Page 80 of We Shouldn’t Do This Again

“Now I understand so many things… Your silences when someone asked you something about your life, the way you dodged certain conversations about the past, that absurd nostalgia that would suddenly come over you when we visited the beach. Damn it, Barbara… I was there, with you. And you let me into your life knowing you weren’t okay.”

I’m speechless for a few seconds because it hurts to hear the truth—that truth I’ve swallowed and silenced within myself for months.

The breeze rustles the palm trees behind us and the waves come and go. But for me, time has frozen at the exact moment Lidia pulled away when I tried to touch her. In her broken, disappointed gaze. In her “don’t touch me.” Oh my God. The look on her face is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, I know it.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” I whisper, even though I know it sounds like an excuse.

Ingrid shakes her head and lets out an incredulous laugh.

“That line isn’t worth a damn, and you know it perfectly well.”

I lower my head, defeated.

“Nothing we went through was a game to me. What we had was real.”

She looks at me, and her blue eyes reflect so much exhaustion and pain that I can’t breathe.

“Then explain to me what’s going on. Because I don’t understand when I went from being your friend, your partner, and your lover… to becoming the emotional crutch for a woman who can’t get over her ex.”

I look up, and for the first time since I set foot in the Maldives, I decide to stop hiding or sugarcoating a truth I should never have concealed.

“When I left Valencia and finally accepted the job in London, I was broken inside,” I begin. “I had destroyed my marriage. I’d lost the woman I’d loved most in my life…” My voice cracks a little, but I keep going. “I left because I couldn’t bear to keep breathing in a place where everything reminded me of her. London was my way of running away. Of starting over. Of punishing myself, even, for everything I’d done wrong.”

Ingrid clenches her jaw tightly, but she keeps listening to me in silence.

“And you were there,” I continue. “You met me at my lowest point. You made my job at the club easy. You gave me back my hope, something I thought was lost forever…”

She swallows, and the anger in her eyes mixes with that sadness and disappointment that breaks my heart.

“Then why are you doing this to me?”

“I don’t know…” I say, looking away toward the moon. “I suppose, out of pure selfishness, Ingrid…” I confess bluntly. “I’ve loved you, Ingrid. I still do. But not the way I should. Not the way you deserve to be loved. By your side, I found peace,” I continue, my heart in my throat. “Routine. Care. Companionship. A life that was always my dream. And for a long time, I thought that would be enough. I thought love could be built on affection, on habit…”

Ingrid drops her shoes onto the sand with a soft thud.

“But I’m not enough for you.” She shakes her head slowly, more to herself than to me. “God… how humiliating it sounds to say that out loud.”

“No,” I reply quickly, moving a little closer to her. “You’ve given me everything. So it’s not your fault at all. What’s humiliating is what I’ve done—playing with you, with her…” I say, referring to Lidia. “If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to move on.”

The tears finally escape me, and I can no longer hold them back. They run hot down my cheeks.

“I never thought things would turn out this way,” I admit. “When I signed the divorce papers with Lidia, I swore to myself I’d never let anyone in again. I was convinced that the part of me capable of truly loving had died with her.”

Ingrid looks at me with eyes shining with tears.

“But it didn’t die…”

I shake my head. The image of Lidia crying hits me with unbearable force.

“No. It never died. I just buried it under a demanding job, miles away, with schedules that were too strict, and a borrowed life that was never mine…” My voice breaks completely, and the tears keep falling. “And seeing her here… looking into her eyes again, touching her, feeling her close… has made everything come flooding back all at once.” As if my body had remembered something my mind had been trying to force itself to forget for years.

Ingrid wipes away a tear with a sigh of frustration.

“How lovely. Very poetic, all of it. Too bad you had to drag us both through the mud to realize what you truly feel.”

I don’t defend myself because she’s right. Because I’ve hurt Lidia again. Because I was incapable of being brave before everything came to light.

The moon traces a silvery path across the dark water. The sea keeps breathing beside us, immense and indifferent to our pain. I feel small, ridiculous, and empty inside. Stupid and a monster in equal measure.