Pulling me in tight, he drew a deep breath and began. “Her name’s Claudia. Our fathers knew each other from their school days and had been friends ever since. They went to college together, they were godparents to each other’s kids, they went into business together… You get the idea. So Claudia and I grew up together. I barely have any memories without her in them. Since we were little, our families joked about how one day we’d get married, and either we really did fall in love or just hearing that all our lives sank in, and so we started going out at fifteen…”
He seemed for a moment to try to be ordering his thoughts, then he went on. “We never had what you’d call a great relationship. It was never healthy. Claudia’s impulsive, she’s flighty, and she always needs to get people’s attention. When she was with me, she wanted more, and when we broke up, all she wanted was to have me back. She tried a million times. First it was,I need to meet other people, I feel stifled, I don’t know what I feel, then she fell on her knees and begged for me to forgive her. And I never knew how to say no to her, no matter how much she hurt me.”
“They say love’s blind.”
“That wasn’t love, Maya. That was pain. And the older we got, the less things changed. It’s not just that she was constantly leaving me hanging and only tried to fix things when she thought I was slippingaway from her, it’s that she was actually cheating on me, and then she had the nerve to tell me it was my fault because I was always working or studying, and she didn’t feel that Ivaluedher. And I actually bought it, and I tried even harder, and I fucking forgave her.”
“Lucas, there’s a name for that: codependence and emotional abuse.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “It was hard for me to see it that way, but I know that now. Finally.”
“Your family didn’t say anything?”
“My family was no help whatsoever. Anytime I’d gather the courage to break up with Claudia, they’d intervene and I’d end up folding. My parents organized our engagement, bought the ring, set us up in an apartment. Claudia’s family handled the wedding and the honeymoon and paid all the expenses.”
“How…traditional.”
“It sucked.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Then Claudia got pregnant and our families wanted to push the wedding forward. But no one asked me what I thought. Whether I was in agreement, whether I even had an opinion. They just decided without giving me a chance to reply.”
I froze. Pregnant? Did Lucas have a child? I didn’t dare ask. But I could feel my throat swelling as he spoke on, “Claudia had a near-miscarriage a few weeks later, and the doctors told her she’d need to rest for her entire pregnancy. The wedding got put off. It was a horrible time. They gave her a C-section as soon as they could, and right away, we noticed something was wrong with the baby.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, fearing the worst. They must have lost the child, I thought. Lucas looked up at me with his blue eyes, deep, wounded, defeated. And for a moment, I saw all that they were hiding.
“The doctors said they thought he might have Marfan syndrome. It’s a genetic disorder. Claudia and I ended up taking a test for some study or other.”
“And…?”
“The baby wasn’t mine.”
I brought my hand to my chest. “Whose was it?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care,” he replied, now furious. “It was a nasty blow. You can’t imagine. And worst of all, no one seemed to care. I’d been naive, I’d been cheated on, and they still thought I was such a dumbass that I would go on with the wedding, raise some other asshole’s kid, and keep my head down all for the sake of appearances.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I gathered what little pride I had left and I took off that same day. I’ve never talked to any of them again, and I don’t plan to.”
“I’m so sorry you had to go through all that, Lucas.”
He tried to smile, tried to let me know he was OK, but I knew he couldn’t be. I had picked the scab and dug my finger into the wound. A wound that was deep, that was probably still infected.
He kissed me quickly and stood, getting out of the bath.
“I’ll pick you up later, OK?” he said, wrapping a towel around his waist.
I stayed there for a while after Lucas left, thinking about all he had told me. It was hard for me to understand how someone could be so sure of himself, so strong, so composed, and then could allow people to abuse him like that. And it was abuse. There was no other way to describe it. They had manipulated him, lied to him, threatened him, and he had just put up with all of it. He hadn’t reacted until he had to. And if he hadn’t, he’d have disappeared completely.
But why should that surprise me? I had been just as blind with my own family. With my grandmother. Matías always told me she mistreated me. That it wasn’t just that she was standoffish, or bossy, or severe. Matías, too, had used that wordabuse, had tried to tell me she had no right to run me down the way she did and make me feel insignificant for no reason.
No one deserves to be treated that way. No one.
I realized then that Lucas and I were like two mirrors, and I had needed to see my reflection in him to understand that a love that hurts, that wounds, isn’t really love.
39
It was a little after nine when a knock came at the door. I put aside my popcorn and lowered the volume on the TV.
“Hey!” I shouted at Giulio when I opened the door.
