Page 24 of We Shouldn’t Do This Again

“Okay, okay,” she says, raising her hands in surrender, still smiling. “It’s not funny. But it’s normal, Lidia. You can’t expect to see her after all that and act like nothing happened, as if she were just some random stranger.”

“I know, but I don’t want to feel this. I don’t want to.”

“I know,” she replies, and her voice softens, becoming more intimate. “But feeling it isn’t wrong, and you don’t have to hide your discomfort either. You can just let it exist… and that’s it. You don’t have to do anything else. Just because Barbara is on the island doesn’t mean you have to put up with her. You live your life, and let her live hers.”

“That’s a lot of common sense for nine in the morning…”

“It’s my superpower.”

“I thought your superpower was talking a mile a minute.”

“That’s my secondary gift, the one I use to impress people.”

I laugh again, and as I do, I realize something I’ve been silencing for a long time.

Alex has always been much more than my best friend. I’ve known it for a long time, but I’ve resisted facing it because putting a label on it makes it more real, and reality has always scared me. I notice how she looks at me, how she affectionately strokes Jota’s head, how her eyes sparkle when she’s worried about me. It’s always been easy for me to open up to her, to smile, to laugh, to feel comfortable… and now, with the sea in front of me and her laughter on the other end of the line, that initial fear doesn’t seem so overwhelming.

“So,” she asks, pulling me out of my inner turmoil, “what are your plans for today?”

“I was supposed to help Miriam with a couple of things for the food stand,” I explain. “But apparently, she’s changed her mind, and we’re going on an outing. So I’ll go with them, and after lunch, I’ll take a long walk along the coast. The last time I was in the Maldives, I was on a different island—this one’s different… and I feel like getting lost for a while.”

“As long as you put on SPF 1,000 sunscreen and don’t come back looking like a red mullet, that’s perfect,” she jokes, bringing Jota back into the frame. “Right, sweetie? No human barbecues.”

“Oh, really?” I reply, raising an eyebrow in feigned surprise.

We stare at each other through the screen and smile.

“I wish I could be there with you right now…” she whispers then, almost as if it had slipped out.

I feel my heart racing, and suddenly, everything gets mixed up inside me: Barbara, these emotions I can’t control, what I feel for Alex and still don’t know how to handle, the fear that the past will come back and this wedding will turn into a disaster.

I swallow hard.

“Yeah…” I reply, because I can’t think of anything else to say.

The silence that follows isn’t awkward, but it is tense. I’m not ready to take it a step further, to confess to Alex that our friendship has shifted into something else and that, from this distance, she seems much more attractive to me than in person.

“Hey, I have to go,” I add, straightening up.

“Yeah, sure,” she replies, and I detect a slight hint of disappointment in her voice, though she’s trying to hide it. “Go on, take care.”

“We’ll talk in a few days, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Give Jota a big kiss from me.”

“I’ll give it to him right now. And you… take good care of yourself, okay?”

“You too.”

I hang up and stare at the black screen for a few seconds, where my blurry reflection stares back at me. I take a deep breath, then another. I tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear, straighten my shoulders, and start walking back toward the resort.

Today is really just beginning, and I won’t let Barbara, or my father, or fate make me feel like it can’t become the best thing that’s happened to me in years.

CHAPTER 14

CLEAR AS WATER