Page 30 of We Shouldn’t Do This Again

The resort’s restaurant opens directly onto the sea, like almost everything on this blessed island. The constant murmur of the waves seeps into the conversations and mingles with the laughter, becoming that unexpected guest everyone is grateful to have nearby. The dark wooden ceiling casts soft shadows over the white-clothed tables, while the warm breeze carries that unmistakable scent of salt mixed with garlic, lemon, and freshly cooked fish that makes, for a moment, life itself seem simple, light, almost within reach.

I sit across from Miriam and my father, my skin still damp from the sea, my hair tousled and sticky with salt, and that strange, almost suffocating feeling of having experienced something too intense just a few hours ago. A moment underwater that I still don’t know how to fit into the rest of my day, into the rest of me.

“It was incredible,” Miriam blurts out, resting her elbows on the table, her eyes still shining with excitement. “Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such spectacular reefs in my life.”

“And the school of silver fish?” my father interjects enthusiastically, leaning forward as if he were still down there. “They looked like they’d rehearsed a perfect choreography, didn’t they?”

“And the turtles,” I add almost without realizing it, my voice soft.

“The turtles!” Miriam exclaims, her eyes widening. “I could’ve floated there all day, watching them swim so calmly, without a care in the world.”

I nod slowly and force a smile that, for a few precious seconds, I manage to make real.

For a moment, I succeed. I am here. At this table. In this exact moment. Without the past or the future clawing at me from within. But then, as always, inevitably, my gaze drifts to the side, toward her, toward Barbara.

She’s sitting to my right, leaning slightly toward the table, with that serene posture she’s always had, listening attentively to the conversation, as if the morning underwater hadn’t left a single mark on her skin, not a single echo in her chest. As if that brush of fingers underwater, that moment when our gazes met through the masks and the endless blue, had never happened. As if she hadn’t felt exactly the same as I did.

I press my lips together until it hurts a little.

“Hey, Barbara,” my father interjects suddenly, breaking a silence only I seem to notice. “Tell us a little about how things are going for you in London. You haven’t told me anything this morning.”

I don’t know why he asks her when he knows that everything to do with her—her life in London, everything she’s achieved far away from me—is going to hurt me in places that still haven’t fully healed.

Barbara takes a sip from the glass of water they’ve served us and wipes her lips with the cloth napkin in a slow motion, as if she needs to gather her thoughts before opening her mouth.

“Well…” she begins, curving her lips into a half-smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. “The truth is, I can’t complain. The first few months were the hardest, but my teammates…” She pauses and rubs the back of her neck with one hand. “They helped me a lot. And the job is high-pressure; it absorbs me completely… but I’m fine. Really fine. Living the dream.”

“Living the dream.” A cursed phrase that falls onto the table like molten lead and burns as if it were crawling across my skin.

“You’re with West Ham, right?” Miriam asks with interest, tilting her head. “Pablo told me it’s one of the best teams in the women’s league.”

“Yes. He’s not lying,” Barbara nods, her voice growing a little firmer. “I run the team’s physical performance department. I’m one of the strength and conditioning coaches, basically. My job is to help the girls reach their peak physical condition.”

My father lets out a low whistle, impressed.

“That must be incredible…”

“It is,” she replies without arrogance, but with that calm confidence I’ve always admired. “The team is growing tremendously. There’s investment, there’s excitement everywhere… and you can feel it in our day-to-day work. We’ve secured good positions, so everyone’s happy.”

I’ve always sensed that excitement, that emotion, that happiness in Barbara… Part of me is glad everything is going well for her, but the other part… the other part recognizes things in her that I hadn’t seen in years, like that spark of excitement that used to shine in her eyes when we talked about us, about the future we wanted to build together.

“Thanks to the work of the training staff, we got a player back who’d been out for months with an injury and who ended up being the star of the last game,” she continues, and her eyes light up a little more. “No one would’ve bet on her; they thought she’d never get back to her previous level, but within weeks she earned her spot on the team again. It’s been amazing to watch.”

“That’s impressive,” Miriam admits, nodding slowly. “It must be so rewarding to see those changes, right?”

“It is,” Barbara replies, her voice dropping slightly, almost intimate. “So much.”

“So much.” The words bounce around inside my head like an echo that won’t leave me alone and begins to fan a flame I have no way of extinguishing.

“The league there is nothing like the Spanish one,” she adds, shrugging slightly. “More resources, more professional structure… it’s another world. And honestly, I don’t regret accepting the position when they offered it to me.”

“I don’t regret accepting the position when they offered it to me,” I repeat to myself, and as I do, I feel everything split in two.

I don’t know if she realizes the exact weight those words carry. I don’t know if she understands the impact. But I do. Of course I do. Because that “I don’t regret it” isn’t just about an employment contract; it’s about everything she left behind, it’s about us… and about me. It’s about how she left and abandoned everything after we signed the divorce papers; about the emptiness and void I felt when I came home to our apartment.

I feel something tighten inside my chest, as if an invisible string had been pulled to its limit and threatened to snap at any second. A lump forms in my throat, something burns in my stomach, and then I explode:

“How lovely everything is…”