Page 27 of We Shouldn’t Do This Again

“Sure,” she replies sarcastically. “Because you’ve always been an expert at sacrificing yourself for others, haven’t you?”

The jab hits its mark. I deserve it.

“It’s not that simple…”

“No, of course it isn’t,” she concedes, and her voice softens a notch.

There’s a brief, tense silence. When I finally look up, I find her staring at me with an intensity that takes my breath away. Something in her face changes. It softens, and my heart races.

“Sit here,” she finally says, pointing to a nearby bench. “Breathe slowly. Always look at the horizon, not the moving water.”

I blink, bewildered.

“Are you… helping me?”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she replies almost immediately, raising that wall again. “I wish my father hadn’t invited you and spared me from having to look you in the face and remember all the pain you caused me.” Her voice trembles slightly, but she continues. “But I was your wife… and I’ve never liked seeing you suffer, even if it’s hard for me to admit it right now.”

Her words cut through me, and they do so because despite the time, the pain, and the wounds, we share a history, and that will never disappear no matter how much we might want it to.

“Do we want it?” I think, and I sit where she tells me to, following her advice to the letter.

And, surprisingly, it works a little. Enough so that the dizziness doesn’t overwhelm me.

“Thank you,” I whisper, almost without a voice.

She just nods.

The silence that follows is far more dangerous. I don’t know when I let myself do it, but my hand reaches for hers, and when our fingers brush against each other, something explodes inside me. It’s not nostalgia, nor is it memories. It’s the present, vivid and overwhelming.

I feel a brutal urge to pull her hand toward me and kiss it, to check if my heart, despite everything, still beats in time with hers, and if what I feel still belongs to both of us. But I can’t. It would be the worst mistake I could make right now.

Lidia looks at me, I look at her; she frowns and gently pulls away.

I force myself to look at the horizon, to focus on the rocking of the boat, on the constant murmur of the water against the hull. But it’s too late. Way too late. Because it doesn’t matter how long we’ve been apart or everything I’ve built with Ingrid, because we’re still all that we were and that still hurts, that still beats strongly inside us.

And that—precisely that—terrifies me and saves me at the same time.

CHAPTER 15

EMOTIONS UNDERWATER

Lidia

The engine cuts out with one final deep, rumbling chug, and the silence that settles afterward spreads over the water, covering everything. The boat is no longer moving forward, though it continues to rock gently, swayed by a sea that from up here looks like an immense sheet of turquoise glass, sparkling and almost unreal under the midday sun.

I rest my forearms on the warm railing and take a deep breath, filling my lungs with that distinct air that exists only in the middle of the sea. Cleaner, saltier, rawer, and more honest than the air you breathe on dry land. The smell of salt fills my nose and seeps into my skin, as if to remind me where I am and with whom.

“Well,” says Miriam, clapping her hands softly to break the stillness a little. “Welcome to paradise, girls.”

She isn’t exaggerating one bit. The water is so clear it makes my head spin. I can make out the reefs clearly, teeming with twisted corals, patches of intense colors moving lazily with the current, and fish of all sizes darting by like arrows of living light and disappearing into the crevices of the seabed.

“It’s incredible…” I murmur, barely realizing the words slipped out loud.

“I told you so,” my father replies with that smug, slightly boastful smile he wears when he knows he’s right. “You don’t see this in Valencia, do you?”

And he’s right, because only in a few coves and beaches along the Mediterranean can you find a sea as clear as this. Though my focus isn’t on the details, but on Barbara and the effect she has on me every time she comes near. I don’t know how she does it, but she makes everything else fade away, my senses narrow in on her, and my eyes drift over her hair and that look of concentration she puts on when she wants to pretend she’s in control of the situation.

“Are you feeling better now?” I ask without turning my head toward her, keeping my gaze fixed on the horizon.