She helped me get up every morning. She took care of me with a patience I didn’t deserve.
And over time… I started a relationship with her. ”
Lidia takes a step back. Barely one, but I feel as if the ground is opening up beneath my feet.
“So you did love her,” she says, and it’s not an accusation. It’s worse. It’s a weary, deep disappointment.
I nod, because I’m not going to sugarcoat anything anymore.
“Yes. I loved her and I still do. She’s an incredible woman; she was there when my world was falling apart and offered me a stable, peaceful, orderly life… a life where I didn’t have to constantly look back or face my mistakes.”
“And what the hell am I doing in all of this?” she asks, and her voice breaks at the end, as if something inside her had snapped.
I move a little closer. This time she doesn’t pull away.
“You were the one thing I couldn’t forget, no matter how hard I tried,” I reply honestly. “You were the thought I returned to every night, the voice I heard in my dreams, the scent that followed me through the streets of London.”
Lidia looks at me as if she doesn’t know whether to slap me or burst into tears again.
“That doesn’t comfort me…” she whispers.
“I’m not trying to comfort you,” I say firmly.
“I’m trying to tell you the truth, even if you hate me for it, even if you decide you never want to see me again.
I thought I could build a life without you,” I continue.
“I really tried, with all my strength. I told myself over and over that love could also be calm, habit, routine, peace… and maybe for someone else that would have been enough. But it didn’t work for me.
Because with you, I didn’t have just any old relationship.
With you, I had my whole life, Lidia. You were my home, my future, my everything. ”