Page 16 of That Last Summer

“Doesn’t matter now.”

“Yes, it does matter! I get you were a kid, because you were a fucking kid, Pris! But if you were mature enough to marry our neighbor from the house across the street at twenty-two”—he’s pointing at the aforementioned house once more—“you should’ve been mature enough to face relationship problems, not run away at the first sign of trouble.”

“You don’t have any idea about what happened!”

“Exactly, I have no fucking idea! You never told us, you didn’t explain to us what terrible thing Alex supposedly did to you. You banned his name and that was it!

“Supposedly?” I repeat, stunned.

“Yes! Supposedly! I’ve never seen or heard anything, the only thing I saw back then was Alex completely destroyed, physically and morally. And I thought that, maybe, if I picked up the pieces of my sister’s husband, the one she had an idyllic life with, one day she would thank me. One day, when she came back. One day in the next few weeks, or months at the most.”

“But I didn’t come back.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“And by the time you realized I wasn’t coming back, it was too late, right? Alex was already your closest friend. Was that how it happened?”

“You don’t have a fucking clue about how it happened.”

“No. I don’t. And that’s because you haven’t told me.”

“Me? Are you accusing me of not telling you?” he says, outraged. “How do you have the courage to say something like that after your secrecy these past years? How do you think I’ve felt all this time? Huh? How do you think we’veall felt? And now you have the cheek to recriminate me for hiding something from you?”

“And that’s why you’re on his side now?” I ask, hurt.

“No, Pris. I’ve never been on Alex’s side. I’ve always stayed on yours despite having no fucking idea what was happening, but that doesn’t mean that, over the years, he hasn’t become a brother to us.”

Us?

“And when you say ‘us’...”

“I mean Hugo and River, yes.”

“What about Adrián?”

“No, not Adrián. Adrián couldn’t care less about Alex. I guess that won’t surprise you.”

“No.”

Adrián knows what happened. He’s the only one.

“Look, Pris—”

“We didn’t have such an idyllic relationship,” I cut over him, remembering his comment from earlier.

“What?”

“You said Alex and I had an idyllic relationship. That’s not true. I just wanted to make it clear.”

“I’m sorry,” he says in disbelief, “but I don’t buy it, Priscila. You did. I saw it. Alex and you were totally transparent. Both of you.”

“We had our problems, Marcos.”

“And those were... ?”

“Doesn’t matter now. Why does he hate me?”

“What?”