Page 34 of We Shouldn’t Do This Again

“I won’t. I love you.”

I hang up before she can say anything else.

When I look up again, Lidia is much closer. Too close. Our eyes meet, and suddenly the world shrinks to just that: her pupils, darker in the fading light, the weariness etched into them, the anger still smoldering beneath, and everything I feel piercing my chest like a cold current.

There is no sea. There is no overcast sky. There is no London, no Ingrid, nothing but her and that gaze of hers that has always been able to undo me. Too direct. Too raw. Too much of everything.

She doesn’t smile. She doesn’t greet me either. She just watches me, motionless, as if she were waiting for me to be the one to take the first step… or the one to give up once and for all.

My body acts before my mind, as it always has with her, and when she moves to keep walking, brushing past me as if I were just another obstacle on the path, something inside me snaps. Or ignites. I don’t know. I only know that I can’t let her walk away again. Not today.

I take one step. Then another. And when the distance between us is almost nonexistent, I reach out and gently grab her arm, without giving her a chance to escape.

“Wait,” I say, and my voice comes out hoarser than I expected.

She stops short, but doesn’t fully turn around.

“Let go of me, Barbara,” she replies tensely, her voice low and sharp.

I close my eyes for a moment, recognizing that tone I’ve heard so many times when I hurt her without meaning to…

“No,” I reply as I open them again.

Because I can’t. If I let her go now, I know it’ll be over. That she’ll put the wall back up, and I won’t have the strength to tear it down again.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” she insists, trying to pull away with a sudden but restrained movement.

“I’m not going to let you go,” I reply, lowering my voice so only we can hear each other. “And I think we’ve spent too many days avoiding each other. We need to talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Of course there is.”

She finally turns around. Her closeness hits me like a wave. I smell coconut sunscreen and salty air, feel the heat radiating from her skin, hear her uneven breathing rising and falling beneath the thin fabric of her dress. Everything.

“No,” she repeats, more firmly. “What needed to be said was said years ago and at that table a few days ago.”

“No,” I insist, shaking my head slowly. “What happened the other day came from anger. A lot of anger. And I understand that. But you didn’t give me a chance to speak.”

“For what? Didn’t I tell the truth?”

“Maybe part of it,” I admit, my voice lower. “But it’s not the whole truth. And you know it.”

Silence. Around us, one of those heavy silences forms, packed with everything we buried when we got divorced.

“Let me through,” she murmurs at last, almost pleading.

But I don’t. Instead, I gently tug on her arm.

“Come with me,” I ask.

“What? No way.”

“Just for a moment. Somewhere quieter.”

“I said no.”

“And I’m asking you to listen to me,” I reply, looking her straight in the eyes. “Please.”