Page 142 of That Last Summer

“So?”

Something collapses me inside. Something huge. A certainty. The certainty that I have destroyed his life. Me, alone. I have destroyed us. There was no redhead in Alex’s life. That was not our problem. It was me. Me.

I don’t even have the courage to apologize. Something like this cannot be forgiven. “Sorry” is not strong enough to fight for this. Nothing is.

“Every time I look at the sea, I see you; I see you as the monster that took everything from me.”

I close my eyes and nod.

“Getting married was a mistake. You weren’t ready, you lived in a world all peaches and cream and you didn’t know what commitment was. You still don’t know, because it’s not in your nature. And now I’m the one leaving.”

I get up before he leaves the living room and clutch his forearm as if my life depends on it.

“Alex! Alex... wait, please.”

“Go to hell, Priscila.”

He shakes me off and walks out, slamming the door. I stand on my feet in the middle of the living room until I collapse onto the floor in despair. Broken.

That last summer

And the months passed, following one after another until summer arrived. That summer. A summer that had no color. No songs, either.

The only thing that went well in Priscila Cabana’s life that summer was her job. Even if it started out disastrously, things got better very quickly.

She worked six months as an intern, doing a thousand different tasks. Without intending to, she created an imaginary squirrel that helped her get through her day-to-day life, emotionally speaking. Pristy was just a game to her, but sometimes she showed her to her coworkers, and her supervisor saw her potential instantly. So, one day in July, the last day of her internship, the newspaper offered her a one-year contract as a columnist. They’d give her a very small space where she could express—with the help of her fictitious friend—daily life stories.

Having the ability to hide herself behind wit, humor, and easy jokes had half-saved her life, and not only in her work. It had salvaged far more than just that.

She celebrated her new contract with her friend, Jaime. They had struck up a very strong friendship, one that grew more solid each day. That friendship had saved her life the rest of the way.

And that’s how she had survived.

But Priscila’s mind shattered every time she thought about what had happened that last summer. Carolina’s hands around what she thought was hers, the accident, and everything that came after that. And again, Carolina. The redhead. That’s why she stopped remembering. She stopped remembering that last summer.

On the other side of the ocean, in a little town in Alicante, Alexander St. Claire lived the end of that summer very differently. He was on the docks, at the edge of the sea. He sat on the remains of a timber jetty rising up above the water, in a white-and-blue striped swimsuit and a white T-shirt. His eyes fixed on the vast mass of salty water while rage and hatred washed over him, sweeping everything along with it: his common sense, his serenity, his love. The good memories.

Memories of those summers that sealed their fate. Now he was burying them, drowning them in the water along with his Olympic medal and the memory of her.

Her. The one he hated more than anyone else in the world.

Priscila.

He hated her for that September afternoon when she’d left him without explanation. The afternoon he’d spent fixing the garden for her before the unexpected visit of his brother’s girlfriend, who was no longer his brother’s girlfriend since they’d just broken up. He’d tried to get rid of her, he’d wanted to pick up his wife—his pretty girl—from her parents’. But Priscila wasn’t there. She would never be.

He hated her for what she’d put him through during those first few months of her absence, for the worry, the unease, the disquiet. For making him feel like he needed that ski trip with his friends at New Year.

He hated that he’d been trying to stop thinking about her when he went off-piste and collided with those rocks.

He hated her because she had never come to see him, to heal him.

He hated her because he couldn’t swim anymore, not professionally.

He hated her for what she took from him, because she’d left him empty. And he swore he would hate her forever.

The good times—the happy ones—were swept from his mind. Only that bad memory, only that last summer, remained.

And that would be the only thing he would remember.