There was a little playground behind us. We walked there and sat on a bench, close together, so he could wrap an arm around my shoulders. “Come on, now, get it all out,” he said.
I did. I told him about Dante and his misguided jealousy. How Giulio had burst in and heard everything. How badly he’d taken what I’d revealed to him. The intensity of his rejection, his refusal even to admit that I might be right.
“Maya, you shouldn’t have left,” Matías responded.
“Why not? He didn’t want me there.”
“So? Fuck him!” he shouted. “He had sex with your mom and nine months later, you popped out. Maybe he’s not your dad, but it damn sure seems like it. That’s his responsibility, and he needs to face up to it.”
“I can’t force him, though. Not now.”
“Force him, maybe not, but you’ve damn sure got a right to try, and if he isn’t your father, great, you can both get on with your lives. If he is…”
“It’s not that simple,” I countered him.
“Maybe not, but you should have stayed there and tried, because—I know you’re going to argue with me here—you didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Maybe not, but it’s weighing on me. Anyway, I couldn’t let Lucas face this alone. And, don’t roll your eyes, it’s not an excuse. If you knew what I know, you’d get it. You can’t imagine what his family’s like. And I know he’d do the same for me.”
“OK, so what happens when Lucas solves his problems here and decides to go back?”
“Maybe he won’t?” I mused.
I didn’t bother concealing my apprehension. Not that there would have been a point. He always knew when I was hiding something from him. But maybe it was me I hoped to hide from? Because I had changed. I was hardly the same person I had been when I left. I had learned to let go, to let the mood carry me, to let my instincts hold the reins and my desires mark my rhythms, to let my impulses move me without thinking of tomorrow. Living for the minute. Flying high. Too high, maybe.
“I finally found my wings, you know,” I told Matías.
“You never lost them, hon.”
No, there was nothing he didn’t know about me. He remembered every single crazy thing I’d told him through the years.
“But now I wonder if they’re breaking,” I said.
“It wouldn’t matter. You’ll always soar, Maya, even with broken wings. But just so you know, everything that’s broken can be mended.”
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure, dummy. And I can sew my ass off, so if those wings ever tear, just bring them my way and I’ll have you airborne again in no time.”
We laughed. It was that easy. Because I knew what he said was true. He would never let me crash into the ground. His arms would always be there to catch me at the right second.
47
I woke feeling his body sliding between the sheets. His hand reached under my skirt and rested on my stomach. He pulled me in to him, his chest resting against my back. His nose was in my hair inhaling softly as he said, “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“What time is it?”
“Almost nine.”
I closed my eyes and relished the heat of his body as I asked, “How’s he doing?”
“Same. A nurse let me in to see him during their shift change. I didn’t think he’d look like that, you know? So…withered. He looks like he’s aged ten years.”
“How are you?”
“He was happy to see me though,” Lucas said instead of answering. I turned and tried to glimpse him through the darkness, running a thumb under his eyes as if I could erase the bags under them.
