Page 36 of We Shouldn’t Do This Again

“It was exasperating,” I insist, though my voice comes out lighter than I expected.

“It was adorable,” she corrects me, and my legs start to tremble.

“I was a mess,” I reply, brushing it off. “The only adorable thing there was the parrot in the cage behind the waiter.”

“Be that as it may… I thought you were adorable,” she says, giving me a look that stirs a warm whirlwind in the center of my chest. “You had that chaotic beauty of a storm about to break… and I loved it from the very first second. I stood there watching you argue and thought, ‘This woman is going to change my life.’ And wow, did you ever.”

I look away, uncomfortable because her words pierce me exactly where it hurts and where something is still alive. I try to brush it off, but I feel a part of me soften a little. Just a little. My heart is beating faster than usual.

“And you stood there like nothing could shake you. Like the whole world could fall apart and you’d still have that calm smile on your face.”

“I used to pretend a lot better than I do now,” she admits with a half-smile that doesn’t reach her eyes.

That makes me look at her again. There’s something different in her tone, a crack that doesn’t fit the memory we’re weaving together. But I don’t push it. We keep walking. The wind blows harder now, kicking up little swirls of sand that brush against our legs and force us to squint.

“It was only two weeks…” she murmurs after a while. “And yet I feel like I lived more during those days than in many years put together. I remember every detail: the nights in the hotel gardens, the conversations that lasted until dawn, the way you laughed when I tried to explain how the most common knee injuries happen…”

I nod slowly, because I felt exactly the same way.

“It all happened too fast,” I admit. “It was too intense. Like time sped up just for us.”

“Too real,” she adds without hesitation.

Her answer comes immediately, directly, the way it always has when she talks about us.

“Yes…” I sigh. “I remember waking up every morning thinking it was all a dream and that at any moment I’d open my eyes and go back to my old life. But no. You were there beside me, with that same sleepy expression, asking how I’d slept, and suddenly everything became real.”

A brief silence settles between us, filled with images flooding my mind. Images of those nights when we barely slept because touching each other felt more necessary than breathing, of those moments when I traced the curve of her back with my mouth, of the laughter that escaped her when I tickled her waist, of the heat of her lips against my neck, the scent of her skin after an intense round of sex. I swallow hard.

“When the last day came…” I begin, not entirely sure why I’m opening that door. “I knew it instantly.”

She turns toward me, attentive, her eyes wide open.

“What?”

I look her straight in the eyes.

“That I wanted you to be part of my life. Forever. That I couldn’t imagine a future without you close to me.”

The wind carries the words away, but I know she’s heard them. I can see it in the way her eyes well up, in the way she presses her lips together for a second.

“Me too,” she replies softly. “There wasn’t a single moment of doubt. From the very first day, I knew it was you.”

And there it is again. That “us” that existed so powerfully and that, in some clumsy, wounded way, still exists.

“I never meant to hurt you,” she adds suddenly, stopping dead in the middle of the path.

I stop too. The sand sinks slightly beneath my feet.

“Our thing…” she continues, her voice trembling. “Our marriage was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever had in my life. The trips, the laughter, the lazy mornings… everything.”

The words hit me hard, but not in the way she imagines. I shake my head gently.

“No,” I say.

She frowns, confused.

“Lidia…”