Page 149 of No Greater Oblivion

“Waiting?” He glances at me over his shoulder. “Waiting for what?”

“For me.”

He looks at me but he isn’t looking at me. He’s looking through me.

“Dahlia.”

The way he says my name…I hate it. Each syllable is elongated and heavy, as if being drawn from his lips by force. When did he start saying my name like that? And why am I only noticing now?

“Please, we can talk in the morning⁠—”

“I don’t want to talk in the morning, I want to talk now,” I say. “Did you even notice I was gone?”

He frowns. “You left? When?”

Right then and there something in me just snaps.

“I’ve been gone six hours. Six hours! No phone, no wallet, no ID.” I rattle each item off on my fingers. “Nothing. You mean to tell me you had no idea I was gone for that long? Where the fuck did you think I was?”

“Your room.”

He turns and walks away. Leaves me by the front door of our apartment as if he can’t be bothered. I refuse to be ignored by him any longer.

I follow him down the gallery hall where one wall is flowery stained glass mosaics and the other is fine chinoiserie I spent weeks restoring by hand. The lights are off so I turn on the first lamp I encounter.

“I’m not done talking to you.”

“Dahlia, ya te dije que no quiero hablar. Mejor esperamos hasta la mañana y lo prometo que⁠—”

“I don’t want to wait until tomorrow, I want to talk now. So either talk to me or I won’t be here in the morning.”

With a heavy exhalation, he turns to face me. “And what exactly do you mean by that?”

I can’t tell if it’s exhaustion or condescension in his voice. Either way, it disgusts me.

“For once I would like my presence to be acknowledged without such a strenuous effort on your part. I’d like to feel that my desire for your attention isn’t such a burden.”

“No one said your desire for attention was a burden⁠—”

“But that’s the way you make me feel!”

It all rushes out of me at once. A high-pitched scream I don’t recognize, the sound of a neglected creature begging not to be abandoned. It strikes a nerve and suddenly I’m a little girl again waiting at the door of our apartment for a father who may not come back. I’m sitting at the end of a hospital bed awaiting the recovery of a mother who’d rather die than stay with me. It’s Lyss moving to the other side of the country without telling me and it’s all the years of isolation that follow.

It’s Karina. Leaving me in Barcelona to chase after Brent, planning her wedding on a holiday that used to be special to us, and choosing him at every step of the way, even at the cost of painting me as a liar.

For once, I’d like to be chosen in return. Just once I’d like to be enough. Me, Dahlia. As I am, without having to bend backward for the people around me. No choosing colleges to accommodate other people, no tolerating boyfriends I hate, no moving halfway across the world with the promise of being loved only to be discarded within the year.

Alejandro stands at the other end of the hall and I can see the wheels turning in his mind. I want him to say something but he never does.

“Don’t you have anything to say to me?”

“Dahlia…” His fists clench and unclench at his side. “I…I just don’t have the capacity for this right now. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have the capacity?”

Silence engulfs us. If not for the flickering lamp at my side, I’d not be able to see him behind the haze of tears clouding my vision. As it is, he’s a glowing shadow at the end of a long, empty hall of which I have no desire to set sight on ever again.

What’s the point in yelling and screaming when he isn’t going to hear a word? What’s the point in this house if there’s no family living inside of it?