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Undone, Chapter XIV

My fatal flaw still hovered about me, surrounding me like a palpable fog that refused to dissipate. Apparently, I was capable of loving someone—of falling in love—but my voice, my ability to say the words out loud that made it real, was taken away from me. I could love and be loved, but I could never admit it directly.

Or so it seemed.

I didn’t know how to navigate my relationship with Cristiano anymore. Officially, we were still together but it felt off. Even if I never did anything to disrespect the boundaries of our relationship, I had the feeling that the trust had gone.

He couldn’t trust me to be alone or to be around other men. I couldn’t trust that he didn’t look at me and see someone that was secretly in love with his teammate.

It scared me to think that there might be a possibility that I would lose him.

I thought of satiating him by cutting off all contact with Sergio, but that seemed unfair to both me and Sergio. It felt wrong that as a grown woman, I had to sneak around just to send texts or speak to my friend on the phone. It felt like I was cheating on him with the one person that put things into perspective for me.

I tried keeping my distance from Sergio, but he reached out first; he was concerned because he never saw me in the state that I had been in that night. No one had. It embarrassed me.

I stared at the pastries in the open box in front of me. The familiar pink box brought up memories that felt like they had been created decades ago. My formers bosses were surprised but happy to see me again.

“Are you going to eat one or just stare at them?”

I looked over the rim of the box. “I assume you’re actually pregnant this time.”

“You think so?” The sarcasm in her question was supposed to mask her excitement. It didn’t. She took a pregnancy test while I was here again, and judging by the scream I heard minutes ago, I assumed it was positive.

I grabbed a strawberry-lemon tart—a freebie thrown in during the packing process—and closed the box up. Nagore frowned at the inconvenience of having to open the box back up herself.

“So, when did my house become the headquarters for treachery?”

“Treachery?” I scoffed mid-chew, letting a crumb or two fall from my lips. I swiped them away and swallowed my bite. “Nothing’s happening. I just need a neutral space out of the public eye to speak freely. If I tell him that I’m with you, he doesn’t get that look in his eyes.”

She balanced a colorful tart in the palm of her hand. “He’s an idiot if he thinks you, of all people, would cheat on him after purposely depriving yourself of sex for so long. I mean... you haven’t even thought of touching Sergio, have you?”

“Nagore!”

“Ay!” She lifted her free hand. “I’m sure you wouldn’t. But Sergio would screw anything with a pulse, girlfriend or no girlfriend. I thought you would have been the one to change that considering how he looked at you sometimes. So, knowing that—which is something I’m sure Cristiano knows as well—I understand where he’s coming from. But, again, he’s suspicious of the wrong person.”

I thought of the lines that had been a bit blurred at the beginning of Sergio’s relationship with Pilar, and even at the beginning of my relationship with Cris. I just figured it Sergio being carefree and overly comfortable with me as he had always been.

The thought was ridiculous; I didn’t know Sergio nearly as long as Nagore or Cristiano so I didn’t know his track record, but I couldn’t imagine him as the person Nagore was implying he was. Not the Sergio I knew. A whore as a bachelor, maybe, but while he was in a relationship? No. Sergio as a homewrecker? Definitely not.

“What are you talking about? The only way Sergio ever looked at me was as if he wanted to make a porno in public.”

I took a sip of the wine Nagore poured out for me. She was killing me with the glorified grape juice.

“Is that the only thing that you heard me say?”

I shrugged. “You did say a lot. I’m just trying to understand why you’d bring that up some five minutes before Sergio is supposed to show up for our rendezvous.”

“I was just chatting,” she chuckled. “For once, I have no ulterior motives.”

“I appreciate your transparency.”

She shrugged off my sarcasm and walked off with half her tart still in her hand. I lifted my glass from the countertop and followed behind her. We sat in the front living room continuing to chat for a while. About her now confirmed pregnancy, the mess that was my personal life, and just everything else in general.

The front door opened shortly after the doorbell—an oddly elegant chime—sounded. Listening to his footsteps grow closer made me oddly nervous.

“Ladies,” Sergio greeted. I breathed in and out as he turned toward me after kissing Nagore’s cheek. Was there something in his eyes that narrowed with his gentle smile? “How are you doing Isla?”

He was still worried. After that night, I could understand why.

“You know, just peachy.”

“I’ll leave you two to it,” Nagore chirped.

“You don’t—”

“Thanks,” he said with a gracious upturn of his lips.

I watched helplessly as Nagore got up and walked away. I still stared after her even as Sergio crouched in front of me. When he cleared his throat, I reluctantly looked into his eyes.

What, exactly, was in there? What wasn’t I seeing that apparently everyone else could? It didn’t even matter at this point. At least, it shouldn’t. Perhaps I was just searching, hoping, for something that wasn’t there.

“Sergio.” I could taste the question on the tip of my tongue. I really should have swallowed it.

“What’s up?”

“Would you cheat on Pilar?” He coughed a choking sound. I resisted the urge to gulp down the remainder of my wine. “I mean, have you cheated on anyone before? Like, in general, would you cheat on someone you’re dating?”

He sat back with his left leg bent at the knee. “Jesus, Isla. What’s this about? Are you asking me if I’d cheat on Pilar with you or what?”

“That’s not what I meant,” I blurted.

“I mean—” He waved his hand in the air, conjuring up his words, before resting his arm on top of his knee. “I mean I would but not while you’re still with Cris—”

I swallowed my gasp. “How can you say that so easily?”

“It’s not like I actively sit here and pick from a list of women and decide I’m going to cheat. Sometimes things just happen.”

“Sergio, what the fuck? Do you not respect the whole monogamy aspect of a relationship? You know, the entire point of a relationship? Which means committing yourself to one person?”

His shrug was disturbingly nonchalant. I could still hear Nagore bluntly saying he’d fuck anything with a pulse. “Look, I know I’m not perfect; I never claimed to be perfect. I admit that I used to be out of control, but I’m older and not about all of that now. It’s just, back then, I didn’t know what to do with all the pussy that was being thrown at me. Do you go to a buffet and just eat one plate?”

“I don’t want to answer that question.”

“Then don’t. Morally, I always knew it was wrong, but after that first time, I just realized that I was generally fine with crossing that line. I’m better about it now, or at least I’m trying to be if you count flirting as cheating. But if we’re talking about you—”

“Yeah, I get it. You’d still fuck me if not for Cris.”

Sergio got that look on his face like he wanted to laugh but knew it wasn’t appropriate. I imagined that was the same look he used to make when he was a kid terrorizing people in his hometown.

“Only if we’re speaking hypothetically. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.” He started to mime dramatically with his hands as he tried to explain the nonsense that was leaving his mouth. “I’m talking about alternate paths here—I don’t want you to think that I think about cheating with you now or anything. I know that’s what Cristiano is suspicious of but he’s wrong to be.

“You didn’t want a relationship with me, but I wouldn’t have minded if you did want to be mine. We were never anything official but we worked. So, if you hadn’t decided you wanted him, and I still ended up in a relationship, I wouldn’t be able to help myself.”

I peeled at the skin of my lip with my teeth. “I wasn’t expecting this level of honesty.”

The corners of his eyes crinkled under the pressure from his grin. “You know I never shy away from saying what’s on my mind.”

Of course he didn’t. That didn’t mean that I needed the entire truth plainly laid out for me. Sergio’s carefree attitude seemed more of a free-love situation than I had realized. It made sense but I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t expect him to be an angel.

Truth is, I had no room to talk.

“I guess we both have colorful pasts involving a lack of boundaries.”

“What did you get up to?”

Sergio was suddenly enthralled by the skin peeking out from my cropped jeans. He kept my foot on his thigh as he stroked my ankle. It would have felt like an innocent gesture if we were having a different kind of conversation. I pulled my foot free.

“I never seriously dated, obviously, but I did come between a relationship or two.”

His laugh was playfully smug. “So you would have been my mistress.”

“I’ve racked up enough bad karma. My first real boyfriend thinks I’m going to cheat on him. With you who I have to sneak around to communicate with,” I muttered. I looked up with a shake of my head and focused my gaze back down to Sergio’s face. His expression was vaguely uncomfortable. “Are we cheating right now, Sergio?”

“No.” His smile was sad. It was a sympathetic sadness. Pity. “There’s no cheating going on here. You two are just in a fragile place so we’re being careful.”

“It feels like we are,” I murmured.

“Do you want me to leave, then?”

“No.”

We fell silent after my hasty response.

I had trouble looking him in the eye now. He was one of my best friends and he brought me a type of comfort that even Nagore couldn’t bring. But he was Sergio.

Sergio, who I used to have great, intense sex with for an extended period of time. Sergio, who was my boyfriend’s teammate. Sergio, who I would speak to on the phone at late hours of the night. Sergio, who admitted that in some alternate timeline, he would cheat on someone with me.

I understood how Cristiano could feel threatened by our friendship, but I expected him to have more trust in me. I never gave him any reason to mistrust me. I had always been candid with him.

“Why doesn’t he trust me?”

Sergio winced. “That’s something you’re going to have to ask him yourself.”

“Do you know something?” I pressed.

“If I did, it would still be something you’d have to ask him about yourself. Let me ask you something now.”

The bitter taste of cabernet sat in the back of my mouth. My throat and tongue wanted to be washed over with that deep red liquid and I obliged them. Sergio watched me take a long sip and waited until I swallowed.

“What really happened that night that I picked you up from that guy’s place? Hearing you cry like that… I was so worried about you, Isla. You scared me,” he admitted, sounding like saying it out loud finally took a weight off of his chest.

My hand outstretched on its own. My fingers, all five of them suddenly sprouting their own brains, having their own free will, stroked Sergio’s face, his rough stubble scraping against my skin. I couldn’t decide if the touch was meant to comfort him or me.

I sighed, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He angled his head, pressing his cheek closer into my palm. “Were you really going to cheat with that guy?”

“Are you asking if I was actually going to or if I secretly did?”

His eyes widened. “Did you actually—”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” I pulled my hand and away and folded both of them in my lap.

“You’re the one that implied it. I’m offended you didn’t call me up. You really made the effort to attempt to fuck some stranger instead of coming straight to me.”

“No,” I hummed. “Knowing what I know now, we probably would have ended up actually doing something regrettable.”

“As hard as it would have been, I wouldn’t have let it happen. I was just joking with you.”

I couldn’t share his smile. Sergio made room for himself right beside me on the couch. He patted his shoulder twice and I rested my head on it without protest, curling myself into the space he made for me in the crook of his outstretched arm. When I was comfortable, he let his arm drape over me from behind.

“I was drunk and flirted with the guy the whole time I was out at that bar. Once we got back to his place I did… we did start to kiss and he might have copped a feel or two, but I couldn’t. That was when I called you.”

“How did you even get to that point?”

“Same old argument except he accused me of cheating in some roundabout way and it just left me so hurt and angry that I snapped. I told him that if he wanted me to be that person I just might be.”

He gave my arm a comforting squeeze. “You two really need to work this out.”

“You think I don’t know that? I’m trying but he’s being so difficult. We haven’t exactly fought since then, but he says things and watches me in this way… it makes me want to snap again.”

“Isla…”

“Can we talk about something else please?”

Sergio threw his hands up, happy to oblige. He was understanding and patient, but even the best listeners got tired of hearing about the same unresolved drama from time to time.

We sat together and chatted, skirting around topics that could somehow lead back to Cristiano. His family was doing just fine. His plans for his stud farm were going great. Pilar still had him in the doghouse for running to my aid, but he didn’t mind. Of course he didn’t.

We laughed and debated. Nagore even joined us for a bit before scuttling off again to dote over Ane when she woke up from her nap. I felt relaxed here in their company.

An hour ticked away as we bantered back and forth. I kept my worry—my stress over my relationship that continued to teeter vicariously over the edge—tucked away, squished right against the back of my skull. Sergio didn’t have to know that I’d turned my phone off so I could ignore the reality that we were both sneaking around just to have a normal conversation.

It was ridiculous but it felt necessary. Cristiano and I had been having an almost decent week and I didn’t want it to go sour at the mention of Sergio’s name.

I was thankful Sergio understood. He always seemed to understand even the dodgy things. Even if he didn’t fully get it, he seemed eager to just so he could help me navigate my way through something so unfamiliar. It made me wonder how that different timeline would have looked at this point.

“I’m sure your kennel master is going to recall you soon,” I joked.

Sergio had his head resting against the back of the couch. His eyes were closed, stopping me from trying to find whatever bullshit I stupidly thought I wanted to see in them. What I was probably looking for was some comfort; the comfort that comes from somebody looking at you affectionately rather than with silent accusations.

I just wanted someone to look at me in a way that didn’t suggest they were expecting me to fuck them over. I saw that when I looked into Cristiano’s eyes more often than not these days. I just needed to give him one good reason to justify his paranoia.

“You felt my phone vibrating,” Sergio chuckled. “You already know she’s asking me where I am. She won’t flat-out ask me if I’m with you, though, so until she says what she means I’m not answering.”

“You didn’t tell her you’d be here?”

One brown eye focused on me. “Did you tell Cristiano?”

“I only told him I’d be hanging out at Nagore’s for a while.”

“But you didn’t tell him that you’d be at Nagore’s hanging out with me.” That eye blinked shut without waiting for an answer.

I thought back to when I was first getting to know Sergio. I was naïve to think he would have had some deep desire to be with me in a romantic capacity if I let him get too close. Being dead set against getting close to him was a stupid idea and now I was glad that I gave in. He was the comfort that I needed.

Things were so easy with him. So effortless.

“Sergio?”

“Hm?” His eyes were still closed. He was so still I’d have thought he was sleeping if he didn’t answer me.

“Do you love me?”

The way he exhaled, I knew he’d have rolled his eyes if they were open.

“Why would you ask me a question like that?” he grumbled.

“Can you just answer it?”

Four fingers swiped across his forehead. Back and forth, back and forth, wrinkling and smoothing out his impressively elastic skin as he tried to subdue his agitation. I needed answers. I needed to make sense of what was going through Cristiano’s head; if he gave me the answer Cristiano suspected he would maybe I’d understand.

“I’m sure I love you in the same way that you love me: as a close, reliable friend. Of course, it’s different with you because of how we used to be. If what you’re really asking me is if I’m in love with you, then you know the answer to that, dumbass.”

My laugh was weak. “Can you just say it out loud, please?”

“I can’t tell if you and Cristiano are good for each other or not anymore.” He looked into my eyes, straight through me into my soul.  “I love you, but I’m not in love with you. Happy?”

I hummed a response to his lips pressing against my forehead.

We parted ways, our agreement to keep in touch floating in the air with no real concrete plans as to when we’d speak or see each other again.

I kept Nagore company for a little while longer before leaving as well. I was going to head back to my apartment just to afford myself time with my thoughts, but I assured Cris that I wouldn’t be out all day. He wanted to have dinner together and end the night with Junior spread across both of our laps; I’d undoubtedly have to scold Cristiano for nibbling on my ear while Junior was in the room instead of paying attention to the movie.

I felt unsettled walking up to his front door. It felt like I was sneaking back in from a debaucherous night out on the town. I’d almost wished I’d at least smelled ripe with sex so I’d have a reason to feel guilty, to feel like I deserved those looks he gave me.

He was walking out of the kitchen just as I was heading to the bedroom to change my clothes. I was paranoid he’d somehow feel Sergio’s residual energy if he’d hugged me while I was still in these clothes.

“Hey.” His smile was gentle. Genuine, even. My heart thumped a tune when he opened his arms. “How was Nagore’s?” he asked.

“Same old. Just some girl talk and her giving me wine I never asked for as per usual.”

He breathed in as he briefly tightened his hold. “Hm.”

“I’m going to soak in the bath for a bit before dinner.”

He didn’t let go immediately. I was sure he could feel my heart beating as he leaned in to press his lips to my ear.

“You do know that you still smell like him, don’t you?”

See, Sergio didn’t always smell strongly of cologne on a casual day. If he was just meeting me, he never really bothered. If you spent enough time around him, you knew that he had a specific scent that he wore on a normal day of the week; it was a smell that was unique to him which made it easily identifiable.

Today, he wasn’t very heavy-handed with it so I barely noticed it when we were together. I was just used to it now. But if you were searching for some sign of him, you’d notice it right away.

“Cristiano—”

“Go take your bath.”

“Will you please just—”

“‘Please just’ what, Isla?” he taunted. He hid his disgust behind a derisive look, the scornful look you’d give a sibling you hated when you were teasing them. All that he needed to know was that I apparently reek of Sergio. That was enough for him to connect dots that never actually connected.

We migrated to his bedroom. I wanted to talk him down, but he wanted to walk away. There was something about his room that somehow made it so that it was in the perfect position where no one in the adjacent rooms or hallway could hear anything coming from inside once the door was shut. It was useful when we had sex but these days it was only useful for heated discussions.

These heated discussions quickly escalated because I couldn’t help being a hothead. Heated, pointless bickering where we both fed off of each other’s amplified negative energies. Both of us eager to snap without digesting what the other was saying.

“Will you just listen to me for like two seconds?”

He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t really care about what excuse you’re going to make this time. ‘Oh, he’s my friend,’” he mocked my speech patterns, the rhythm and pitch. “Why wouldn’t you just tell me you were going to be seeing him?”

“Because of this! The way you react when I even mention his name! You act so suspicious of him, of me for no reason!”

“‘No reason?’ You got drunk and convinced yourself you were going to fuck some stranger, Isla! You made this dangerous, impulsive decision and then told Sergio you love him right in front of me right after you told me you couldn’t bring yourself to tell me that you love me as well. Do you know how long it took me to convince myself that you didn’t go straight to him that night?”

“I don’t even remember half of what I said because I was drunk, Cris. I told you nothing happened with that guy because even though I was angry with you for doing exactly what you’re doing right now, I still couldn’t betray you. You act like I don’t care and tell me you’ll be patient but you keep doing the same thing. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t be here.”

He paced away, his feet dragging angrily, brushing against the grain of the carpet. He left behind darkened grooves in the smooth carpet, winding drag marks that looked like rivers.

“Why can’t you see it from my perspective?” he pleaded.

“I do get it—”

“If you really did, you’d understand why I don’t trust him or appreciate you running off to vent to another man.”

“You know what—” I fished my phone and keys out of my pockets and set them down. I shook my head as I grabbed at the bottom of my shirt and continued, defeated, “Can we just drop it? I’m tired of arguing about the same thing over and over again.”

I waited for a reaction from him that I didn’t get before I pulled my lightweight turtleneck over my head. Cristiano remained silent, but by the way his lips were set, I had the strongest feeling he had something to say. I expected it to hurt.

“Fine.” The word shot out like a bullet, so quickly, with some sort of grim finality that I didn’t notice until it hit me. My brain had an unusually hard time processing a singular word.

I walked away to run that bath and peel off the clothes that apparently smelled of Sergio. Cristiano remained in the doorway, hovering like a phantom gatekeeper, just watching me as I ran my hand through the flowing water to gauge its temperature. Aside from the rise and fall of his chest, his eyes were the only things that moved as he scrutinized every inch of me that he could see, searching for a hint of any temporary blemish as if I’d be stupid enough to let myself be marked up during a non-existent affair.

Though he still watched wordlessly—staring at me like some kind of mute peeping tom with so strong an obsession he began to resent that which he coveted for so long—I continued to undress.

His gaze didn’t make me bashful or anger me. I wanted the topic to be dropped and could tell he still wanted to argue so I had to ignore him.

When the water was at an acceptable level, I climbed into the tub. I reached out to turn the knobs so only hot water would flow and fill up the tub the rest of the way.

“Are you going to stand there and watch me bathe?” I asked over my shoulder. I didn’t even bother looking back at him.

He grunted a response and remained a decoration in the doorway. For someone so angry, he couldn’t look away. Or, he didn’t want to look away, like he was still searching hard for something that would magically manifest itself and prove I was out giving myself to Sergio.

“Can you at least be useful and help me wash my back?”

I held my loofah, already coated generously with my body wash—cool peppermint castile soap that made my skin tingle and feel extra clean—out in the middle of my palm and waited. He stalked over and balanced himself on the edge of the tub, still dead silent. I leaned forward, hugging my legs to my chest, and rested my head on my knees.

A contented hum vibrated in my throat at the feeling of the gentle scrubbing he was giving my back. This was how our arguments usually went: one of us would set the other off, accusations and overly defensive statements flew around, and in the end, the conflicts wouldn’t be resolved. They would just be dropped and ignored until the next pot boiled over. At the end of it all, some sort of act of affection would be displayed in lieu of an apology in order to spackle things over until the next tiff.

I sometimes considered how sublime angry sex might be, but I could never be the one to initiate anything with someone who was accusing me of promiscuity.

“Why can’t you trust me?”

His hand stopped in the center of my back, applying gentle pressure to my spine. “It’s not you that I don’t trust; It’s him”

“Bullshit,” I scoffed. “Not trusting him means you think I'm weak and you don’t trust me. You know—”

My anger was bubbling just under the surface. I had to stop myself from acting impulsively again. If I told him what Sergio admitted to me today without any context, it would have made things worse.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I shook his hand off my shoulder.

I took my loofah back and began scrubbing my legs. He covered the side of my head with his hand and applied pressure, forcing me to lean my head against him. After a moment, I felt his lips atop my head, lingering for a few heartbeats.

“Did Sergio do something to betray you?” I learned so much about Sergio today and I had to know if I was still missing anything.

“No,” Cristiano said into my hair.

“Then why don’t you trust him with me?”

“He has a history. But you make things different; you complicate things and make people deviate from their old habits.”

“You seriously think he’s in love with me? I asked him already and he’s not. You even asked him and got the same answer. Casual sex with no strings attached does exist, you know.”

“Not for that long. Something in you changes.”

I scooted away. “Not in me. Besides, it’s been well over a year.”

He blinked slowly and let his gaze wander down the length of my legs. “Do you love me?”

“Cristiano…”

“Is it really that hard for you to say? Can I at least get a yes or a no?”

“You said you already—”

“Yes or no, Isla. Please.”

I looked up at him and saw that vulnerability in his eyes I thought I saw so long ago. That flash of something no one else in this paradoxically too small, but too big world would ever see. This was Cristiano. That arrogant, macho persona he put on for the world was someone else, someone I didn’t care to know.

It was the glimpse of this man, the one that wasn’t afraid to open his heart and love, that I wanted to get closer to. This was the man that needed me to see that he existed under that protective shell of showmanship that shielded him from his detractors.

It was Cristiano that prized open my heart, that turned my curiosity into infatuation and my infatuation into—

“Yes.”

[leggiamo]

I love when I decide to check your page and see that there are actually updates that I missed :’)

I always feel so bad when I remember how many of y’all have waited so patiently to know what happens next and how many have given up hope LMAO :( I wish my life was more compatible with this little hobby of mine because I do miss my little characters everyday. I’m just gonna keep writing this summer and keep dropping updates for anyone that might still be out there hoping to get some closure.

[leggiamo]

Oh my god. Ooooooh my gos. OH MY GOD OH MY GOD OMGGGGGGGGG

AH? What happened?! LOL

[leggiamo]

Duplicity — Chapter XXVIII

I greedily reached out for the cup of coffee being held under my nose. A smile fixed itself on my lips as I wrapped both hands around it and breathed in, making my mouth water in anticipation for its taste.

Joan let me sleep in while he went out for a quick meal with his mum and decided to wake me with a fresh cup of brewed caffeine. It felt strange to once again wake up in a bed belonging to a man that I wasn’t in love with. We were growing closer, of course, but it never felt like anything more than a budding friendship. We both had too much from our pasts that we were holding onto.

“You know—” I blew onto the surface of the coffee before taking a sip. “—last night I almost convinced myself to have sex with you to ease my pain.”

His eyebrows were raised. “Do you really think I’d let you use me like that?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You are absolutely right.”

We shared a laugh knowing all too well neither of us would let that happen. I took another sip of coffee as he lay back onto the bed and tucked his hands behind his head. We went out for dinner last night with a few of our coworkers and he let me crash at his place once again; I didn’t want to face the silent loneliness of the little home I made for myself.

I was thankful for him.

In the midst of all the darkness in my world, he had become something of a beacon giving off a comforting light. I could feel myself stabilizing knowing that I had some sort of support from someone who cared only about what would be best for my well-being. Any advice that he gave me was so that I could come out at my happiest at the end of all of this.

“What do you have planned for the rest of the weekend?” he asked as he scratched his chin. He had gotten lazy and let his stubble grow into a short beard.

I shrugged. “Pity party, maybe. I might call home just to let them know that I’m still alive.”

“Have you, uh, still not spoken to—”

I cleared my throat and ignored the sinking feeling in my chest. I knew who he was alluding to, but I avoided answering the question because I still hadn’t called him. There was one night after my drive back home from work when I almost picked up the phone, but when I got to his name, I turned my phone off and went inside.

The look on Joan’s face seemed to imply that he knew I still hadn’t done what he had suggested. He simply sighed and decided not to push the subject knowing that it wouldn’t go anywhere.

Funnily enough, he didn’t have to force the issue. The silence that fell between us was interrupted by the loud buzzing of my phone as it vibrated against the glass top of the bedside table. I reached over and set my cup of coffee down before picking the phone up, the knot in my stomach tying tighter and tighter.

“Speak of the devil,” I laughed nervously. Joan sat up and left the room, closing the door behind him as I answered. “Hello?”

“Oh, I—” He cleared his throat and swallowed. “—I wasn’t expecting you to answer since you never called me back.”

“Well, you told me you probably wouldn’t answer so I figured it would be pointless.” I half-shrugged as if he could see me.

I held my phone between my shoulder and ear as I picked at my nails. Neither of us really knew what to say at this point. What was there to say? I left him with the divorce papers and all but disappeared from his life after I ruined it. I don’t think he even knew what he was calling for. Gerard’s words replayed in my mind but I ignored them.

“I guess I’m just—”

“Can you—Oh, I’m sorry—”

“No, no, it’s fine go ahead.”

I sighed. “I’m sorry I just left like that. It seemed foolish to stay but I didn’t think it would have—I didn’t think you would have felt that strongly about it. I just thought it would have been easier for you if I was out of your way.”

“Did… was that what I told you when I left that message?”

I cursed to myself. No, he didn’t tell me that. I listened to that message over and over again enough times to know that I didn’t get that bit of information straight from his mouth. It had been Gerard that told me he was torn up over the way I pulled a disappearing act on him.

“Yeah,” I lied. “I mean, you said plenty of other things, but yeah.”

“Oh.”

Static crackled softly over the line as it fell silent. The idea of getting closure flitted through my mind, but I wasn’t sure where to even begin with the process. All of the wounds had still been raw and we had done nothing to heal them. Just waiting it out with time clearly wasn’t going to be enough.

“Do you hate me?” I blurted out. “Before you answer that—if for whatever reason, you still somehow don’t hate me, I need you to lie to me and say that you do. Please lie to me. This whole time you have done nothing to show that you do and I just feel like I’ve gotten away with murder; it feels like you’ve been justifying everything that I have done to you and I can’t live with that.”

He remained completely silent for a long while. My heart raced in my ears as I listened to him exhale a heavy breath.

“I don’t have to lie to you; I do hate you. I hate everything about you. I hate the perfume you wear, I hate the way you speak, the way you laugh, the way you care and know so much about art—” His voice changed; it sounded as though he was clenching his teeth to restrain himself. “I hate how you used to smile at me whenever I came home, how you pretended that you were so happy to see me when you had probably spent all your time with him.

“I fucking hate the way that you used me when Gerard tossed you to the side. I hate that you pretended to love me and how real you made it feel. I hate that I fell for the act.” He took another deep breath and softly spoke, “I hate that you ended it because I couldn’t. Part of me still wanted to come home to you and I hate that. I hate you because… because I can’t shake you. I can’t let go of you. I still love you and it pisses me off.”

“That’s—” I cleared my throat when my voice cracked. “Thank you.”

The crackling returned. Not a word was said between us. I had multiple going through my mind, but I couldn’t bring my tongue, teeth, and lips to work together to pronounce their syllables. What he said helped but I knew he only said it to convince himself and not me; he was still hurting and he had to lie to himself to make it easier. That was what tore me up inside.

“You know, I couldn’t stay in that house. I um… I had to move. I found some of your things when I was packing though and I have them in boxes still, so if you want to just come and pick them up then you can feel free to come by,” he rambled.

I thought I had a few things missing but I was never sure. “I can come and get them when you’re out.”

“No. You don’t have the key so I’d have to be here to let you in.”

“You can leave a key—”

“I don’t have extras—”

“Then mail it to me, Cesc,” I sighed.

“Indigo,” he said slowly, “I am trying to get you to come here so that I can see you. Don’t tell me that it’s not a good idea because I don’t give a damn.”

“Cesc—”

“I don’t want you to say anything unless you’re saying that you’re coming.”

I thought of the other night. Specifically, I thought of what Gerard, in his own way, implied that I should do. Time apart from each other was supposed to fix things. Thinking of what might become undone if we met face to face terrified me.

“Would you actually do something for me? Just this once? You didn’t even say goodbye or anything you just fucking left. Please, just say that you’ll come.”

I couldn’t recognize my own voice when it left my lips. “I’ll come.”

That was all that he needed to hear from me; the line quickly went dead. My movements were slow as I pulled my phone away from my ear. I tossed it in my hand a few times before it vibrated. He sent me his new address and told me he’d be free again after six.

I didn’t blame him for moving out of that house. I grew to hate it too. Good memories that we were supposed to form together within those walls never had a chance to flourish.

I moved the blanket aside and tossed my legs over the edge of the bed. I looked toward the door as I stretched my arms above my head.

“You can come back in now,” I called out.

From the other side of the door, Joan let out a guilty chuckle. My toes cracked as I pointed and flexed them out. The door creaked open as Joan stepped back into the room.

“I was only listening a little bit. It got a little too intense for me.”

“Sorry my conversation was too much for you to comfortable eavesdropping on.”

He smiled and braced himself against the footboard. “How are you, though? I take it as a good sign that you’re not crying.”

I shrugged. “I genuinely think I’m all out of tears to cry.”

When I felt a familiar pressure building up while I was on the phone, I was sure the tears would come but I had absolutely nothing left. Perhaps this was a sign of growth. Maybe it was beginning to get easier. How much would that change once Cesc and I were once again face-to-face?

Time, with its crippled limbs, slowly crawled along, prolonging the feeling of tightness in my chest. I tried staying with Joan for longer just to distract myself but that only worked for so long. He dropped me home, where I counted down the hours in solitude.

Decades skipped by as I stood beneath the steamy flow of the showerhead. A century had come and gone as I dressed. An entirely new era had arisen while I watched my kettle boil. By the time I sat down with a hot cup of tea, I looked at the clock beside the doorway and saw it was only nearing 4:40.

I stared at that clock for a while—stared at the thin black hand ticking rapidly—just counting down the seconds that went by. My chest still felt as though it was being crushed.

I looked away as I took a sip of the watered-down tea that I was too impatient to let properly brew. I looked back at the clock and it was only just abruptly shifting its hands to read 4:41.

It felt like there was static throughout my entire body. There was a chill in the air that wasn’t there before and it caused me to shiver. I left my cup on the table and went to my bedroom to grab my phone off the charger. Waiting was too hard.

The line rang, and rang, and rang. I almost ended the call, but at the very last second, my call was answered.

“I know you said that you’d be free after 6, but I—”

“It’s fine,” he tittered. “I got done earlier than I expected so….”

“Oh.”

“Indigo?”

“Yes?”

“Are you going to come, then?”

Heat stroked the tips of my ears. “Oh, right. I’ll head out now.”

I hung up the phone and went searching for my purse and keys. I felt ill at ease the entire time I spent driving. He was so calm and patient with me, which I didn’t deserve. I was afraid to see him after all this time; I didn’t know how I would react—how we would react to each other.

Part of me, no matter how foolish I knew it was, wanted a flare to spark up between us. I had a loose hope that we would restart and have a moment of tenderness similar to what we had on our first date. Part of me fantasized about him recognizing how broken I was and deciding he wanted to put me back together again.

But that wouldn’t have been fair to him. Being selfish with his heart, taking advantage of his kindness and ability to forgive so easily was what got us here in the first place. Well, that and my inability to remain faithful to the man I was meant to have committed myself to.

I felt sick as I walked up to his door; my stomach knotted as I heard the sound of the doorbell coming from inside. It felt like an hour had passed as I waited, but I was afraid to try the doorbell again, so I continued to wait for him.

I stumbled backward when I heard the lock click. I looked up the length of the door as reality slowed to a crawl as it opened. The second it opened wide enough to reveal his face, my mouth went dry.

We stared at each other for a minute, neither of us entirely sure how to greet the other. I was sure he could easily see all of my emotions on my face and in my body language, whereas I couldn’t get even the slightest read on him. Even his eyes, which always used to reveal everything to me, told me absolutely nothing.

“Are you coming in?”

I nodded but I couldn’t move. He waited for me and chuckled lowly when he realized I wasn’t going to be able to get my feet unplanted from his doorstep. The warmth I felt in my chest at the sound of his laugh was almost nostalgic, except it roused more feelings of guilt than it did feelings of fond recollection.

“Indigo,” Cesc called out, “you can come in; it’s okay.”

He opened the door wider and waved me in. Even with his assurance, I still hesitated. I heard his quiet chuckle again as he shook his head. I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t move. It was fortunate that he didn’t notice me recoil away from his out stretched hand.

“Oh,” I murmured when he wrapped his hand around my wrist and pulled me inside.

There was no more hesitating, no turning back, once I was inside of his house. I looked around the entryway as he shut and locked the door.

“I’m sorry?” I blurted when I realized he had been talking. Nearly everything he said in that voicemail had been playing on a loop in my head.

“Oh, I was just um—” He scratched his stubble covered jaw and focused on the tiled floor. “—I was just asking you how you were. I thought your stuff was mine so it’s upstairs. I just forgot to bring it down.”

“That’s fine.”

I didn't move as I waited for him to take the lead. He didn’t move, however. He also just stood there, looking me up and down as he took in and accepted my existence. I was here, standing in front of him, within reach, after not being face-to-face for longer than we had ever been since he moved back to Barcelona.

“Cesc, I’m—”

He shook his head. “You don’t need to say anything.”

He looked off to the side and cursed to himself. He moved so quickly that I couldn’t stop him. I was in his arms within seconds, squeezing my eyes shut as the familiarity of him and his scent came back to me. My heart ached as he held me closer; his hand gripped the back of my neck, his fingers tangling in my hair, and his opposite arm snaked around my back, holding my body against his. He breathed in deeply and muttered something to himself that I couldn’t understand.

“I thought you hated me,” I whispered into his shoulder.

“God, I do.” He took another deep breath and squeezed me tighter. “I do.”

It was clear that he was trying to convince himself of this more than he was trying to convince me. If I hadn’t completely overworked my tear ducts, I would have had more tears to cry at the sound of his shuddering breath. I wanted to break down along with him but I couldn’t.

This was the moment we needed to share. More importantly, this was the moment he needed to have and I didn’t want to do anything more than physically be here as he worked through it. We wouldn’t be standing here and going through this if it wasn’t for me. He wouldn’t be in this much pain if I had just been stronger for him from the very beginning.

When he finally let go, I could tell he wasn’t ready to. I wanted him to hold me again, but I knew I couldn’t let him do that.

“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he quickly said.

I watched him rub his eyes with the base of his palms. I frowned at the flush of his complexion, but he didn’t pay me any mind. This, what I now understood, was what Gerard had meant about him being different. While he had always worn his heart on his sleeve, he never broke down at the drop of a dime. Now that he was with me, he was cycling through the emotions that he had kept pent up while he found ways to ignore them.

I didn’t want to, but I wondered if he brought women to his house or if he rented rooms at hotels. Did he go to their place? Did he use our old bed before he moved? Did he even get rid of the old bed that we had shared?

I shook my head. It didn’t matter; it wasn’t any of my business.

“You can follow me upstairs. I’ll help you carry the boxes down.”

I nodded and walked behind him as he led me deeper into his house. He had family pictures and pictures from his moments of success up on the walls. Naturally, there were no pictures of with me, and as few with Gerard as he could manage.

As I looked at these memories, I wondered what we were supposed to do with the pictures we had together. Did we burn them or shred them? Or did we hold on to them and just tuck them into the most discreet places they would never be pulled from again, much like we hoped to do with these soured memories we had? I couldn’t imagine either of us years from now, in new relationships, explaining the existence of our old wedding pictures and reliving all the pain.

I froze when I realized the boxes were in his bedroom. He was talking as he picked one up but stopped when he noticed I hadn’t joined him.

He materialized in the doorway. “Sorry. I know I should have moved them—I just didn’t get the chance to.”

I smiled unconvincingly as I shrugged. I still hesitated in the doorway as he watched me, but ultimately, I ended up following him inside.

He had been keeping three boxes worth of my things beside his walk-in. Before we did anything, I quickly looked through them. There were a few miscellaneous art supplies, some clothes, some books, and documents; they were all items that I wasn’t exactly missing but I understood that he didn’t want to hold on to them.

We each grabbed a box and walked them back down to my car.

In silence, I made it back up to his room for the last box and had it in my hands before he joined me. As I turned around, I noticed his ring, the ring I slid onto his finger as I pledged myself to him, was just out in the open, sitting on the table beside his bed.

“I’m not sure what to do with it.”

The box went crashing to the floor when it slipped from my fingers. His smile was apologetic as he walked over and took a seat on the edge of his bed. I watched him wordlessly as he picked up the ring and turned it between his fingers.

“What did you do with yours?” he asked.

I swallowed. “It’s just in my jewelry box.”

He nodded. “Ah.”

Suddenly, he stopped turning the ring and looked up. He reached over and put the ring back down before patting the space beside him with his eyebrows raised. My feet were ridiculously heavy as I inched closer to the bed.

I could feel my heart racing, thumping aggressively against the cage that contained it, as I sat down. Cesc began to lie back before he stopped himself.

“Can we just talk for a bit before you go?”

I understood and lay back with him. For a while, we both just lay side-by-side, our hands folded atop our stomachs as we stared at the ceiling. I was the first to turn my head. When he turned his head, I gave him a gentle smile that he didn’t reciprocate. All that I could see was the person that Gerard told me he had become.

“I understand why you just left like that,” he began. Each moment that he took to breathe was deliberate and allowed him time to think. “It didn’t make sense for you to just stick around. We were—we are—done. It wasn’t healthy for you to stay any longer….”

“Yeah…” I agreed meekly.

“I guess it was just a shock for me to wake up and not see you at all, more so than it was to not wake up next to you anymore. But this is how it’s meant to be, right?”

It was unnecessary for me to answer; we both knew that. Reality was settling in around us as we lay here and came to terms with the dissolution of our marriage. Despite it all, we still understood each other and how much this moment was needed.

“I know I’ll never be able to make it right no matter how much I apologize, but I truly am sorry, Cesc. I loved every moment we spent together and I deeply regret everything that I did; I know it doesn’t seem like it, but I never wanted to hurt you and I tried as hard as I possibly could at the time to avoid doing that.”

He frowned as he digested my words. I knew I must have sounded like a broken record to him. “Did you love me?”

“You know I did. I still do.”

He chuckled. “Of course. You just weren’t in love with me.”

“I—”

He reached out and covered my hand to stroke my knuckles with his thumb as he turned away to look up at the ceiling. “No, it’s okay. I finally understand.” A weak smile upturned his lips. “You were—you still are—in love with him. You just chose me because I was ready to settle and he wasn’t. Understanding that doesn’t really make me feel better but at least I get it now. I simply couldn’t compete where I didn’t compare, right?”

I couldn’t respond. What more could I possibly say? I couldn’t refute what he said because deep down, I knew it was true. What I felt for Cesc was entirely different, and I tried to hold on to it for as long as I possibly could because I knew I had stability with him and I felt bad about throwing it away.

But what I felt for Gerard was so much stronger; it had endured all of these years, all the time we spent apart. What I felt for him, I couldn’t define or let go of. It repelled me and it attracted me all at once. I couldn’t forget the memories, how it felt to be with him, even in the shadows. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how much he had hurt me, I just couldn’t force myself to let go. It sounded nonsensical, but it always felt like we had been together in a past life but we kept running from each other and in this go around, we were fated to be together or we’d be lost and separated forever.

My feelings for him controlled me. Before he could even tell me to jump, I’d be asking him how high, even when I knew I was supposed to be committed to Cesc. It didn’t matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, but what I felt for Cesc simply did not compare to something that ran much deeper.

“I wish it didn’t turn out like this,” I confessed.

He stopped stroking my hand. “I don’t know when I’ll be able to forgive either of you for this, but what I do know is that even though I’m supposed to hate you, I still want you to be happy. I want you to be happy even if the only way you find happiness is with… him.”

He turned his head back and I could see the sincerity in his eyes. Was that how strong his love was? Could he really, despite how much I had done to hurt him, give me his blessing to be with the man, his former best friend, who I had been with behind his back? This only made me feel worse. He still loved me enough to want me happy even if he couldn’t stomach it and it physically pained him.

I thought I had been out of tears to cry but I was wrong.

“What do you suppose we would have named our kids?”

I laughed out loud rather tearfully. “Our small army,” I sighed nostalgically.

We shared another few laughs as we bantered back and forth about names and future professions of the kids we would never have now. I was ready to give him at least two, with four being the absolutely most I could do just to keep him happy. I was happy when I made that promise; I was convinced that I had actually fallen deeply in love with him.

Time apart seemed to treat us well, even if we were both hiding how we had been doing on our own. Going forward, maybe we’d be better off now that we had this moment together.

“Indigo,” he said as he stopped laughing. “Have you spoken to him lately?”

This whole time, I realized, he hadn't once mentioned Gerard’s name each time he referenced him.

I contemplated my answer. All of my lies brought us here, but I didn’t want to risk hurting him and having him shut down on me by telling him the truth. What was the correct answer to give in this situation?

“I’ll take your silence as a yes,” he hummed.

“It was purely coincidental—”

He lifted his hand off of mine and waved it, dismissing me. “It’s fine. I know that I still want you in my life, but even if I forgive you, I can’t stick around and watch you be with him. Maybe, eventually, I’ll be okay with you two having the life I wanted to build with you, but I can’t foresee that happening anytime soon.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’ve been thinking about leaving for some time now, but I definitely can’t stay if you two are going to be together.”

My heart plummeted so rapidly it made me feel nauseous. I could tell by the expression on his face that he had been contemplating this for some time. The fact that he was even thinking about leaving the place he had a much stronger claim to than I did made me feel even guiltier. He had longed to be here for so long and I took that away from him.

“You can’t—”

“My mind is made up. Even if you two don’t get together, I just can’t be here anymore. It’s just not working for me.”

I caught him off guard just as he had done to me earlier. I couldn’t suppress the urge to throw myself on him and apologize profusely. Though I spoke into his neck, I knew he could understand me perfectly. He nodded repeatedly as he smoothed my hair down and listened to everything he had already heard before spill out of my mouth.

“Are you done?” he laughed.

I had to laugh as well. “Yeah. I’m sorry.”

“One day, you’ll stop apologizing.” He let me go and I rolled back over to stare up at the ceiling as he continued to speak. “Thanks for stopping to talk. I haven’t said that out loud to anyone yet. I think by the end of this season I’ll be out of here. Anyway, I’ll let you go; I’m sure you didn’t plan on spending your whole day here doing this.”

We sat up at the same time and he leaned in to place the gentlest kiss on my cheek. I stood up to grab the final box full of my things and he followed behind me. He didn’t leave his doorstep as I loaded my car and I knew it was for the best. We might have lasted that whole time without either one of us breaking down completely—which I knew was a sign that this was the closure that we needed, the step to start the actual healing process—but I knew that if we spent any more time that close together, one of us would break first.

I waved back with a smile on my face as he waved goodbye. As soon as I hit the road and was well out of view of him, I had to wipe away tears that silently fell. It still hurt but I knew now that it could get better.

[leggiamo]

Hierro and Ramos after the match vs. Russia | July 1, 2018

[leggiamo]

Sergio Ramos at the end of the match vs. Russia | July 1, 2018

[leggiamo]

Isco’s dance moves during Spain NT training

[leggiamo]

World Cup: Cristiano before kick off vs Morocco | June 20, 2018

[leggiamo]

Undone, Chapter XIII

I had to take some time for myself to be by myself. My apartment looked completely untouched even though I had been in and out of here more often than usual lately. Mail still piled up on the table beside the door, and dust collected on top of unused surfaces. Even still, I was glad I listened to my gut and didn’t give it up to live with Cris. This used to be my favorite place to rest in solitary, but now I felt guilty for slipping away to have alone time.

Alone time is something that is allowed in a relationship, is it not? Wasn’t I afforded moments on my own to be left in silence with my thoughts?

In the grand scheme of things, a year wasn’t that long. Sure, a lot can happen in a year, which was something that I was all too aware of. A year felt like a lifetime to me, a lifetime with him; it felt like a lifetime of feeling a kind of love for him, a unique love, that I was unfamiliar with.

A lifetime had since passed from the moment I decided to stop pushing him away, and here I was again, trying to push him away once more to deny myself what I knew I wanted all because I was afraid now that I realized I could be falling in love.

If I knew this, why couldn’t I just tell him how I felt and put his mind at ease? He claimed he could tell, but I knew all that he wanted was to finally hear me admit my feelings and tell him that I loved him in the same way that he loved me. There was nothing more that I wanted than to break the barrier that was keeping me from saying the only three words that would keep him from leaving. Even though I knew my feelings were reciprocated, some unfounded fear maintained my silence.

I trudged to my bedroom and walked up to the window to push the curtains aside, illuminating the room with the final remaining rays of sunlight. I opened the window, ignoring the slight chill of the winter air, and reached into the drawer of my bedside table.

My gut told me not to, but I wrapped my fingers around that little polka-dotted cigarette case and pulled it out. I found one lone cigarette, the only one that survived my purge, under the clip. I removed it and pinched it between my lips. After another search in the drawer, I found my old lighter.

“Come on,” I muttered as I struggled to get it to spark. “Let me have this.”

I sighed frustratedly and stormed off toward my kitchen.

The front burner on my stove clicked on and I dipped the tip of the cigarette into the flame. Holding the cigarette between to fingers, I waved it in the air to extinguish the flame on the tip as I turned off the burner. I anxiously brought the cigarette to my lips, expanding my lungs as I inhaled the smoke, initiating the release of dopamine as the nicotine entered my system.

Suddenly, I felt like the old me, the me that didn’t date because she didn’t want to be tethered down out of fear of losing herself.

The cigarette burned slowly as I walked back to my room. Each drag and exhale out of the window managed to calm the chaos raging inside of my head.

I looked down at the street below as I leaned on the window sill—I chose this place because there wasn’t a lot of street traffic. It felt a little skeevy at night from time-to-time but nothing ever happened. Here, there were no cameras and no Cristiano. No one paid me any mind and I went on my way. Here, my life still felt like the old version of normal that I previously knew.

Ashes got lost in the wind as I tapped the tube with my finger. It just felt good to be in this moment and pretend that I hadn’t moved to a new city and found what I had been trying to escape from in the first place. It was nice to pretend that I hadn’t found a man that I needed to teach me how to love. I didn’t want the moment to last forever, but I was still allowing myself to enjoy it. We were spending so much time together that I was beginning to lose myself in him, as I always feared I would.

I looked at my phone disinterestedly as it began to ring from on top of my bed.

After that night at the hotel when he said he would wait for me, something changed.

He still told me how he felt and he wasn’t cornering me to return an “I love you”. He still held me, still kissed me, and still spoke to me the same. That tender look still entered his eyes when we spoke, and I still felt the tickle of those flapping wings in the pit of my stomach when I’d catch him staring at me as if I was his whole world.

As often as he verbally and physically reassured me that he loved me, I’ve started to see something else lurking in the background. I know he cares and it comforts me, at least until he slips up and fails to hide the suspicions he keeps tucked away from me. When those come out, that’s when it hurts me. It hurts to see that some part of him doesn’t trust me and doesn’t trust that when I tell him that I only want him, I mean it.

Above all, his mistrust scares me. I know it only exists because I balk at saying the words he’s waiting to hear. But what if I finally say them but he thinks I’m only saying them to appease him, or worse, out of guilt? He says he can already tell how I feel, but if he can, why does he look like he’s trying to catch me in a lie each time I answer the phone around him? Why does he so keenly observe how I interact with not only Sergio but with other men as well?

I might be new to this, but I’m not the person he’s becoming suspicious that I might be. When I tried to explain this to him, it turned into another serious argument. That was how I found myself back here, alone as I smoked the only cigarette I held onto as I tried to hold on to the parts of me that were here before I met him.

I let my phone continue ringing as I finished my cigarette. He could wait while I gave myself this moment.

I remembered the look on his face as I threw my hands up and walked I away. I was non-confrontational by nature, and to sit there and argue with him, someone I was invested in, was too much for me. Even as he called out my name after me, I kept on walking away.

I couldn’t let the argument continue when it was about nothing at all; too many senseless arguments had the potential to ruin relationships. Everything that he was saying was just him beating around the bush and finding ways to bring up my relationship with Sergio without actually bringing it up. He said he didn’t care about my past with Sergio, but he kept finding every excuse he could to allude to it.

I put out the end of my cigarette and dropped the butt in the ashtray on the nightstand. My heart felt heavy and I wanted to hear Cristiano’s voice, but I didn’t want to call him; I would just have to wait for him to give in and call back.

I flopped onto my bed and held my phone to my chest. Why did it have to be Sergio and not Cris who had gotten to me first? Had he stepped up, I wouldn’t have to worry that he was jealous, or that he was distrusting because of a past that he assured me he didn’t care about. I’d still be in his bed, my ear pressed to his chest as I listened to the strong, steady rhythm of his heartbeat if I had been able to hit it off with him before anyone else.

I waited for his call for as long as I could manage to keep my eyes open. Without bothering to get up to close the window, I allowed myself to doze.

I saw him in my dreams, albeit briefly.

We were back at my parents’ house, watching snow fall through the doors of the balcony as he held me, his heart beating against my back. His embrace made me feel warm and secure. It was in that moment that I was still running off of the energy and myriad emotions brought on by the wedding. Admitting to him that there was something very real about what I felt, even if I couldn’t name it, relieved me as much as it frightened and thrilled me. Despite any fears, I knew that I longed to be in his arms for as long as possible.

The ringtone and vibration of my phone startled me awake. Out the corner of my eye, I saw my curtains flutter in a cold breeze that made me shiver. The picture of me sleeping on his chest as he smiled smugly into the camera that he set to his contact flashed in front of my eyes. I hesitated to answer.

After a deep breath, I finally allowed his call.

“Cris.”

“Isla—” I closed my eyes and cradled my phone as I kept it pressed against my face. The low, almost melancholy tone of his voice made me long to be back with him where I could happily sleep in his arms. “—where are you? Come back to me.”

The ache I felt in my chest worried me. “I can’t do that, Cris. Not right now.”

“Why not?” The gentleness of his question further agitated that ache that I felt for him.

I reached out to grab a pillow so I could hug it close to my chest. Another breeze snuck in through the open window, causing my skin to prickle with goosebumps even as I turned away.

“What do you want from me?”

“What?” he laughed.

“What do you want from me?” I repeated slowly. “I don’t understand anymore.”

“Isla, you know—” He paused to take a breath, to think just a little more carefully about what he wanted to say. He could take all the time in the world and I’d still wait for him. “I want to be with you for as long as I can, and I want to love you with all that I have. What I want from you is for you to want the same. I want us to be on the same page.”

“I thought we already were.”

“Are we really?” he asked quietly.

I let out a sigh of frustration. “This is why I’m here right now and not there with you. Every time you do this, play this act like you don’t already know how I feel, it hurts me. You know it hurts me and yet you keep doing it.”

“What am I supposed to think when you’ve been so distant lately? You say one thing, but you barely want to be here and you barely ever want to talk to me beyond one or two words. If we’re on the same page, why are you pushing me away like this?”

“Did you even listen to anything that I said? Every single time that we talk, you say something that hurts me! It’s like you don’t even care.”

“I do care—of course I care,” he said quickly.

“Then why do you treat me like you don’t?”

The wind outside started to pick up as the sky released droplets of rain, one by one. My heart began to race as I awaited his response. The inside of my mouth started to dry out the longer I waited. Part of me was glad that we were doing this over the phone and not face-to-face because I didn’t want to see what look he had in his eyes now.

“Is that what you think? Is that… is that how you feel?” He sounded troubled, as if my words were finally beginning to sink in.

I grimaced. “You have this lack of trust in me, and I can’t understand where it’s coming from. I don’t need you to come out and say it, but I know some part of you, for whatever insane reason, thinks I’m somehow going to decide to cheat on you with Sergio no less.”

“Isla—”

“No, Cris, I don’t want to hear you try and deny it again. I know that’s what it is and the fact that you think that I could do something like that is what hurts me. If you really had an issue with me keeping a close relationship with Sergio, why would you lie about it—”

“I wasn’t lying back then.”

“So what changed now?” I demanded. “Why are you suddenly so obsessed with the idea that I would even think of being unfaithful to you? After I told you that all that we talk about is my commitment to you and how I can deal with my feelings for you, you still seem to think that I would… that’s what hurts me. That’s what makes me think that you’re doing this on purpose in order to hurt me.”

“You know that’s not my intention.”

“No, I don’t!” I sat up and moved to close the window as the rain began to pick up. I rested my forehead against the windowpane and shook it slowly. “You do it so often that I can’t believe that it’s not on purpose anymore.”

It was his turn to let out a deep sigh. “I love you and I would never go out of my way to hurt you. I just worry so much about why you can only talk to him and not me. Why is he the one that you think of when you wake up in the middle of the night when you can easily roll over and talk to me about what’s on your mind?

“I don’t mind that you’re friends, but I can’t process the idea that you’re only talking to him about your feelings when you’re whispering over the phone at 3 in the morning. I understand that this is something new to you, but any man would feel uncomfortable with the woman he loved rolling out of bed to talk to another man so late at night instead of coming to him with her problems. It’s not normal.”

“I don’t know how many different ways that I can tell you that you have nothing to worry about. He helps me to get closer to telling you everything that I still can’t tell you right now.”

“That’s still not very comforting,” he chuckled. “Why does it have to be in the middle of the night when that’s the time that I’m meant to have you in my arms all to myself? I don’t like that he’s taking you away from me, even if you’re the one doing the calling. It’s the fact that your first thought is to call another man while you’re in my bed that I can’t wrap my head around.”

“I don’t need you to understand. I just need you to stop treating me like I’m cheating on you when I’m not.”

“Well, when you’re as distant as you have been lately, what else am I supposed to think?”

The ache that I suddenly felt made me clutch my chest.

“You really did not listen to a word that I said, did you?” I spoke softly, trying to hide the shakiness of my voice. “Just… just give me some space, Cris.”

“What are you saying? Are you saying you want to take a break?”

“No. What I’m saying is, if you want me to be that person that would cheat on you, maybe I will.”

I ended the call before he could respond and set my phone down on the bedside table. He could call and call as many times as he wanted, but I refused to answer. I wasn’t going to continue to be treated as though I had been cheating on him all along.

As I watched the rain clear up as quickly as it had begun to fall, I decided that I wasn’t going to stay in and pity myself. I wasn’t sure if I was still in a relationship anymore, but I wasn’t going to just sit here and dwell on it. There was a bar not far from me where I knew I could easily find my comfort in the bottom of a glass or two.

I ignored my phone as it started to ring once again and started pulling clothes out of my drawers. If I was already letting the old me make a comeback, I might as well let her come back fully. I had my mind set on picking up another pack of cigarettes and hanging out in a crowd I didn’t belong in.

For once, I finally felt tired enough to fall asleep at a semi-reasonable time. All the lights were out, and I was just started to get settled in to go to bed when my phone started to vibrate on the table right beside my pillow. At this hour, I knew it could only be one person.

I sat up and grabbed my phone and looked beside me. Even in the dark, I could tell she was sleeping. I didn’t want to risk waking her so I grabbed my phone and got out of bed as gingerly as possible and stepped out into the hallway.

“Isla what is it?”

“I couldn’t do it. I was so angry at him but I just—I still couldn’t do it,” she sputtered into the phone. I could tell that she was drunk by the way she cried and slurred her words.

“Fuck,” I muttered to myself. I walked further away from the door and down the stairs so Pilar wouldn’t hear. “What’s going on? Why are you crying?”

“He just keeps—” She hiccupped and sniffled something incomprehensible in what I assumed was Dutch. “He hurts me. He… he knows that it hurts and he keeps doing it and doing it and I can’t take it, Sergio. I can’t do it. I just want—”

I kept walking away from my bedroom, down the stairs, and into my office. I reached over to turn on the lamp as I sat on the edge of my desk. She continued to rattle off incoherent sentences as I struggled to make sense of what was going on. The more hysterical she got, the more worried I grew. This was something that I had never experienced before, not from Isla.

“Slow down and take a deep breath, Isla, I can’t understand you. You’re not making any sense.”

“I-I went home with this guy and I-I couldn’t do it. I just can’t do it. I’m not that person, even if he thinks that I am. I can’t be that person,” she continued to ramble.

I pinched the bridge of my nose and squeezed my eyes shut. “Where are you? Do you know where you are?”

“No,” she sobbed into the phone, “I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. I’m sorry, Sergio. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be here. I’m sorry.”

I gently shushed her. “It’s okay, you don’t need to apologize to me. Just take a deep breath. Do you know this guy?”

There was shuffling, like something was brushing against the mouthpiece of her phone, and it worried me. She went silent for a while and didn’t respond to me calling out her name. I felt agitated as I scratched my chin and continued to call out her name more urgently.

More shuffling reached my ears before I heard her voice again.

“I’m sorry I dropped it. He’s so nice—he listened to me when I said I couldn’t and he’s letting me sleep in his bed and his dog is so cute—”

“Isla,” I said firmly, “focus. Pay attention, okay? Go ask him for his address. Give him your phone so he can send it to me. Can you do that? I’m going to come and get you.”

“Sergio—”

“Do it right now.”

“Don’t tell Cris—”

“I’m going to be there as fast as I can. I just need you to get me that address. I’m going to come and get you, just sit tight and don’t let whoever you’re with touch you, okay? Send me that address, Isla. You’re going to be fine.”

I had to drill into her head what I needed her to do just a few more times before I felt comfortable with hanging up. I didn’t want to end the call, but I needed to call Cristiano and let him know what was going on. I had no idea what had happened between them, but at this moment, it was the least of my concerns. My main priority was making sure Isla was safe; I couldn’t give a shit about their relationship.

It didn’t surprise me that he didn’t answer this phone at this hour. Still, I was annoyed to have reached his voicemail.

“Sorry to call you so late, hombre, but I’m going to go pick up Isla from God knows where. She called me just now sounding really out of it and I’d thought I’d let you know before I left. If you happen to be up, I’m going to bring her back to her apartment if you want to meet us there.”

I ended the call and turned the lamp off. I rushed back up the stairs, taking them two at a time. When I reached the door to my bedroom, I noticed a faint light leaking out of the bottom of the door. I scratched my head and tried to feel less keyed up before I opened the door, but I was too afraid of what might happen to Isla to even consider what awaited me.

After a deep breath, I pushed the door open and looked straight at Pilar’s scowl before turning away and walking into the closet. She at least waited until I grabbed some sweats and a pair of sneakers before saying anything. I glanced up at her as I pulled the sweats up.

“Why does she always call you so late?” She almost snarled out the question as she emphasized the “she” with distaste.

“I’m not doing this right now,” I said as I slipped my feet into my sneakers.

“Doesn’t she have someone else—”

“Seriously, I’m not doing this. Not right now.”

“So, are you running to her? That’s what you’re doing now? Leaving me, your girlfriend, behind to go save some other woman? Are you her knight in shining armor now, Sergio?”

“I don’t like the way you refer to her with so much contempt.” I looked over my shoulder. “She’s a good friend of mine and she needs help. You might be my girlfriend but she entered my life first. Whatever problem you have with her, I need you to keep it to yourself right now because if something happens to her because I’m here arguing with you?” I threw my hands up and shook my head.

I walked back to my closet to grab a jacket to shrug on. Pilar seethed quietly from the bed we shared as she watched me walk back over to grab my phone. I felt just the slightest bit of relief when I saw that Isla managed to get the address to me.

As I was walking out of the room, I heard Pilar call after me: “You’re in a relationship with me and she’s in a relationship with Cristiano. Remember that Sergio!”

I tried to call Cristiano again on my way out, but I went straight to voicemail this time. Whether or not he got my messages didn’t matter much to me at this point. My main priority was reaching Isla and making sure she was okay.

The drive itself felt longer than it was considering how stressed I was. I tried calling Isla multiple times to let her know that I was on my way, but she didn’t answer either. The longer that I went without being able to reach her, the more worried I grew. That worry only died down slightly when I managed to get buzzed in by whatever clown she found tonight.

When I reached his apartment, I had to hold back from pounding on his door like the police. I wouldn’t be able to calm down until I had Isla with me safe and sound, but grabbing the attention of everyone on the floor wasn’t ideal. Luckily, I only had to ring his bell and he opened the door within a matter of seconds.

“I think you have something that belongs to me.”

His eyes widened with a sense of recognition that I was all too familiar with. “Oh, yeah, right. She just fell asleep.”

I followed him inside to where she had fallen asleep. She was holding tightly onto her phone and sleeping with her eyebrows knitted together. I wish I knew what was causing that pained look on her face.

Before I stepped into the room to wake her up, I turned to this stranger. “Look, thanks for taking care of her and not taking advantage. She’s kind of having a rough time right now and I’d appreciate if this could stay between us.”

Even though I thought I was quiet, the sound of my voice roused her out of her sleep. She sat up and rubbed her eyes as she squinted at me.

“Sergio,” she slurred, “What are you doing here?”

I walked into the room and crouched in front of her. This was my first time seeing her like this and I didn’t like it. She was unrecognizable to me; what I was looking at wasn’t the Isla that I had known for as long as I did. It hurt to see her in such a bad way.

“I’m taking you home, dumbass,” I teased softly. “Let’s go.”

“I can’t see Cris like this—”

I stroked her knuckled with my thumb. “I’m not taking you there. I’m taking you back to your place. Come on.”

She was shaky on her feet, but I managed to get her up and out of the bedroom. I thanked the guy once again and left the apartment altogether. Trying to get her into my car was a more difficult task, but once she was in, she fell asleep again. As I drove, I took a couple glances at her just to make sure she was ok. For the time being, she was, but I wasn’t sure how she would be in the long term. All I knew was that I needed her to be safe.

Isla was in an even deeper sleep when I parked in front of her building. I looked through her bag for her keys and shook my head at the new pack of cigarettes I saw. Whatever happened earlier today set her back on the completely wrong path.

I pressed her keys against my palm and got out of my car. I walked around to the passenger side and gently woke up her so that I could get her inside and into bed.

“Hey.” I gently shook her awake.

She blinked tiredly. “Sergio….”

“Shh, I got you.”

I heard a car door open and shut as I helped her out of the seat. Through my periphery, I saw a shadow move in a familiar way. Apparently, he got my messages after all.

Isla balanced on me as I shut the door once I had gotten her outside. She held on to me for assistance as I walked her to the front of her building where Cristiano was standing waiting for us. He looked between us as she clung to my shirt, mumbling about something neither of us could hear.

He nodded in my direction. “Hey.”

“She’s uh… well clearly she’s had too much to drink but she’s ok.” He was focused on her with his head cocked to the side. He looked troubled, but again, it wasn’t my business. It was the least of my concerns. “You got it from here?”

He accepted the keys from me. “Yeah.”

“No,” she whimpered. “Sergio don’t leave. I don’t want you to leave.”

“You’re fine, Isla. You know he’s going to take care of you.” I hugged her to me and kissed her forehead. “I’ll see you later when you don’t stink or look like shit. I have to get back home but I’ll check up on you later.”

She reluctantly let go and all but fell into Cristiano’s arms. I almost laughed, but I felt too tired to even attempt it. She looked pitiful, but anyone with eyes could see that something painful had to bring her to this point. This wasn’t like her at all.

Before I could walk away, she called out to me, “I love you, stupid.”

I cringed and tried to ignore the look that I saw on Cristiano’s face. Drunk Isla was quickly becoming my least favorite Isla. Whatever was going on, I knew that I had no interest in getting caught up in the middle of it again. I said goodbye to the both of them and got in my car to drive home to a relationship issue of my own that had to be dealt with.

Cristiano silently let the both of us into my building and guided me up to my apartment. Once I was inside, I dropped my bag on the floor and paid no attention to Cris when he regarded me curiously as he picked up the pack of cigarettes that fell out. I stumbled away toward my bathroom and ignored the fact that the room was spinning as I turned on the shower.

I spent a long time under that stream of hot water, letting it wash away everything that I had been holding on to today. If I could cry, I had found the perfect place to do it. I was tired and sick of being drunk and angry with myself.

I was definitely still drunk when I stepped out of the shower and I had to close my eyes as I brushed my teeth to make the room stop spinning. Cris was sitting on my bed, flipping the pack of cigarettes in his hand, when I walked into my bedroom. I ignored him and pulled out the first set of pajamas I could find and put them on.

Even as time continued to pass, Cris said nothing to me. He waited until I crawled into bed and curled up to even move. I just continued to lie there as he stripped down to his underwear and joined me in my bed. This was something that was new; he had never been in my bed and I wasn’t even sure that he had been in my apartment before.

When he draped an arm over me to pull me closer, I rested my hand atop his and closed my eyes.

“I couldn’t—I didn’t do anything,” I said quietly. I was annoyed that my words were still slurred.

“I know. That’s not who you are. I’m sorry I made you do this,” he said into my hair. “I have to work on it. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You frighten me, Cristiano.”

“Why do you keep saying that?”

I slipped my fingers in between his. “Because you do.”

He kissed the top of my head. “How?”

“I feel like I’m losing myself. I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never been hurt before. I just… I don’t like the thought of being without you, but I don’t like the thought of being with you when you act like you can’t trust me. I don’t know how to process this.”

“Why are your feelings something that you’re afraid of?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured. “It feels like who I am, who I know I am, is disappearing.”

“Are you afraid of being in love?” He paused and I heard him swallow loudly. “Or are you just afraid of being in love with me?”

“I—” Even with my eyes closed, I could feel that sting of tears that threatened to fall. “I’m afraid that if I admit it, if I make what I feel real, that I’m going to lose you.”

“Why would you lose me?”

I shook my head. I couldn’t let those tears fall. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not going to,” he said as if he could tell the future.

“You don’t know that. You can’t lie in this bed with me and tell me for certain that we’ll never end up being apart. If you ever broke my heart by leaving me I don’t think I’d survive.”

“Why would I do that?” he asked.

“I don’t know!”

“I wouldn’t—that won’t happen.”

I swiped at my eyes with the butt of my palm. “What if I break yours?”

“You’ll only be able to break it if you don’t let me love you the way that I need to.”

I knew what he needed me to say, but I still couldn’t bring myself to say it, not even with the liquor in my system. I needed him to know the reason why I couldn’t sleep with another man, the reason why I could never feel any desire for Sergio again, but I just couldn’t get those three basic words to leave my lips. I knew that if I couldn’t say them soon, I would lose him, no matter how much he tried to insist otherwise.

[leggiamo]

Ramos arrives in Madrid with the Champions League trophy | May 27, 2018

[leggiamo]

LOL. My favorite thing about you is that you post and go. The go maybe a few months long but you always post. Thank you for always coming back

LMAO

I’m still committed even when life gets in the way, I guess. I feel bad holding on to all these would-be posts that I have written down or saved so I just tiptoe on in and post them and then flitter away. Plus, I have a friend that harasses me so I do it for her. One day I’ll probably just dump everything all at once and then be on my way.

[leggiamo]

Undone, Chapter XII

I see it in his smile.

I see it in his eyes.

I hear it in his laugh.

I feel it when he touches me.

I taste it when he kisses me.

That “it” that I can use all of my senses to recognize is the love that he admitted he feels for me. He doesn’t always need to say it because I know that it’s there, and I still haven’t figured out how to react to it.

Hearing him tell me that he loves me that first time reversed the direction that my world rotated on its axis. Those were words that I never heard uttered by anyone other than family. No one else had even gotten close enough to me for them to even get the opportunity to develop such strong feelings for me.

I thought about this as I watched him walk back and forth from his closet to the bed as he tried deciding on something to wear. Those words were still pinging around somewhere in the back of my mind.

I rested my head on my knuckles and felt a small smile inexplicably creep up on my face.

“All of these look the same,” I teased.

He stopped with one pair of trousers hanging over his arm and gave me an unamused look. “Shut up.”

I laughed and watched him lay the trousers out beside another pair and a few of the shirts he pulled. When he disappeared to look for shoes, I sat up and crawled toward his display. I started to rearrange things to my liking and he just watched me when he came back with a couple of pairs of shoes.

“I like this one,” I said as I folded a black jacket over a white shirt. “It’s classic black and simple. You’ll look like a fine piece of ass no matter who wins.”

“No matter who wins?” he asked with an uplifted brow. “You don’t think I’m going to win?”

I rolled my eyes. “Did I say that?”

I climbed off of his bed and walked over to him. I took the shoes that he had in hand and set them down on the ground by our feet. My arms locked around his waist and I leaned back into his when he mirrored my actions. I could locate a smile in his eyes that I couldn’t see on his face. He gave me two quick pecks when I puckered my lips.

“I thought you already knew that I’m always rooting for you, Ronaldo,” I said with a wink. “Even if you don’t win you’ll still get to go home with me, so technically, you’d still be the winner.”

“Does this mean you’re coming with me, then?”

I remembered not having an answer for him when he first asked me. I remembered the look of disappointment that he tried to hide from me. For some reason, even though we had long since gone public with our relationship and gone out and been photographed together on numerous occasions, going to a highly publicized event with him fucking terrified me.

This still wasn’t a lifestyle that I was accustomed to. I grew up in a cozily crowded house by the sea where it was quiet and all of our neighbors knew each other well.

Here, I experienced none of that quiet closeness. Here, I was his girlfriend who was previously and rather frequently seen with his teammate, my relationship with whom was often the topic of speculation.

I sighed. “Yes, I’m coming with you.”

I saw it in his smile and I could taste it in his kiss. This man loved me and God only knew why.

My stomach was in knots. One loop after the other pulled tightly and looped around over and over again. It was hard to breathe; one minute I was too hot and the next I was fine. Those knots never loosened; all they ever did was tighten.

I watched him get dressed as I sat with my back against the headboard. My hair and makeup were both done. My shoes were already out of my suitcase and my dress was hanging up in the closet on the far side of the room. I basically begged him not to buy me another dress but he insisted.

I wanted to get dressed but I was paralyzed, stuck sinking into the firm hotel mattress as the world seemed to speed up around me with no concern for my moment of turmoil. Even Cris was unaware that I was silently struggling to coach myself through breathing.

Why was I so afraid of showing up at a public event with him? What was so scary about showing up to support him when I had already done it so many times before? The flashing lights and cameras almost never fazed me all those times before, so what exactly was so different about today?

“Isla,” he called softly. “Where are you right now?”

I cleared my throat. Unable to breathe, I choked out, “I don’t know.”

His smile was delicate and his eyes showed understanding; I didn’t stop to consider that he might be nervous as well, even if deep down he already knew what to expect.

He left his bowtie hanging untied around his neck as he abandoned it to come to me. I reached out and tied it for him, though my shaking hands made it more difficult than it should have been. He watched patiently, but I didn’t dare look up to catch his sympathetic gaze.

“Are you nervous?”

I pulled his bowtie tight and nodded.

“Can you look at me please?” he asked. I pursed my lips and slowly let my eyes rise to meet his. “That’s better… do you know why?”

“No,” I sighed.

“Can I make it better?”

I shrugged and he gave a doubtful look. When he raised an eyebrow, I chuckled, “Perhaps. I don’t know; I’m sure I’ll get over it.”

“Yeah? You sure?”

“I’m sure,” I breathed out. “Just let me get into this gown before I freak out too much to go.”

He failed at keeping a poker face as an obviously mischievous idea occurred to him. Before I could scoot away, I was in his arms, being lifted from the bed and set on my feet. He steered me in the direction of the closet and kept a tight arm around my waist as he pulled my dress off the bar. I laughed softly as we walked back to the bed together with awkward steps as he kept me pinned to him.

Once he set my dress down on the bed, he took it upon himself to grab hold of the bottom of my shirt and lift it up.

“Arms up,” he said, his voice quiet but authoritative.

My bottom lip quivered as I held back a laugh. Cristiano kissed his teeth and dropped my shirt to lift my arms above my head. I kept them up as he went back to lifting my shirt from my body.

The heather grey tee dangled from his hand as I reached for my dress. It was black, sleek, and simple with long sleeves that hung off my shoulders; for a last minute purchase, it did the job. He watched my dress, neither a smile nor frown beneath his thoughtful gaze. When we were both ready, we met a hired car downstairs.

Knowing what awaited us when we pulled up to the venue made my heart race. Before he opened the door, Cris kissed my shoulder, then my lips. Unlike before, when we shared that kiss outside of my parents’ house, his kiss didn’t gently warm my cold body and soul; his kiss slingshotted me off into the beyond. I was set ablaze.

He did something to me that was entirely inexplicable.

The entire walk across the carpet, Cristiano held my hand, keeping it from shaking as he intertwined his fingers with mine. Bright lights and camera flashes left my vision spotty, but I did my best not to look overwhelmed in order to give everyone a good enough picture.

It still felt weird to hear people calling out my name after his to get me to look into their lenses as I shook hands with multiple vaguely familiar faces. I accepted customary kisses on the cheeks as I wondered how long it would be before I could sit down and breathe.

As I stood off to the side while photographers got shots of him alone, I tried to keep a soft smile on my face. I looked off to the side and saw Sergio walking up. We both noticed each other at the same time and he winked when he caught my eye, which made me feel slightly relieved.

He walked behind Cris who was having a brief chat with someone on the other side of the barrier.

“You look like you want to bolt out of here,” he laughed as he pressed a harmless hand to my waist.

I watched Cris look over his shoulder briefly as Sergio kissed my cheek before turning away. The way his eyes narrowed slightly, so quickly, before they went back to normal made me feel less at ease once again.

“I’m barely holding it together,” I muttered.

I smiled at Pilar who stepped out from behind Sergio to make sure she was seen. Truthfully, I was still vaguely embarrassed about our first run-in, and the way her eyes seemed to be peering into me as she sized me up told me she hadn’t forgotten. The two walked along after Sergio said something along the lines of, “catch you later.”

Not too long after, Cristiano wrapped up and we continued walking along until, finally, we found ourselves in a calmer area. I took a deep breath and finally relaxed just a bit more despite the fact that he hadn’t said anything to me. Before we actually stepped into the event room, I placed my hand on his elbow.

“Is everything okay?”

He pecked my lips. “Yeah.”

I wasn’t convinced but I didn’t want to push him. We walked in together, but I was disappointed to learn that we wouldn’t actually be sitting together. My anxiety almost bubbled up again until I realized I happened to be seated beside Nagore by utter chance.

“You definitely should have taken those nips in the hotel fridge,” she said, looking me up and down as she shook her head.

I huffed and planted myself in the uncomfortable seat. “I just had Sergio’s girlfriend stare into my soul so I feel a little exposed.”

Nagore looked around carefully. “He actually brought her?”

“Well, they are dating so, yeah. Of course he came with her.”

Something about the face she made actually caused me to laugh. She kept me going throughout the whole ceremony. I was no longer completely nervous, at least not for myself.

When they finally got around to announcing the main event, I crossed my fingers and put my hands under my thighs. I held my breath and waited as a silence fell over the entire room. It was quiet enough to hear someone in the far corner trying to suppress a cough.

I released my breath when it wasn’t his name that was called out.

“Next year,” Nagore whispered to me.

I wouldn’t hold my breath when I wasn’t sure I’d still be around in a year’s time. It’s not that I wanted things to end; I just wasn’t confident that this would last. After all, I still found it hard to believe that I had even made it to a year in a committed relationship. This was nowhere near what I expected to become of my life when I first boarded that plane to Madrid.

I cleared my throat. “Right.”

Everyone started to get up and move about once the ceremony concluded, but I stayed in my seat. Nagore patted me on the shoulder on the way out, but I couldn’t react. I wasn’t going to move until I saw Cristiano. I couldn’t explain why my heart had started to race again or why my palms were growing damp.

It felt like most of the room had cleared out before he came and found me. I tried my hand at a smile to match his but ultimately failed.

Our arms interlocked perfectly as we walked out through a large set of doors. He preferred to keep his silence the entire time until we made it to the after-dinner portion of the night. We were some of the last to arrive, but I still managed to end up beside Nagore once again. Other familiar faces were either at the same table or close by—including Pilar, much to my chagrin.

“I don’t want to look up in case she tries to steal my soul again,” I muttered to Nagore.

In response, she pushed my untouched glass of wine closer to my hand. She raised her eyebrows and waited until I brought the glass up to take a sip. I was sick of only having access to glorified grape juice, but at this point, I’d take whatever I could get.

I caught Cris’s eye over the rim of the glass as he walked toward the table. He had gotten caught up in some small talk when we first walked in and was only just returning to me.

“What are you drinking tonight?” he asked as he wiped the corner of my lips and brought his thumb to his mouth.

My stomach tightened as desire spread from my gut to the apex of my thighs. The tips of my ears blazed when I remembered we were surrounded by others that bore witness to his thoughtless action.

“I couldn’t tell you; Nagore just pushed it into my face.”

We both looked over at her and she shrugged innocently. There was a mischievous, knowing twinkle in her eyes that she tried to hide as she turned away.

“Did I tell you how beautiful you look tonight?” His smirk was telling.

“What did you do?”

“Nothing,” he laughed. My heart beat just a bit faster when he took hold of my hand. “I’m just happy you decided to come.”

He was being genuine; my decision to come meant more to him than I could understand. Somewhere in the back of my mind, the memory of him confessing his love started echoing loudly. How open we were being in front of others made me feel so exposed. He had this brightness in his eyes as if he had actually won that award tonight.

Someone from the end of the table piped up, “Are you planning on sharing Isla with the rest of us now?”

“Nah,” Cris said with a shrug. “I’m a little too selfish for that.”

There were a few laughs that did nothing to make me feel less exposed. I could see the smirk that Nagore tried to hide by taking a sip of her drink. She hadn’t seen us, seen me, act like this around each other before and I could tell she would have something to say somewhere down the line.

I was much more aware of observing eyes when Cris pressed his lips to my temple in a tender display of affection. He was explicitly showing off what was his.

I excused myself from the table to find the restroom. I wanted nothing more at this moment than to be back home, back at my apartment, and in my bed away from Cristiano. I needed a moment to exist in my own domain; I needed a break from him and his love so that I could think clearly.

I needed a break from what I felt when I was around him before it overwhelmed me.

Was that even something that I was allowed? Could I take some time away from the man I decided to commit myself to? This is a relationship, not a work project, but I still needed to take a step back before I got washed away.

As I washed my hands, I took a look at the woman in the mirror. If I had seen this reflection of myself, expensive dress and the glint of being infatuated with a man—one named Cristiano Ronaldo, no less—I’d never recognize her. It made me wonder: was all of this meant to happen or did I take a wrong turn off of the path that I was supposed to follow?

The door swung shut behind me as I stepped back out into the hall.

“Oh, Isla, hang on!” Came the call from over my shoulder.

I stopped mid-step and waited for Sergio to catch up to me. I was surprised he was allowed to walk around without Pilar on his arm while I was roaming about.

“I didn’t say anything before because your girlfriend was literally staring a hole into me, but what in the everloving fuck is going on with your bowtie? Is it supposed to look like that?”

He shrugged. “Yeah.”

I narrowed my eyes at the bowtie’s ends. They looked as though they were supposed to be longer and thinner than they were. “Are you sure?”

He gave me a look of annoyance. “Did you give Cristiano this much shit about what he’s wearing?”

“No,” I said matter-of-factly, “because I picked out his clothes and tied his bowtie for him.”

Sergio scoffed and moved to start walking but stopped himself. By the look on his face, I could tell our conversation was about to head into a delicate place that I didn’t want to go, especially not here.

So, I started to walk away only to have Sergio stop me by gently wrapping his hand around my arm.

“You remember that day I called you in the middle of the night and told you that I missed you?” I asked softly. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Sergio nod. “I do miss hanging out with you and everything, but I especially miss the lack of complication with everything that we did.”

I shook his hand off of my arm and turned to face him. Behind that pensive, vaguely confused look, I knew he actually understood what I meant.

“What are you—”

“We finally had sex and he told me he loved me afterward.”

“Oh, wow,” he breathed, his eyes widening as he processed my words. “Whoa.”

I nodded and started to walk off again. I was aware of how long I had been gone now and I needed to get back.

Before I got too far, I stopped and turned around to face Sergio again.

“Did something happen between you two that day? Xabi mentioned you seemed a little tense around each other.”

“Um—” Sergio scratched his head and looked over my shoulder. “—not quite.”

“Not quite?” I scoffed.

I shook my head and stomped off. If he didn’t want to be straight with me either, fine. I would just have to ask Cristiano after all. And if it turned out that he also refused to give me an answer then… I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d do.

From the angle that I approached the table, Cris was able to see me clearly. And if he could see me, he could also see Sergio. His upturned lips twitched into an almost indiscernible scowl after Sergio stepped out from behind me and directly into his line of sight.

Suddenly, I wanted to be as far away from everyone as possible, including Sergio and the man that supposedly loved me. Seeing as I couldn’t escape at this very moment, I took my seat next to Cris. When Sergio sat down, he took my hand in his and made a show of kissing my knuckles. This time, the gesture didn’t make me blush.

I leaned into him. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he answered, his expression as nonchalant as his tone.

“Really? Because to me it looks like you’re marking your territory like a dog with his balls still intact,” I whispered through my teeth.

I allowed him to continue holding my hand for as long as he needed to flaunt our very obvious relationship. I brooded over my glass of wine, wishing I could replace it with a pint or something a little stronger. For the remainder of the night, I said nothing; when it was time for goodbyes I offered nothing but false smiles and kisses on the cheek.

While he allowed my silence to persist in public, once we were back in the hotel and back-to-back in the bed, he finally spoke up.

“I can’t go to sleep with you mad at me.”

“Who said I was mad?” I snapped.

Judging by the silence that fell between us, I figured he had been taken aback by my tone. A year and some change and I had never even caught the slightest attitude with him. Before now, we hadn’t even gotten into a serious argument. It goes without saying that the only one that had taken the brunt of my anger before now had been Sergio.

“You haven’t said anything in hours and you really just snapped at me.” The mattress bowed under his weight as he turned over. “You don’t even want to fall asleep facing me.”

“Your back was to me, too.”

“That’s not—” He breathed deeply through his nose and softly spoke, “Can you please face me and tell me what’s going on?”

I clenched my jaw as I stared into the darkness. The curtains were drawn in front of the windows but the smallest bit of light still seeped in. I reluctantly turned over to face his silhouette but I didn’t even bother looking him in the face.

“Isla,” he urged.

I sat up abruptly and reached toward the bedside table to turn on the lamp. “Fine. I’m not quite mad, ok? I’m frustrated because no one is giving me a straight answer and you’re acting weird.”

“What do you mean?” he asked carefully, sitting up as well. I could feel his eyes on me but I continued staring straight ahead, flexing my jaw. “An answer for what?”

“What the fuck happened between you and Sergio the other day that made you respond so negatively whenever he and I interacted tonight?”

“Nothing—”

“No,” I interrupted, turning to him as I wagged my finger. “You are not going to bullshit me like that. I understand Xabi not wanting to get involved, and I even vaguely understand Sergio not giving me a straight answer, but I will not accept this shit from you.”

I made a sound of disbelief when I heard him chuckle quietly. He leaned back against the wall and gave me a look of disinterest that made something in me tick.

“I asked him a question and I didn’t like his response.”

“You asked him a question?” I repeated incredulously. “You’re acting all pissy because of the way he answered a fucking question?”

“Aren’t you doing the same thing to me right now?”

My jaw fell open as I laughed out loud. I pushed my hair back as I looked at him with my eyes wide. That same disinterested look was in the shadow of his raised eyebrow.

“Whatever—whoever—this is speaking to me right now I just want to let you know that I don’t like it. You’re supposed to leave this machismo out on the field and not bring it into our relationship—”

“Oh, so we’re the ones in the relationship, right?”

My face screwed up into a look of confusion. “What the hell are you talking about?”

He smiled sarcastically. “I’ll ask you the same thing I asked him: what do you call him to talk about so late at night that you can’t talk to me about?”

“Seriously?” I rolled my eyes. Deep down I knew he would have had a problem with that phone call even if he tried to convince me otherwise. “If it bothered you why didn’t you say something that night instead of fixating on it?”

“Sergio told me you talked about your feelings but I don’t believe that.”

“How is it unbelievable that I talk to my friend about something like that? It’s not like I’ve hidden how I feel from you in any way.”

“Friend—” He nodded thoughtfully. “You know, there’s another question I asked him, and the answer that he gave for it was what I really didn’t like.”

Something about the look in his eyes as he thought back to this moment he apparently had with Sergio made me nervous. At this point, I didn’t know what I expected him to say. What I did know was that he expected me to ask him what that question was, but I didn’t want to open my mouth and find out; I was sure I wouldn’t like what he had to say.

“He just walked away,” he chuckled. “I asked him if he had any feelings for you because it’s not normal to me that he’d be on the phone with you so late. He just said ‘te patinan las neuronas’ and walked away.”

“Why would you—”

He cocked his head to the side. “What do you say to that?” he asked as he narrowed his eyes.

“W-why would I—” I heard myself swallow loudly as I choked on my words. “Why would I commit over a year of my life to you if I had feelings for someone else? I’m here with you because for the first time in my life, I want to be with someone like this.”

His expression softened briefly before he was back on guard. The fact that it felt like he was trying to catch me in a lie actually made me feel something I had never felt before now: hurt. I was terrified of my feelings for him, but I was also terrified of losing what we had because as far as I knew, what we had was something good.

“What else am I supposed to think when you continue to say nothing when I tell you that I love you but you run off to whisper to him on the phone?”

I shook my head slowly. “It’s not—I do—” I took a deep breath and reached over to place my hand on his cheek. “I’m new to this; I’m not even sure if I know what it feels like to be in love with someone. That’s what I talk to him about. Whatever I feel right now is something but I don’t know what to call it which is why I’m afraid to say it back.”

“Isla—”

“I don’t want to lie to you. I think it could be love, but I can’t say it until I know for certain.”

He nuzzled his cheek against my palm. “Why didn’t you just tell me this?”

“You frighten me,” I sighed. “No one has even come close to making me feel like this before.”

There was a gentle smile on his face that made my heart beat a little bit faster in its cage. Perhaps this effect that he had on me was part of what being in love felt like. Logic told me that everything that I felt could only be one thing; everything else was simply a matter of me being in denial. I wouldn’t still be here a year later if it wasn’t some form of love.

“I’ll wait,” he said softly, “but only because I can feel what you can’t use your words to say.”

[leggiamo]

Duplicity — Chapter XXVII

Life was quiet. I went to work, I put on a smile for my kids and my coworkers, and at the end of the day, I went home to release the anguish I hid from others. I was waiting for it to get easier, but I wasn’t sure it ever would. I thought that I prepared myself for the moment that it would all end, but evidently, I was nowhere near equipped for the pain.

For something so arbitrary, time has such a funny way of affecting our lives. I waited for it to pass—I needed, just this once, for it to disobey the rules that constrained it and speed up so that this feeling would leave me quicker. I wanted to be able to say that I survived the pain of giving up some of the most important things in my life. 

Instead of getting easier, it only seemed to get harder. Days that I spent wondering when the pain would subside accumulated into weeks. Those weeks stacked up into months, and like a relentless downpour, the pain continued to wash over me each time I was alone.

I freed him because he needed to be free. I did the right thing for once and it left me irreparable.

Every night I fell asleep alone, wishing I could reach out and touch the empty space beside me and he would suddenly be there. I missed his scent lingering in the sheets. I missed waking up in the middle of the night and hearing his quiet snores go uninterrupted as I brushed his hair away from his forehead.

Aside from my demonstrations for the children, I found that I could neither sketch nor paint. Like him, my creativity was gone from my life like he was my muse and kept me going. I used to be able to close my eyes and see shapes and colors that I could transfer to a medium. Now, when I closed my eyes, all I saw were shades of grey and amorphous patches of black.

The color had gone from my beloved city as well. Memories projected like apparitions each time I walked the streets and wound up somewhere familiar. Even on the sunniest days, the city felt cold to me as if it were rejecting me. My home no longer welcomed me.

On the first month, I stopped wearing my rings on a chain when I was in public. By the fourth month, I stopped wearing my rings before I went to bed. They were safely tucked away in a jewelry box when I realized the only way it would get easier was if I learned to let go completely. My pity parties would have to stop.

And, so, when October came around, I finally accepted Joan’s offer to join him for a night out. Joan was tall and never let his red beard grow beyond stubble. Something about his slightly crooked front tooth made his smile seem charming yet familiar. I liked him because he was passionate about his work and didn’t try to get a scoop about my highly publicized.

“Oh,” he breathed once the door opened. “Wow.”

I chuckled before biting down on my lip with a smile. “What is it?”

“You are… I thought I had seen beauty in the world before now but I was wrong.”

“Oh, shut up,” I laughed. “I just need to grab a couple of things and I’ll be ready.”

I guided him into the small sitting area I called a living room. It took time to find this cozy little place. After that day, I didn’t move out immediately, which made it so much harder. We danced around each other, leaving rooms the other occupied, sleeping in rooms far apart, claiming different bathrooms. 

There was one night, a single night, when things were different. A moment of being drunk off the joy of winning his first league title led to a night of confused complications where we celebrated together, our laughs and jokes genuine and our touches and gazes reminiscent of earlier days.

I looked at the jewelry box on my dresser and sighed before leaving the room. Joan had taken a seat and was scrolling through his phone when I returned.

“All ready.” He looked up from his phone and smiled, which I was happy to reciprocate. 

When we made it outside, I raised a surprised brow at the classic import Joan decided to pull up in; I didn’t take him for a car enthusiast. “You like?” he asked when he noticed how I looked around once we were in the car.

“I haven’t been in a classic since…” I swallowed the bitter taste that built up in my mouth. “We pulled off in an E-Type on my wedding day,” I laughed through the pang of the recollection. 

Joan cast a sad glance in my direction before turning back to the road. He lightened the mood with many years worth of jokes and amusing stories as he weaved through the streets. I enjoyed listening to him as the still warm air scented with the sea breeze blew through the open windows.

Joan’s tales only continued between moments of getting to know more about me as we sat across from each other. Conversing with him throughout dinner was effortless. For that moment while we ate and conversed, I didn’t feel like my world was collapsing.

Our conversation lulled as Joan picked at what was left on his plate and I reached for my drink. I watched a quintet of men carrying instrument cases meander through the tables as I took slow sips of the basil and rum-infused punch. The straw fell from my lips as I watched curiously as they set up on a small stage in the back of the dining room. Other patrons also seemed to be interested as the leader plucked his reed from his mouth to introduce himself and the quartet behind him. 

“Thought you might like enjoy this,” said Joan right as the emcee played a riff on his saxophone.

A slight smile upturned my lips as I listened to the band play swing covers of modern songs, as well as original pieces, livening the atmosphere of the dining room. 

The marriage of the piano and drums to the bass, brass, and woodwind left me fidgeting in my seat. My toe tapped in time with the infectious rhythms as the music flowed through me. I heard Joan chuckle as he wiped his sip of beer from his upper lip.

He spoke over the music, “Looks like you want to dance.” His raise of an accusatory brow wrinkled his forehead.

“If you get tequila in my system I just might.”

“Now, Ms. Indigo, that sounds like something that might get me into trouble,” he chuckled. 

“Only if you let it, Mister Joan.” I dragged out ‘Mister Joan’ and pressed my elbows onto the table, leaning in just a little closer. “Besides, a bit of trouble might be fun.”

I winked as I stood from my seat and sauntered off to the find the toilets. I hadn’t realized I was smiling until I took a look at myself in the mirror as I washed my hands. It was hard to remember the last time I genuinely laughed or enjoyed myself in the way I had been tonight. There was a war brewing in the back of my mind, however, as I tried to stop myself from comparing this to my first date with Cesc. I had to remind myself that this wasn’t the same; this was genuinely two people enjoying a friendly night out.

I wasn’t ready to put myself out there like that again. It was much too soon. 

Before leaving, I did a bit of primping just to touch up what was wiped away while I ate and to boost my confidence. When I pulled open the dark wood door, my smile fell from my face.

Everything around me faded away including the music, which gradually became quieter as if I was walking further away from its source. All the pain, all of my memories—everything I had been fighting to push aside for tonight came rushing back to me. I suddenly felt too hot, too exposed, as the small hallway began to blur as vertigo sent the world violently spinning around me.

Suddenly, going out had become a mistake.

It was all there, written on his face for the quickest of moments before it was gone. The sound of my name coming from his mouth was too much to handle. 

“—I thought that was you—”

I remained paralyzed as I stared at him leaning against the wall, his mouth moving but none of the words making sense. My trance was broken when someone walked between us, and I used the interruption to escape him and everything that I saw tucked away in his blues. I was sure that I heard him call my name again, but I didn’t stop; I had to get back to the table and hope that my smile was convincing enough so Joan wouldn’t probe for information.

“Got you that tequila.” He pointed to a salt-rimmed double shot glass sitting on a small square plate.  

My heart was still racing as I sat down and reached for the glass. Joan watched in wonderment as I downed the entire shot. I could feel the burn of the alcohol tear at my throat as it traveled downward and warmed my chest. I wagged my head and looked out at some of the people that had gotten up to dance.

I forced a laugh. “I’m ready to dance now. As long as you can keep up, of course.”

His hand covered his heart. “Did you just imply that the music teacher couldn’t keep up?”

I laughed more genuinely but it was still rather weak. After a quick, final swig of his drink, Joan stood and held his hand out for me to take so that he could lead me out to a clearing in the room and make me back up my words. 

Unsurprisingly, he kept up with me and showed me some moves that I hadn’t known. I got a good look at the pretty shade of green in his eyes when he pulled me back into him after twirling me outward. Dancing with him actually made me laugh out loud as I enjoyed myself.

“This is perfect,” I uttered as we swayed, catching our breaths, during a break in the music. “I should’ve known you’d take me to a jazz bar.”

His smile was pearly white. “What can I say? I’m a bit of a classic man. And I might have wanted to show you off just a little bit.”

My face felt flush when I remembered that only a few other couples were dancing along with us, but I continued trying to dance it away. The rest of my surroundings became blurred as we did spins and turns and rapid footwork. At one point, our foreheads briefly touched as I wrapped my leg around his thigh and leaned into his hand as I dipped.

“That tequila works wonders on you, I see,” he chuckled as I came back up.

I closed my eyes and exhaled through my nose as our foreheads touched again. “I haven’t had a night out like this in ages. I’m just enjoying myself.”

“I can definitely see that. I’m enjoying you enjoying yourself.”

We both laughed and I let my eyes flutter open. Our movements were still at our own pace, set apart from everyone else. Dancing became something else, something a little more intimate but not necessarily romantic or sexual. It was something between two people who were trying to get to know each other better without any real end goal. I wanted to be free for just one night and this was helping.

“You mind letting a pretty little lady like myself crash at yours?”

His brow lifted. “I don’t usually take strange women home.”

“So I’m a strange woman now?”

He lifted his hand and brought his thumb and index finger so close together that they were almost touching. “Just a little.” He licked his lips and smiled. “So, you want to see my place so soon?”

“Why not? We’re both consenting adults, aren’t we?” He laughed at something he saw behind me—a surprised face, I assumed—as he placed his hands on my hips and guided them in snaking motions. “You don’t wanna cuddle with me?” I teased.

“Hmm… not sure about that one.” His voice was soft in my ear.

“Oh, please.” I pressed closer to him. “I know you’ve been dreaming about it since I started working at the center.”

He gripped me tighter and moved with me. “I’ve had plenty of dreams but none of them actually involved cuddling.”

“Oh, ho ho,” I laughed scandalously. “Are classic men allowed to be so naughty?”

I looked over Joan’s shoulder before he pulled me back in after spinning away from me. I couldn’t stop myself.

He was at a table in the distance, staring out over the petite body of a blonde sitting across from him, facing away from me. As we stared at each other, I wondered how long he had been watching. I felt that ache but I couldn’t look away, and now that he knew I saw him watching, neither could he.

Joan spun us around, breaking me free of the trance that I was in. I could still feel him staring at me, taking in the view of my backside as I moved with the music. 

“So is a sleepover out of the question or not?”

My partner wet his lips. “Are you the one having trouble keeping up now? Two more songs and I’ll give you the grand tour of my place.”

A flash of a smile spread across his face when I agreed to let him flaunt me and his move through two more songs. When our performance was up, we returned to the table so he could pay and to grab our things. When we were all sorted, I followed close behind as he led the way out, my smile gradually fading. Once we were outside, I stood off to the side and waited for Joan to bring the car around. 

“Indigo.” I heard his voice again. I shook my head and refused to turn around. “Indi,” he called softly. 

I bit down on my lip at the first sign of the slightest tremble. My chest felt tight, an all too familiar feeling I’d been experiencing for months. 

“You’re just going to ignore me, then?”

I turned my head and caught his silhouette in my periphery. “Gerard—”

“He misses you, Indi.”

My mouth went dry. “You miss me or he misses me?”

“I’m trying to move on—” He looked around. “Are you seeing that guy now?”

“What do you want Gerard?” I faced him completely, unable to contain the myriad emotions running through me. “Why—”

He pulled me out of view, into the shadows of the restaurant, away from probing eyes. I wanted to collapse and cry out. I wanted to push him away and fight him off, but I simply slumped in his arms, the joy that I was feeling earlier quickly escaping me. 

“Gerard,” I whimpered. His shirt wrinkled in my grip and he said nothing, he did nothing, as I continued to whimper . “Why didn’t you just let me leave? Go back inside with whoever—”

“He misses you—fuck, you already know that I miss you but I can’t—” He pressed his lips together and looked above me, scanning the area around us. “A bunch of us went out and you already know he can’t hold a drink,” he sighed. “He must’ve forgotten… he told me that you just up and disappeared—”

“I did what?”

He shrugged. “He said you were gone when he woke up in the morning. You left without saying anything.”

I scoffed and shook my head. Why would he say it like I abandoned him? 

“I ended our marriage. I had to—”

He ran his hand up and down my back, something that was still so comforting despite our time apart and despite all the pain that I felt.

“It doesn’t matter. He just told me that you left. He woke up and you were gone with barely anything but some signed divorce papers left behind. I never expected you to leave—” He breathed a laugh then bit down on his lip and furrowed his brows. He looked down at me before cautiously continuing, “He told me about the women—some of them. He’s not the same, Indi. He’s different. He mentioned your name once and his eyes just—he needs to see you.”

I shook my head. I couldn’t get the image of him and another woman—other women—together. He was doing all that he could in order to get over me and I was afraid it was breaking him. It was turning him into something that he wasn’t and I didn’t know what to do. 

We couldn’t be together again; he deserved a real chance at happiness with someone who wouldn’t take him for granted. I was afraid that seeing him would break me, but most of all I was afraid that it would break him all over again. 

“We need to be apart in order to heal. You’re ruining that—”

“I’m sorry.” He held me at an arm's length and used his thumb to wipe my cheek dry. “I just saw you in there and I felt something—”

I looked away from him as I reached into my clutch for my vibrating phone. “Hey.”

“Uh, are you okay? Where’d you wander off to?” he asked worriedly.

“Sorry, I’ll be over in just a second.”

I ended the call and finally looked Gerard in the face. There was a blatant sadness in his eyes and a distant look of longing hidden amongst that sea of blue. A pang somewhere deep inside me forced me to look away. 

“I have to go.”

“Remember what I said, Indigo,” he called as I walked away.

Joan was sitting in his car waiting for me. A look of relief washed over his face when he realized I was the one knocking on his window. He was all smiles as I settled into the passenger’s seat.

“Everything okay?” he asked carefully.

I nodded. “Of course.”

He opened his mouth but paused for a moment. His eyes flickered to the side and then back to me. “Are you sure? I just couldn’t help but notice that Gerard Piqué is standing out there looking like he wants to walk over here and say some very intense words to me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said quickly. “Just drive, please.”

He frowned and nodded. “As you wish.”

Gerard and I watched one another as Joan pulled away. I didn’t know what I expected or even wanted to happen once I reached Joan’s, but I knew that I needed just one moment to try and subdue what I was feeling.

I woke up beside Joan, his arm around my waist, the both of us atop his covers and fully clothed. He is as good a listener as he is a cuddler.

The entire mood of our night shifted once we were in his car. Flirting ceased and joking didn’t happen; a word barely passed between us until we were sitting in his kitchen drinking cups of coffee. He opened up first about his girlfriend of four years leaving him out of the blue. I told him Gerard and I go back a ways and that he was trying to act as a lone liaison between me and my ex. Naturally, Joan recognized that my ex was Cesc, but he made no comments.

I sighed and patted the back of Joan’s hand before pulling his arm off of me and sliding off the bed. I sought out the bathroom, and when I was done, I trekked back to the kitchen to pick up my phone. I didn’t really expect to see many notifications, but what I especially didn’t expect to see was a missed call and voicemail from Cesc.

It had to be pure coincidence.

I was willing to think that it was a mistake, a misdial, but once my shaky fingers were able to find my voice mailbox, I saw the message was much too long to just have been a mistake. 

I sat down and pressed play before bringing my phone up to my face. My heartbeat was in my ears as I heard nothing but silence. After a few seconds, there was movement and then there he was.

“Hey—” The sound of his voice, so scratchy from a lack of sleep made my heart race. Every inch, every single tiny molecule that made up my existence missed hearing his voice and yearned for him in that moment. “I, um, I know it’s late. I know we haven’t spoken in so long but I... I don’t know. I just had an urge to call you. I’ve had it for a while but I never found the nerve until now.

“You’re probably sleeping, or you just watched this ring because you couldn’t or—or you didn’t want to answer and I don’t blame you for that. I guess I was just hoping to hear your voice even though I probably wouldn’t have had anything to say, so this is probably for the best, isn’t it?

“You don’t have to call me back. To be honest with you, I probably won’t pick up anyway. I couldn’t pick up. There’s been so much going on that I just—I guess I just miss you even though I really shouldn’t—” There was a long pause and a muffled sniffling noise. It was faint but I could hear him curse to himself. “I’ll be signing those papers for you. I wish you—”

He reached the time limit and probably didn’t even feel bothered to call again and continue what he had to say in another message. This one was more than enough for him; it was more than he could handle.

I was shaking by the time I set my phone back down on the table. I wanted to know what he was trying to say, but I was afraid to call him back. He didn’t sound it, but he must have been drunk. There was no other explanation for him deciding to call me out of the blue. Him having one drink too many was especially more plausible than him reaching out because Gerard told him that he saw me.

I stared off into space for a while, fully aware of each tear that I shed. Something he said just wouldn’t stop repeating in my head. After all this time, he still hadn’t signed the divorce papers that I left for him. He had them and held onto them for what reason? I left my signature so that he could move the process along and be rid of me, but he hadn’t done anything with them. What was he waiting for?

I hiccupped and sniffled quietly as I picked my phone up again and found my call history. My thumb hovered above his name and I almost pressed it. Ultimately, I couldn’t bring myself to call him.

It didn’t matter what Gerard said; Cesc needed the distance. Being apart from me was the best thing for him. He deserved happiness and freedom and so much more than to love an unfaithful joke of a woman.

I turned my phone off altogether and returned to Joan’s room to find him still fast asleep. It felt strange as I crawled back to him and wrapped his arm around me, but for the moment, it made me feel safe; It made it all go away.

“You okay?” he asked sleepily.

“Yeah, go back to sleep. I’m fine.”

I wasn’t fine, but he didn’t need to know that. I closed my eyes and struggled to find sleep again. After struggling for five minutes, I turned around and snuggled in closer to Joan, hoping the comfort of being this close to another person would help me just the slightest bit.

Joan cleared his throat and sleepily asked, “You want to talk about it?”

I blinked as I considered talking it out. The t-shirt that he changed into sometime during the night felt soft against my forehead as I kept it pressed against his chest. He still smelled slightly of the cologne he wore and the combination of it and being this close to him calmed me. It felt as if we had known each other all along.

“My ex called me,” I whispered.

“Oh.” He tried his best to embrace me, which meant pressing me against him and squeezing me with the arm he had draped over me. “What did he say?”

I closed my eyes. His voice was still clear as day.

“He misses me. He called just because he had the urge to. Until now, he hadn’t even signed the divorce papers.”

“Shit,” Joan remarked. Just one word fully conveyed his sympathy and surprise. He needn’t say anything more.

I nodded. “I want to believe that he was drunk leaving me a drunk message, but when he’s drunk he speaks in fragments. Those were all complete sentences that came from somewhere full of pain. When does it get easier?”

I rested my hand on his chest, my fingers clawed as I ran them over the fabric covering his skin. He paused as he mulled over his answer, leaving a quietness to settle that was only penetrated by the sound of his gentle breaths. Before he opened his mouth, his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed.

“Honestly? I don’t know. For me, once that second or third month hit, I missed her a little less and less each day. That was only because I turned that hurt into anger. I thought that if I could be angry then I would be getting over it. I wasn’t. I still thought of her every time a song she loved played, or when I would do something that she used to scold me for like burp loudly.

“I realized that being angry was just another form of hurt that I didn’t let go of until like the sixth month. It might have been earlier than that, but that was when I walked into your classroom for the first time to observe you and I realized that she was no longer on my mind. How could I possibly allow myself to stay hung up on someone who clearly wasn’t meant for me when someone like you exists?”

I laughed, though I didn’t feel uplifted. “You really know how to ruin a moment, don’t you?”

“It made you laugh though, didn’t it?” he chuckled. “So, are you going to call him?”

“I shouldn’t—”

“Look—” He made sure to back away just enough so that he could move his arm and place a finger under my chin. The touch was enough to make me angle my head so that we could see each other’s faces; a comforting smile softened his. “—it’s really not my place, but we’re already here so I might as well. I don’t know the full details and I don’t need to, but if what you’re doing right now isn’t working for either of you, maybe it’s time to try something else to get that closure you need. He called you for a reason so find out what that reason was.”

I stared at his lips as he spoke because I didn’t want him to see the vulnerability in my eyes. He could probably still see it written all over my face anyway. I wanted to be able to let go, but something in me was still holding on as tightly as it could.

“Why do I feel like I’ve known you forever?” I muttered more to myself than to him.

“Maybe we’re actually soulmates finally reunited in this life,” he said in jest.

My eyes closed as I smiled and let my head rest against his chest once more. There was a time when I entertained the idea of my soulmate being out there, and I truly thought I had found mine until I realized that I was wrong.

[leggiamo]

Undone, Chapter XI

I sighed as I rolled out of Cristiano’s arms. He was fast asleep with the sound of muted snores escaping him each time he breathed in. A few of his sleep-tousled curls fell to his forehead and I couldn’t resist brushing them aside.

The clouds cleared away, unleashing the moon’s light which turned the room a hue of blue. I finally realized that I couldn’t ignore what I felt, especially when I felt it even as I watched him sleep. He was carving out a space for himself in my heart and I had no idea what to do. After years of dodging commitment and feelings, I didn’t know if I was ready to accept that I was beginning to fall for him. I felt blindsided by something that was so unfamiliar to me.

Moments that we shared during our brief visit to Portugal were… special. They were different from what they usually were when we were together. It turned out that I was more nervous about him meeting my family than I was when I realized I was going to be meeting his. There were times when I would look up while I was talking with his mom or playing with Junior and catch him watching with a smile that was only in his eyes.

While we were there, I thought about the feelings that had been afflicting me for some time now—the feelings that I admitted, out loud, did exist. I still couldn’t say that falling meant that I was falling in love, but I was definitely falling into something.

I looked away from the windows and back at Cristiano. Both trips changed him. He stared a little more often, held me a little longer, and he let his lips linger just a little more than he used to. Things as simple as sitting together in silence seemed to leave him more content than before.

I bit down on my lip and gingerly crawled out of the bed. This was my third night sleeping here, in his bed, in one of his shirts and a pair of his underwear because I still didn’t return to my apartment even though I ran out of clean underwear of my own on the second day.

Cristiano turned over onto his side, his sleep uninterrupted, as I grabbed my phone from the bedside table. The screen lit up, revealing that it was exactly 2:30 in the morning. I had still been trying to quit, but if I was home, now would have been a perfect time for me to have a cigarette. I couldn’t sleep and I was stressed.

The door opened silently and closed just the same as I stepped into the dark hall. Small lights along the baseboards glowed faintly but gave off just enough light for me to be able to see where I was going.

It was a bit too chilly for me to comfortably sit outside, and if I sat in the kitchen I would be too tempted to eat whatever I could find. So, I settled into the couch in the family room that was a little more isolated from the rest of the house.

I frowned as I unlocked my phone and took a gamble. The line rang and rang, and surprisingly, I got an answer.

“Do you know what time it is?” he asked, feigning annoyance.

“I can tell by the sound of your voice that you weren’t sleeping, Sergio,” I laughed quietly. I grabbed a pillow to squeeze between my knees as I settled onto my side. “I know you’re happy to hear from me again, you don’t have to pretend.”

I could hear him moving. “What’s keeping you up?”

“I’m suffocating—” A forced breath of annoyance registered from his end. Before he could say anything, I continued, “I’m just not used to this, okay? I don’t know how to handle this and I’m still thinking about the ring even though I know what it isn’t. You know I’m new to this.”

He snorted. “Are you really still hung up on that ring? I still don’t understand the issue with him buying you jewelry. He didn’t propose, Isla.”

“Yeah, I fucking know that,” I snapped. I breathed in and out. “The way he just presented it to me and what he said implied that there is a ring or he’s been thinking about getting one.”

"Right. So, hypothetically speaking, what would you do if he did end up asking you, though?”

I bit my thumb. “I’d have to say no.”

“Wait, what?“

“I can't do that level of commitment, Sergio. I’m not ready for that and I don’t know if I ever will be. I can barely handle knowing that something in me feels so much better when I’m around him. I can’t say I’m falling in love but I’m scared that this is what it feels like.”

“When do you decide to stop running?” he sighed. “I know that this isn’t your ‘thing,’ but when are you going to at least give it a real shot. When is the thought of actually loving someone going to stop scaring you?”

I turned around so that my back was to the rest of the room. Sergio was waiting patiently for an answer that I was reluctant to give because I got the slightest feeling that he wasn’t going to like it. I didn’t call him to be lectured about my feelings as if he knows me better than I do. I just wanted some support.

“It’s not,” I said simply.

“Isla—”

“It’s just not going to happen, Sergio. The thought of it is just fucking terrifying, alright? I don’t want to be one of those people who falls in love and gets so comfortable that they end up losing themselves if it ever ends. Committing has been hard enough for me, but that? I don’t know if I can be that person that can be perfectly fine with being in love.”

The sound that he made resembled a laugh but it lacked the element of humor. “I don’t know what to tell you, then. Why are you still with him if you can’t let yourself be in love? You think you can just sit still and he’s not gonna fall in love with you if he hasn’t already? It doesn’t work like that.”

“Oh, because you’re the relationship expert now, aren’t you?”

“Why do you always have to do that Isla? Why do you shut down or go for a personal attack?”

I closed my eyes and tucked my knees into my chest. He sounded tired and just slightly hurt and that wasn’t what I intended to happen when I got the idea to call.

“I’m sorry.”

As silence settled, I was revisited by a gnawing that I had been feeling for a while. I threw out my last pack of cigarettes after the wedding, and ever since, I walked around with a constant need to rest one between my lips and light it.

“Sergio, I miss you,” I muttered.

He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “I’ll talk to you later, alright?”

“Yeah, sure,” I sighed.

I was left to lie in the quiet room with Sergio no longer on the line. It was just me, my memories, and my worries left alone in the pitch black. All that I wanted was to hold on to myself. Where was the harm in wanting to retain my identity when I had seen so many others lose theirs?

I flinched at the sound of his voice.

“What are you doing out here?”

I turned over and watched him approach. “I was on the phone.”

“With?” He asked as he settled in next to me. His eyes were barely open.

“Sergio,” I said as I felt his arm tighten around my waist.

“Sergio?”

“Yes, Sergio. I couldn’t sleep so I called Sergio, my friend.”

“You didn’t want to talk to me?”

I gave an exasperated sigh. “You were sleeping. Does it bother you? Because it shouldn’t.”

His shoulder rose and fell in a half-shrug before he locked our legs together. I snuggled into him, pressing my head into his chest, taking in the smell of his warm skin.

“I didn’t say that it did.”

“That’s not how it sounded to me.”

He didn’t say anything. We just lay together in the dark with his fingers stroking the small of my back. I understood his discomfort. It was the middle of the night and I crawled out of his bed to call another man. I would be bothered if he slipped away while I was still asleep to call someone he used to have sex with.

But at the same time, it was different. Sergio was my only friend out here that I could talk to about this relationship that I allowed myself to fall into. He knew my qualms and he knew Cristiano as more than just his public image. We shared something more than just a sexual history.

“I’ll mind my business,” he chuckled quietly.

I looked up and found myself gazing directly into his eyes. I felt my heart begin to race as it liked to do these days. It was hard to tell if it was because of how I was beginning to feel, or if I saw something in his eyes that made me nervous.

“What do you want from me?” I whispered.

His brows furrowed over his sleepy eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Why am I here, with you, instead of anybody else?”

His lips pressed gently against my forehead before he started tracing circles on my skin. My palms began to grow damp the longer I waited to hear his voice. I knew my heart was still racing, but it had become something similar to background noise now that I had gotten used to it.

“I want you here. I like to think you want to be here.” The corner of his lips lifted so slightly, I could barely notice it in the dark. “I don’t have the words, Isla. I just like being with you for reasons I can’t explain.”

I swallowed loudly before I accepted his kiss. Whatever words he couldn’t find, his kiss found for him. I could feel his need for me, his need to have me here, where he could unmask and be himself. I wasn’t sure who I was when I was with him anymore; I felt vaguely like myself but something was always different.

Who I was with him was unlike who I was with anyone else.

“Can you come and try to sleep now?”

I stroked the tip of his ear with my thumb. “I can try.”

I watched him as he pulled away and stood up. It was chilly outside but he considered it warm enough in here to sleep without a shirt. I had no intention of complaining if that was his prerogative.

I struggled to keep my laughter quiet when he scooped me off the couch and into his arms. He carried me through the house bridal style with a smile on his face. It was during these late hours of the night when his smile seemed the most genuine. These were the moments that made something start to change; these moments made me begin to feel something more than an innocent curiosity.

Without even allowing me the chance to protest, he dropped me and I hit the mattress with an impressive bounce. Trying to stifle his laughter caused him to snort.

I rolled over when he lowered himself onto the bed, but he pulled me close to him, keeping my back pressed against his chest. He pulled the blanket over our bodies and I relaxed in his arms. I could feel his chest rise and fall with each breath he took. I subconsciously tried to match each of his breaths.

As we settled in, I slipped my fingers in between his where they fit perfectly. His lips faintly kissed the back of my neck, causing goosebumps to prickle my arms and legs.

Nights weren’t as lonely when we were together. His bed was much too big for one person alone, and mine was too uncomfortable without an extra body, his body, to share it with. I never minded sleeping alone, but now that I knew what it was like to sleep with him, I hated it. I was quickly turning into the opposite of the person that I used to be.

“Cris?”

“Hmm?”

I bit my lip. “I don’t recognize myself when I’m with you.”

“Is that a bad thing?” he asked after a moment’s hesitation.

“I… I don’t know. You just give me something that makes me feel things that I can’t explain.”

I didn’t know why I was being so open but I couldn’t stop myself. When I opened my mouth to say something, I expected to hear my voice come out but I heard his instead.    

“You make me want to be better, you know. Every time I wake up now I feel luckier than I did the day before.”

“You are lucky,” I joked quietly.

“Oh, I know.”

It didn’t take long for me to doze off. We were in the middle of a conversation about absolutely nothing at all when I fell into a deep sleep. The sound of his voice acted as the perfect lullaby.

When I woke up, he was gone. Our little vacation from the world was over as the season was beginning to resume. Maybe spending more time away from him would help me to clear my head and fully understand what I was feeling.

The minute I stepped into my apartment and set my bag on the floor, my phone started to ring. I groaned before digging through the mess of clothes haphazardly thrown into the large tote.

“Hello?” I answered once I found it.

“Isla!” Nagore sang into the phone. “I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever. Get over here!”

“Um, it’s good to hear from you, too, Nagore. How are you? Because I’m doing pretty well, thanks.”

She scoffed, “We can do all of that pretending to care stuff when you get here. Hurry up!”

The call ended abruptly, leaving me staring at my phone with a deadpan expression. I don’t know how I could have possibly forgotten how that woman was but I managed it.

I sighed and headed toward my bedroom so I could change into a clean pair of jeans and a sweater and grab a different jacket. Not heading over to Nagore’s wasn’t an option because I knew she would only call and call until I showed up. And if I didn’t answer, chances were she would probably find her way over to my place.

Once I was changed and slipped into a comfortable pair of sneakers, I headed back out and made the drive to the house she and Xabi chose for their family. The door was unlocked when I arrived as if she just knew that I would come immediately after her call.

“Isla? Hang on, I’m on the toilet!” she shouted from somewhere inside of the house.

“Great,” I muttered to myself.

I closed the front door and left my jacket on the coatrack before walking further into the familiar home. Just by looking around I could tell Nagore consulted Xabi very little when it came to decorating. I’ve seen his tastes and most of the house did not match.

I was grabbing a glass out of the cabinet when Nagore came rushing into the kitchen.

“Hello Isla!”

I pressed my glass against the dispenser built into the freezer door. “Did you just pee on that?”

Nagore nodded and showed me the pregnancy test in her hand. “Xabi and I are trying again. Do you know how hard it is to squeeze in this much sex with our schedules and two kids?”

I choked on the small amount of water I had in my mouth. My face subconsciously screwed up in response and Nagore rolled her eyes as she walked past me, the peed-on piece of plastic on display in her hand.

“That’s not a mental image I ever needed of the two of you.”

“Please! No one said a thing about you and Sergio being so open with whatever it was you two were doing at the time,” she huffed. She cast a sidelong glance in my direction. “Or you and Cristiano for that matter.”

I shook my head. “Not that it’s any of your business, but we still haven’t had sex, thank you.”

I heard something clatter to the ground as I took another sip of water. Once I lowered the glass, I looked to the floor where I saw the pregnancy test lying on its face. I allowed my line of sight to gradually climb higher until I reached the surprised expression on Nagore’s face. At the sight of it, I rolled my eyes.

“Why do people keep acting like it’s so surprising that I can abstain from sex?”

“Are you kidding?” Nagore asked with an incredulous laugh. She bent down to pick up the white stick and placed it on the corner of the sink. “You thrive on sex, Isla. It doesn’t make sense that you haven’t had sex with him yet. Who is this standing in my kitchen right now?”

“Maybe I just want to do this relationship thing properly. I don’t really know what I’m doing here, alright?”

“Fine, fine.” She raised her hands in surrender and smiled. “I’m joking with you, Isla. You’re clearly enamored with the man so you’re taking it seriously, I get it. I’m proud of you.”

“Enamored?” I choked out. “Come again?”

There was a soft look that came to her eyes that matched her equally soft smile. It was as if she knew something that I didn’t—something that she managed to learn in the few more years she had been on this earth compared to me.

“Well, what else could it be? You’re clearly working so well on a purely emotional level. The two of you have been together for what, a year and some months? You can’t tell me you’re not falling for him, not when you’ve been together for this long,” she laughed.

I stayed quiet and traced the rim of the glass with my thumb. Was it really that obvious? I didn’t want to believe I was holding back from something that I always craved, something that came naturally to me, because I was satisfied with just an emotional connection on its own. I didn’t do emotionally involved relationships. Those were always foreign concepts to me.

“How do you even know when you’re…” I struggled to find the words for what I wanted to say. I bit my lip and asked, “When do you know if it’s actually… something?”

There was a tender, knowing smile on her face now. “At first, they’re all that’s on your mind when you first wake up or right before you go to sleep. You miss them even if you’ve only been apart for a minute. It hurts to be with or without them, but after a while, you start to feel comfortable. They become something like the best friend you’ve been searching for your whole life. It won’t be about being all over each other all the time; it’ll become all about just enjoying life with them.”

Was any of that even something that I wanted for myself? Especially with Cristiano? I refused to believe that that was what it felt like to fall completely for someone. It made me wonder how anyone could be satisfied with that.

“I’m not sure that’s what I’m feeling.”

“It could be different for you,” she said with a shrug. “I can’t tell you how you feel about him, of course.”

I nodded and brought the glass up to my lips. I watched as she checked her phone and then glanced at the test. A disappointed sigh escaped her and she threw the test away. When she turned back to face me, there was a smile on her face. She just found out that she wouldn’t be getting exactly what she wanted, and yet, she was still able to find a way to smile.

“Guess we just have to keep trying,” she chuckled. “Enough of that now. Have you met Sergio’s new girlfriend yet?”

I laughed out loud. “Sort of. Have you?”

“Sort of?” she queried. A raised eyebrow temporarily wrinkled her otherwise porcelain skin. “Explain. She’s so peculiar to me.”

“Her tastes aren’t my thing but then again, neither were Sergio’s—”

“Oh, please! You liked his tastes enough to—”

“Shut up! Look, I didn’t really talk to her, but she must not like me considering she walked in on me in Sergio’s room, sitting on him, while he was basically half-naked.”

Nagore’s head was tilted, her eyes were wide, and her mouth was agape. I could see her trying to form the words with her lips but she was too taken aback to even find the sounds that went with the movements. If I could laugh I would have, but reliving the moment still made me cringe too much to even make light of it.

“S-sitting on Sergio? Who was what now?” she finally managed to spit out.

Recalling the exact moment Pilar walked into the door made my skin crawl. I had never seen her before, nor did I have any idea of what her personality was like, but I didn’t need to know in order to know what she must have thought of me in that moment.

“Look, in my defense, I didn’t even know she existed. Sergio was half-naked on his bed, I was sitting on him and massaging his back, and she just walked in. Maybe I crossed a line there but—” I shrugged and widened my eyes. “—I figured it would be okay? It was just a massage, you know?”

“She didn’t do anything when she walked in on you rubbing your hands all over him?”

I shook my head. “They talked while I was downstairs, but she hardly even reacted. I would have freaked out on someone.”

Nagore pursed her lips. “I told you she’s peculiar.”

It was relieving to be able to chat with someone who wasn’t Sergio or Cristiano, even if that person was Nagore. For the remainder of our conversation, I tried to keep the topic off of myself and my relationship as often as possible. Not talking about it didn’t stop my mind from wandering to thoughts of Cris and what I felt when I was around him.

Did I miss him when we were apart for even a short period of time? What did it even feel like to miss someone that wasn’t family or a close friend? Even when I was trying to distance my thoughts from him, he still managed to invade all four corners of my mind.

“You know what,” I said to myself more than Nagore. We were up in the playroom now with Jon and Ane who woke up from their naps while we were conversing. “I think I’m gonna head home, grab something cute, and go right back to Cristiano’s. I can’t believe I’ve held out for this long.”

Nagore stopped blowing raspberries on Ane’s belly and smiled down at her as she tickled her instead. “I can’t believe you held out for this long,” she commented without looking up or making her smile fade away. “You at least, you know, right?”

I looked over at Jon as he busied himself with his abacus and animal figurines. Nagore glanced up at me as I shook my head and her eyes widened.

“Seriously?”

“Not a singular orgasm since Sergio,” I muttered.

“You need to leave and change that right now.” She managed to sound horrified while keeping a smile on her face.

I stood up and stretched my legs. “I’ll let you know how it goes.”

I said goodbye to Jon and Ane and promised Nagore that I would watch them the next time she needed me to. Just as I was leaving, Xabi was coming back in. I expected to greet him and quickly leave, but he stopped me just as I started putting my jacket on.

“Um, Isla?”

“Yes, Xabi?”

He frowned as he asked, “It’s really none of my business, I know, but did something happen between you, Cristiano and Sergio?”

“No? Not that I know of?”

He nodded but his face remained stern. “I was just asking because they seemed a little tense around each other at practice.”

I tried to think of a reason, any reason at all, that could make them act like that, but I couldn’t come up with anything. Everything seemed fine between them the last time I checked. As much as I wanted to brush it off as Xabi reading the situation incorrectly, I couldn’t. He wasn’t usually one to go out of his way to make something up.

“I’ll ask Cris about it, I guess.”

“No, no,” he dismissed my suggestion. He frowned and waved his hands. “Don’t worry about it. I probably misread it.”

I shrugged. “If you say so. I’ll see you later, then.”

He saw me to the door and closed it after me. I shivered and quickly shuffled to my car where I tried to call Sergio, but got sent straight to voicemail. What Xabi said didn’t sit right with me, but I wasn’t sure how I would even begin to bring it up with Cris. I sighed and drove back to my place only to grab more clothes.

When I was on my way to Cristiano’s, I decided to call him.

“Miss me already?” he answered after a few rings.

“A ‘hello, darling’ would have sufficed, you know.”

My stomach knotted at the sound of his laugh. “Hello, minha princesa, meu amor—”

I gagged, which caused him to laugh more. I knew what he was saying was in jest, but hearing him say ‘meu amor’ made my stomach twist into a tighter, more intricate knot.

“Are you home?” I asked when my nerves settled.

“If you’re on your way over now I’ll probably get there after you.”

I smiled slightly. “I’ll be waiting then.”

Unsurprisingly, I managed to beat Cristiano there. Some time ago, he gave me the code to the gate and a spare key for moments like these. It was just myself and his chef, whom I politely declined a meal from before walking straight to Cristiano’s room. I ran myself a bath and relaxed in the hot waters, losing myself to my thoughts for a while.

My original plan was to get out of the bath and change into something a little sexier before he got back, but when I walked back into the bedroom, he was sitting at the foot of the bed taking his shoes off.

He watched me walk over with a sneaker in his hand and an eyebrow raised. I walked around him without a word and climbed onto the bed where I lay with my back against the headboard. He glanced over his shoulder and watched me cross my legs.

“Are you trying to seduce me?”

I pulled my lip down slightly with my fingertip. “Is it working?”

He gave a breathy laugh as he shook his head. My heart rate increased as I watched him crawl toward me. I shivered at the feeling of his hands on my legs and gladly allowed him to spread my legs just enough to give himself space between them. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears when he rested his head on my knee.

“What’s this?” he breathed. His fingers trailed up my thigh, leaving goosebumps in their wake. One finger ran across a skinny streak of raised skin that was lighter than the skin surrounding it.

“You never noticed it?”

“I haven’t had my face this close to your thigh before,” he laughed before kissing the scar.

I shuddered at the sensation. I remembered the only other person to have buried their face between my thighs recently had been Sergio. Except, when he asked about it, I was too busy trying to focus on breathing to give him the real story.

“A girl stabbed me,” I explained nonchalantly.

His head shot up. “You say that so… as if getting stabbed isn’t a big deal.”

“I mean, it did hurt,” I chuckled. The look of horror on his face made me want to laugh again, but I held it in. “Actually, I didn’t realize it at first because of shock but once I pulled the knife out and threw it I couldn’t stop screaming.”

“Well, yeah… you were fucking stabbed.”

I reached out and ran my fingers through his hair. “It could have been worse; she could have gone for some vital organs or my neck.”

“How are you explaining this like it’s something normal?” He shook his head, but he couldn’t stop the corners of his mouth from twitching upward. “What did you do?” he asked.

“Why did I have to do something to get stabbed?” I scoffed.

He gave a look. “Isla.”

I rolled my eyes and interlocked behind my head. Cristiano was holding onto my thighs still, and every so often, he would kiss a different spot of my skin as if he was trying to coax the answer from me. Shivering was an involuntary reaction to the presence of his lips.

“It was just some petty bullshit over her boyfriend. Honestly, I didn’t even fuck him. He just... kind of went down on me and I didn’t let him stop until his jaw got tired,” I said quickly and quietly.

Cristiano laughed loudly and crawled up so that his face was level with mine. I found amusement in his gaze as he leaned in to connect our smiles. When he pulled away, he bit down on his bottom lip and shook his head.

“I knew you were trouble,” he teased. “But now it makes sense.”

“What does?” I questioned. He kissed my lips again before leaning in to kiss my chin. I breathed a laugh and tilted my head back so he could kiss my neck. “Cris?”

He didn’t answer. He just continued to kiss my neck. I felt his fingers wrap around the towel and loosen it a bit. His lips left a warm, wet trail from the left to the right of my collarbone. A dissatisfied sigh left my lips when he pulled away, but my breath quickly hitched in my throat when his lips were suddenly on the soft skin of my thigh.

“It makes sense,” he repeated softly while bending my legs. “She—” He kissed my thigh again. “—was—” Again, but higher now. “—aiming—” Higher. “—right—” To the left. “—here.”

I gasped and the muscles in my abdomen tensed.

“How long did you have that poor boy trapped here?” The voice he questioned me in a voice was low and suggestive.

“I-I don’t know,” I whispered. “A good while, maybe.”

“I don’t think I’ll need as much time as he did.”

A whispered, “oh my god” escaped my lips when he scraped the inside of my thigh with his teeth. I could feel heat radiating from the apex of my thighs as he crawled his fingers up the outside of my thighs to my hips. He bit again and pushed the towel up, leaving me entirely exposed to him. There was a look of insatiable hunger in his eyes as he pulled at my legs, causing me to slide down so my head was on his pillows.

His first taste of me was enough to make me lightheaded. My body was so eagerly receptive to each lap of his tongue, to the gentle suction of his lips, to every stroke of his fingers. It had been so long since I experienced a touch like this and it made every inch of me tingle.

Each time I would try to bite down on my lip to silence myself, he would reach up with a finger coated with my own juices, and release my lip from my teeth. My body felt weak as I entered a state of euphoria. I lost control of my own tongue and gibberish spilled from my lips.

When he crawled up to give me a taste of myself, I could feel his eagerness press against me. With trembling hands, I reached between our bodies and quickly worked on freeing him from his jeans. He only managed to get his shirt off before I started stroking and guiding his length into my warmth. I couldn’t wait any longer for him to get undressed.

After a year of deprivation, we were almost too eager. It wasn’t romantic, but I didn’t want it to be. It was raw, it was rough—it was exactly what I needed. He tried to pull away to undress, but I gripped and scratched at his shoulder and back in protest, causing him to grunt loudly.

“Isla,” he whispered roughly.

I shook my head fervently and locked my legs around his hips, forcing him deeper. He cursed repeatedly and pressed his forehead to mine, bringing our lips together in a sloppy kiss. He fed off of the energy I was giving him and thrust his pelvis forward, driving deep into me, causing my eyes to roll back.

I could barely make a sound as I felt his tongue roll over the skin of my neck. He lifted one hand off the mattress to fully open my towel and flash his thumb across my nipple.

“Fuck,” I whimpered as my legs trembled. They started to slip from his hips, but he used his free hand to catch my left leg and keep it wrapped around him.

His mouth was at my ear, biting my earlobe as he muttered complete filth to me. I was struggling to maintain my hold on him but he wouldn’t allow me to let go. I gasped loudly as my body shuddered. It didn’t even matter to me that it was over as quickly as it began. The aftermath made it feel as though it lasted for hours.

After purposely holding back for a year, I was satisfied with finally breaking that seal.

Cristiano pulled away from me with a confused expression. “I...”

“Shh.”

He collapsed beside me and we both stared up at the ceiling while panting. I started to laugh and he turned onto his side to look at me with questioning eyes. I could only shake my head and continue to laugh.

“I’m okay,” I said between giggles. “I just... this was... this is why you don’t wait this long.”

“I didn’t picture it happening like this,” he laughed along. “You didn’t let me take off my jeans.”

“I’m sorry. I just couldn’t wait anymore.” I rolled over and kissed him quickly.

A smile took over the same lips I just kissed. He shook his head out of amusement and brushed some of my hair to the side. Even now, when I was sweaty and smelled of sex, he was giving me that look. My heart started to race again.

“Isla—”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

He chuckled. “I just have to tell you now, I guess. I love you, Isla.”

It was as if the entire world just came to a screeching halt. Deep down, I knew that it would be coming, but I didn’t expect a long overdue quickie to be the catalyst. I was unable to move even my lips to force a smile. The only thing that offered me relief was that he wasn’t even looking to hear it back. He just looked like he was happy about getting something off of his chest, and I didn’t want to risk ruining that.

He started to say something else to me, but all that I could hear over and over again were those same four words: “I love you, Isla.”

[leggiamo]

Duplicity — Chapter XXVI

Holding someone’s heart in your hand is an honor. It’s a sign of ultimate trust. They trust you to care for it, to be delicate with it, to treat it as though it were your own heart beating in your chest, keeping you alive. Holding on to such a fragile part of them becomes the reason you keep going each day.

Their heart beats for you and yours for them. You live for each other. Your lungs breathe for them and your thoughts become theirs.

When you intertwine, you lose yourself in them; you lose the ability to tell where they end and you begin. Existing as a being separate from them is unfathomable; you can’t remember a time when you walked the earth alone—when you lacked a complete connection with another soul.

To have that—to give yourself completely to one person—is a state of being that is indescribable. To throw it away is a heinous rejection of the ultimate gift.

And I was the fool who threw it away.

He handed me his heart to hold, to cherish and protect, and I crushed it, burned it, and shredded it to the point of being unrecognizable. Where I once held a warm physical embodiment of his soul, I now open my hand to reveal an empty palm. A cold, empty palm.

And yet, he still has my heart in his hand—at least, he holds part of it—and I’m not entirely sure that he actually wants to continue to carry that burden.

“I’m going to lose you, aren’t I?” I asked him, knowing all too well that he couldn’t hear me.

It surprises me how he sleeps so soundly, without even the slightest flinch from a night terror, even though my sinning flesh lay beside his each night.

He manages to hide his feelings from me and the rest of the world so expertly. He’s a different person when we’re around his family. That sparkle, though slightly dulled in only a way I can recognize, returns to his eyes. His smile, though more modest than usual, returns if only for a second. His fingers are still as soft as I remembered, and the feeling that rushes through me when they brush innocuously against my skin is jolting for different reasons than before.

The second we are out from under the observant gaze of those ignorant to our silent struggle for recovery, he becomes someone else. I can see that he’s fighting some inner turmoil, and every day I yearn to know the result. It’s a conflict similar to the one I’ve seen before in a different pair of eyes.

Trying to rebuild has been an arduous effort. At times, it feels like we’re pretending to be people we no longer are. I catch myself wondering if it was even worth trying to hold onto something so fractured, so damaged, that it seemed beyond repair. I was tip-toeing around him lately, choosing my words carefully and policing my own actions, just to be the woman I thought he would want me to be.

I can see a change in the way he looks at me sometimes these days, but I can never decipher exactly what it was that I was seeing in those eyes. Our arguments never last long but they have become more frequent. I feel his frustration just as much as I hear it in his voice. It makes me wonder whether he’s just going to give up and change his mind.

I sighed and brushed away the hair gathering at the peak of his forehead before turning around and forcing myself back to sleep.

Something jolted me awake. Even in my haze of confusion, I was able to tell that Cesc’s side of the bed was empty. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and looked around the room, trying to determine what roused me out of my sleep.

It was the doorbell.

I yawned loudly and ambled out of bed, rubbing my vision clear as I walked down the stairs. I yawned again before opening the door.

It was 9 AM on a Sunday and Gerard was on my doorstep. We stared at each other at a loss for what to say. I panicked and the door shut with a loud bang.

“Indigo,” the muffled call came from behind the door. “Indi, he knows I’m coming. It’s okay.”

That didn’t make sense. Cesc wasn’t here. Why would he leave when he told Gerard to come so early on a Sunday?

I could hear him call out to me from the other side of the door again, but I couldn’t move. I didn't want to move. I hadn’t seen his face or heard his voice in so long. What troubled me was my inability to tell if the tears that prickled my eyes were caused by confusion and sadness, or if they were there because I realized that the nagging emptiness I had been ignoring had finally been filled.

“I don’t care what you say—” I finally found my voice. “—I can’t let you in.”

“Indi please just trust me,” he responded.

“I do and that’s why I can’t do that,” I called out loud enough for him to hear.

There was silence on the other side, and although the seconds continued to tick closer to a minute, I wasn’t positive that he left. I couldn’t get myself to move.

Part of me wanted to open the door and see him still standing there with something in his eyes indicating that he, too, had an emptiness in him that had just been filled. That same piece of me wanted him to call out, to ask me again to let him in, because even though he was here for Cesc, he missed me and needed to see me in order to feel whole again after so long.

That Indigo was selfish and the reason why we were both standing on opposite sides of this door. No matter how I tried to decouple her from myself—my imagined better self—I knew I couldn’t. We were part of a whole; we were two fractured pieces from opposite ends on the spectrum of desirable and undesirable qualities melded into one. It was what made us human.

I could feel him on the other side of the door, his impressive stature hovering, waiting, for something to happen. How is it that he could still have this effect on me?

“Gerard why won’t you leave?”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“This isn’t about you, Indigo.” He didn’t yell, nor did he snap at me, but I could hear the irritation in his tone. The coarseness of his voice threw me off balance. “You already know how I feel, but I’m ignoring that for him. He finally spoke to me outside of a moment when he’s been required to, and I’m taking that as a sign of progress, do you understand that?

“Do you understand what that moment meant to me? What I felt when I realized he was finally acknowledging me as someone that exists again? As someone that he knows? I’m here for him, not you. You can’t—you don’t exist to me anymore, Indigo.”

My world went through rapid cycles of dark and light, each blink of my eyes rendering me momentarily blind. A faint ringing in my ears grew aggressively louder. The door handle blurred and shifted a little to the left, a little up, and a little to the right of where it was when I looked at it just a moment ago.

I blinked as I tried to regain control of my senses. The door handle was back in its normal position and the ringing began to quiet down. When I opened the door, it was Gerard that was hazy, but he also became clear when I blinked again.

He looked at my face and silently followed the path a lone tear took down my cheek and around the bend of my jaw. If he had to force himself to be indifferent toward the sight of my tears, then I understood his reasoning. I walked away from him, leaving him alone to wait for Cesc to return.

I found my way to my bathroom and let the water flow from the faucet as I cupped my hands beneath it. Some water slipped through my fingertips as I told myself to keep it together but ultimately failed. Lukewarm water splashed across my face, washing away the tears that fell. I lifted my head from the sink and stared at myself in the mirror. Droplets of water slid down a face that I could barely recognize.

I finished up the rest of my morning routine and left the bathroom to take a seat on the bed. Despite there being one extra body in the house, it was dead silent.

I wasn’t sure when I had fallen asleep, or how long I had even been asleep for, but I did know that the house was silent whereas now I could hear both of their voices. I could barely make out words; they were loud enough for me to know that they were talking but not loud enough for me to know what about.

I was stuck. This was supposed to be a private moment for them. If I interjected myself I could change the entire dynamic of their conversation. Cesc might look at me and Gerard and let his resentment take over.

But I needed to know what they were saying.

I left the room and quietly made my way to the bathroom nearest the top of the stairs. I left the door open and sat on the counter. Their voices were clearer but not by much. What I could tell was that there was neither anything hostile nor overly amicable about their tones. I supposed the fact that they weren’t yelling at each other was a positive sign, though Cesc was never really one to get his point across by yelling.

As I failed at eavesdropping, I thought about how I let what I had trickle through my fingertips like sand. All that I had here should have belonged to somebody else.

A chill shook me and the sounds of their voices became muffled vibrations in the back of my head. The room faded away as I drifted off into a void. I could feel myself becoming numb to it all. What had been an all black expanse suddenly flashed into white.

I saw Gerard, the blatant pain in his eyes, drift by the deeper I sank into this world. An echo of his words, “this isn’t about you” followed after him. It had always been about me and only me. It was all about how they both made me feel; my feelings, my need to fill a void within in me always came first as I acted in disregard for any repercussions that would have a great effect on their lives.

Though I always told myself it was wrong, I never stopped myself. I could have easily turned to the one person I should have but I didn’t. All for the sake of fulfilling my own need to feel wanted in arms where I didn’t belong. I had more than most but it wasn’t enough for me.

Now, though it was far too late, I realized it couldn’t be about me. I couldn’t insert myself where I didn’t belong. This was about them, their need to heal, to rebuild and move on. I had to remove myself from the equation.

I blinked slowly and exhaled. The sound of my name, a quick call, brought me out of my trance. I heard it again, louder, and jumped down from atop the counter. I paced my descent of the stairs into the tense silence that awaited me.

Their eyes were on me when I reached the kitchen.

I gauged the distance between them. Gerard seemed to shrink himself. His shoulders were slouched, his gaze was quickly lowered, and his hands were in his pockets. Cesc, on the other hand, had his arms folded in front of his chest and watched me as I approached.

I swallowed and couldn’t bring myself to say anything.

“I just need the both of you to answer something for me right here, right now.” He paused, waiting for us to interject, but we said nothing. “Why would you allow me to get in the middle of something neither of you had gotten over? Did you consider my feelings at all?”

“I—”

“I didn’t,” I interrupted. “ I knew it would hurt you and I was always afraid of you finding out, but I realize now that I was always putting myself first—”

“You would have kept it up if you didn��t get pregnant, wouldn’t you?”

I opened my mouth, but Gerard stepped forward and my words were gone.

“I couldn’t,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what or how she really feels, or if she really believes what she just said, but she cared enough about something. Watching it eat away at her, and the realization that there was so much more to lose—I couldn’t keep going on like that.”

I looked between them and knew this was touching upon a part of the conversation that I was absent for. Something solemn was passing between them. Something still understood despite being left unsaid.

I realized what I was witnessing. “This is not ending like this—”

“Indigo,” Cesc sighed. “He has been—he is in love with you. How can I stick around—how can I continue to look at him and joke around knowing that he is in love with the same woman as me? He knows what it feels like to be with you so closely; he was going to be the father of your child for god’s sake.”

“Cesc—”

“You love him and I guess you love me as well. I don’t know how it works—” He shrugged and looked away, his eyebrows casting a shadow over his face. After a breath, he turned to look at me again. “I don’t know you anymore, or maybe I never did know you like I thought I did. I don’t know anything anymore, but I do know that I can’t pretend that I can live with this. If it was anyone else, well… but it’s him. I can’t be friends with someone who’s in love with the woman I love, or at least did at some point.”

I could taste the sick at the back of my throat. “W-what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that if I want to try to love you the same way again, he can’t be anywhere in the picture.”

“No. You two—”

“Indigo,” Gerard muttered, “I already told you that this isn’t about you. This is something that you don’t get to manipulate.”

I could see in his eyes, I could tell by how dull the shade of blue had become, that he was at the end of his line. He already accepted this result and was ready to adjust to his new life. He had chosen one of us but was going to end up with neither of us.

“If—” Cesc stopped to chuckle. “If you want to be with him now’s your chance. I wouldn’t hold it against you.”

They were both looking at me now, waiting for me to say something. Gerard shook his head and turned away. Cesc watched me stare at his now former best friend, the one who loved me and complicated me before him, with an uneasy expression. There was a twinge of disappointment in his eyes when I took the first steps in Gerard’s direction.

“Gerard,” I murmured. He exhaled heavily, but I could tell it wasn’t an expression of irritation. Rather, he was trying to keep his façade from collapsing. “I’m sorry.”

He neither looked at me nor said a word.

I flung my arms around his waist and squeezed. “I’m sorry,” I repeated.

He looked down this time and his eyes were so tired. Those eyes that I had loved so much would not shed any tears in this moment, even though I believed they wanted to. They flickered toward Cesc and then back to me.

“Indigo,” he sighed, “let go.”

It only made me squeeze him tighter. He flinched when I reached up and pressed my palm to his cheek. “Promise me you’ll find someone.”

Air escaped his lips. “Now you want me to?”

“You’re losing so much—”

“Let me go, Indigo.”

My arms fell limp at my sides. When I turned around, I found Cesc shaking his head.

“I don’t understand why you’re still trying to make this work when you’re clearly in love with him, Indigo.”

“I’m not—”

“How are you going to tell me that lie when I just watched that whole thing? I can see it in the way that you look at him!”

“I’m not lying! I have love for him but it is different from what I feel for you. It’s different with you. None of this has been as black and white as you think it is.”

“Do you want her, Gerard?” he asked, completely ignoring me.

I couldn’t see his reaction. All I could see was Cesc’s glower. “All I want is to move on from this—I want to let go of all of this.”

I slowly walked away from him. Cesc looked between the both of us as I moved, as if he was contemplating whether he wanted to wash his hands of both of us or just one of us. The right thing for me to do would be to leave them both, to let them both move on without me.

I was the one who set the wheels of this disaster in motion. I wanted them both in ways I couldn’t have them and left Gerard without two people he loved. I left Cesc without his brother but with a woman he could probably never love again. Was I being selfish by wanting him to stay with me in spite of all of this? I thought of all of the times I betrayed him and still received his forgiveness and wondered how this wasn’t the final straw.

“Do you really still see a future with me, Cesc? After all that I have done to hurt you? Can you really be happy with me?”

“If you want to be with—”

“No.” I shook my head as I closed the distance between us. “This isn’t about what I want. This isn’t about Gerard, either. This is about you and your happiness and what you want. Can you really still love me and want to continue to grow with me? Would that really make you happy?”

“I can’t just turn it off. I can’t just wake up and suddenly decide that I don’t love you, and I’m not even sure that I would want to even if I could. I’m beginning to resent you because I still love you so much. It’s illogical.”

I bit down to stop my lip from quivering. “If—” I took a quick breath. “—you feel like you’re starting to hate me, then shouldn’t you leave me?”

“Do you want to be done or not, Indigo? You can’t make up your mind.”

“I’m not trying to talk you into anything. I want to be with you but only if it’s really what you want and not because you feel obligated or—”

“I love you, I think. I don’t know anymore. I feel something when I look at you but I don’t know what it is.”

“Cesc—”

“Don’t say my name like that,” he sighed.

“—maybe it’s time…”

“Indigo…” He closed his eyes as he let his head loll backward. He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers and sighed loudly. “You keep insisting you want to be with me and now you’re saying I should end this? Has there ever been a time when you knew what you wanted?”

“Yes.” I knew, at one point years ago, that Gerard was my whole world and the only thing I wanted. Then, years later, when I gave myself to him wholly, that Cesc was who I wanted to love unconditionally until the end of time. “I knew that I wanted you when I let myself be vulnerable and you treated me so delicately. But we’re not in the same place and we’re not the same people anymore.

“I know that you still love me, but I can see in your eyes that it’s not the same as it used to be. It’s like every day you’re in love with me a little less. You look at me like a stranger sometimes and I can see the anger and disgust that you keep pent up.”

It felt like it was just the two of us in the room. As I spoke, he watched me with the eyes of a man I did not know. There was exhaustion in the shadows of his already dark eyes. Even when he happened to smile, the sparkle never penetrated that shroud of darkness.

What started as a rift between us had grown into a canyon miles wide. We could see and call out to each other from the other sides, but we would never meet again.

“I already told you that I don’t want you to forgive me,” I said softly, ignoring the look of vague irritation that I received. “We could take the time but what if time only brings you to resent me more? What would be the point? When you add up all that I have done there’s not enough time that could heal those wounds. I’ve been trying to be the woman you want me to be just to keep you happy, to keep you with me, but I know it’s not working—”

“So that’s it, then,” he said quickly. “This is you finally making a decision.”

I nodded as I wiped moisture from my cheeks. I saw fragments of my world beginning to fall away and hit the ground with shattering sounds. The pain I felt in my heart, the tearing and burning, was nothing like what I had ever felt before.

“You can keep that,” Cesc muttered when he saw me grab at my ring. He shook his head, trying to shake away tears of his own, and suddenly pulled me close.

He overwhelmed me with his touch, his smell, and the rhythm of his heartbeat. It became harder to breathe the longer he held on, but I didn’t want him to let go. I wanted to save this moment of myself in his arms because I didn’t know if I would ever experience it again.

My heart beat a rapid tune when his thumbs caressed my cheeks. His kiss never met my lips. Rather, it pressed against my forehead and lingered, leaving behind a residue of the feelings he wouldn’t verbally express. This was him letting go.

It wasn’t until he physically let me go that I realized Gerard was still in the room with us, silently watching things continue to fall apart. I rushed out of the room when I turned and accidentally met the sad curiosity in his eyes.

Of all the things that I have done that I could never take back, this one hurt like hell, but for once, it wasn’t an act of betrayal but a means to heal. We needed this to happen—he needed this to happen—and it should have happened long ago before we even fell too deeply in love. He deserved to be free and happy. I could no longer make him happy. This wasn’t for me. This was for him.

This was for the man I loved.

[leggiamo]

[leggiamo]