Page 137 of That Last Summer

“Neither me nor anyone else. Believe me, if anyone had, Marcos, Hugo, or River would have told me. I don’t think they’d have kept it to themselves after seeing me cry like a fucking baby on their lap, not understanding why you hadn’t come.”

Crying on their laps? I don’t get it. If he loved me that much, if he really loved me and hadn’t tired of me, why was he totally involved in a relationship with Carolina?

“Why did you cry?”

Alex laughs again, in disbelief, and gives me a scornful look.

“You are unbelievable, Priscila. Maybe you have no fucking idea what love is, what it means to truly love someone; you say ‘I love you’ as if it was ‘good morning,’ and now I realize your words are empty because you don’t know what it is to love. But I did love you, with all my heart. And that’s why I cried. Because you didn’t love me back and realizing that was hell. So, going back to the main topic, since I’m so over this and I don’t feel like talking to you about it, I assure you that, if you’d come to see me, any of your brothers—except maybe Adrián—would have told me.”

“They didn’t see me either.”

“Ah, that’s convenient, isn’t it?”

“You were on the third floor, room 308.”

“Anyone could have told you that.”

“Your hair had been shaved off and you had fewer bruises than I’d imagined during the flight. At least the visible part; you were almost completely covered by the sheet.”

How is it possible that I remember that moment so clearly?

“Anyone could have told you that too!”

His shout startles me. And I begin to understand. I think I get where his hatred comes from. That visit. A visit he was expecting, but doesn’t know I made. And I ask myself: can he accuse me, or even hate me, for not coming so soon after he cheated on me?

The answer comes to me too quickly: yes, he can. Because he’s right: there are no excuses, no reasons to justify not coming to see him. Nothing else mattered—our marital problems were secondary; I should have come. And that’s why I did it. I did it with the intention of even staying with him forever, by his side. But things went wrong. He had a new life with Carolina, and I ran away. He started hating me and I kept hating him. End of story.

“I’m only going to ask you one thing, Priscila,” he continues, “one last thing. Tell me why you left. I’ve been racking my brains over it for four years, hating you because I couldn’t understand it, hating you for not loving me anymore. There’s no way to fix us now, but I need you to tell me why you did it.”

“You want to know why I left?”

Is it possible that he didn’t suspect? That he didn’t realize I’d found out about his fling with Carolina? Or not just a fling—his parallel life, with her? I think if I’d committed a crime and the police came to my home looking for me, my first thought would be that they’ve found me out. But I guess we’re not all the same.

“Of course I want to know,” he insists.

“Can’t you even guess it?”

“No, dammit.”

“Really? You have no idea what I found out about you?”

“What did you find out about me? The fuck are you talking about?”

I keep talking, ignoring his question. “I guess if it happened now, if I were to relive that moment, I wouldn’t act the same way. No, it’s not a guess, I definitely wouldn’t. I’m sure I’d face you. But I was just a kid then.”

“I was a kid too, Priscila, and I would never have left the way you did. No reason would be serious enough to leave you without even an explanation.”

“No, you did other things.”

“Things? Spit it out already! What were these terrible things I did?”

“I saw you,” I blurt out then.

“Excuse me?”

“That day, the day I left. I saw you.”

“What did you see?” he demands, hands on his hips.