I walked to the bathroom, where the tile was cold under my feet and gave me goose bumps. It was freezing in there, but there was still vapor on the walls and mirror. I turned on the heater next to the door and waited for it to heat up before stripping off my clothes and getting into the shower.
It was a cold October, and I didn’t have anything warm to wear. After getting dressed and eating a quick breakfast, I walked to my family’s neighborhood, where I had lived my whole life. It was strange, going into my old building and smelling that familiar scent in the vestibule.
I went down to the storage room, got the door open on the third pull, and felt the brief fear, as the light flickered on, that my things would no longer be there—that my grandmother had flown into a rage and decided to get rid of everything that had anything to do with me. But the fear vanished as soon as I saw all my boxes were exactly where I’d left them.
I pulled the ones with clothes in them onto the floor and cut the tape with the corner of one of my keys. I’d brought a suitcase with me, and I filled it with pants, long-sleeved shirts, and a couple of jackets. Then I put the boxes back where they had been.
I stared at the room for a moment.
It was still hard for me to accept the reality it represented.
That time passes, dies away, doesn’t wait. And I was moving in circles.
Three months before, I’d been in that same room, looking at those same boxes.
Nothing had changed since then, and nothing was the same.
Least of all me.
57
The days passed, and finally they discharged Lucas’s father. But nothing changed. Lucas kept working at his family’s company, had his meetings in the evenings, had lunch with buyers and suppliers. And apart from all the work, there was his family always on his heels. His phone never stopped ringing. If it wasn’t his mother, it was his sister or his father, and Lucas never said no to them, no matter the time, the place, or what they wanted.
Claudia was the same way.
And every day, Lucas was less connected to me, less connected to his emotions. He was so good at hiding his feelings that not even he was capable of finding them inside himself. An invisible wall rose between us, and I was the only person who seemed to notice or care.
One day I was watching him dress, missing him already, missing being beside him, talking laughing, doing nothing. Entrusting him with my thoughts, him entrusting me with his.
He was buttoning his jeans and he looked at me sweetly, and I wanted to let out everything that was inside me, but I couldn’t. The words got caught in my throat.
He threw on a leather jacket and put his phone and wallet in his pockets.
“Shall we?” he asked.
“Sure.”
He came close, touched my face, kissed me, looked at me as if trying to read what was going through my head. But at the same time, he looked scared of it. He was baffled and resorted to silence: a silence of a kind that was now starting to define the way we related to each other. A silence that said too much. Much more than any words could.
“It’s late,” I whispered.
He nodded and took my hand.
We walked out of the apartment and to a crossing where we waited for a cab to come. We were supposed to meet Matías and Rubén at a restaurant on the Plaza del Carmen. That night, Rubén’s group was giving a concert nearby at the Wurlitzer Ballroom, and they’d invited us to come. I looked out the window on the ride over, feeling the tension in me give way. I was about to see my friends, chill out, have fun. Do something normal with Lucas for the first time in ages.
I saw Matías sitting at a table on the patio. He stood when he saw us and hugged me tight, rocking me back and forth and saying, “There’s my girl.”
Rubén then gave me a kiss on each cheek and I sat down next to him. He had his hair pulled back in a bun—sort of, because it was sticking out in all directions—and was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt. His fingers were covered in rings and he had a piercing in his lower lip. I liked his style, but what I really liked was how much Matías liked him.
“What time’s the concert?” I asked.
“Eleven thirty,” Rubén answered.
“You look nervous,” I said.
“I always feel hysterical when I have a show. Fortunately, it all goes away once I’m onstage.”
A waiter came and took our order. “What’s your band’s name?” Lucas asked. “I can’t remember if you told us last time.”
