Page 84 of We Shouldn’t Do This Again

“It’s true,” she insists, taking a small step forward.

“The same truth you hid while you were sleeping with me?” I ask, staring at her mercilessly. “The same truth you hid every time your phone rang and you told me it was work, that it wasn’t anything important?”

Her face contorts. She knows I’m not the type to raise my voice and make a scene to hurt her, that it’s enough for me to state the obvious, to call out the lies that now weigh like stones.

“Lidia…” she begins, her eyes brimming with tears.

“No.” I jump to my feet. My legs are shaking, but I force myself not to fall.

My father takes a step toward me, worried, ready to intervene.

“Daughter…”

I raise a hand to gently stop him. Because, even though I’m falling apart, I need this. I need to look her in the face, I need to hear her out and hate her with real reasons, not with these assumptions that are eating me up inside.

Barbara doesn’t take her eyes off me. Her hands are open at her sides, tense, as if she wants to touch me and knows she can’t, that any contact now would simply be one more mistake.

“You have no idea how I feel right now,” I say, my voice breaking again, but without looking away. “You have no idea how humiliating it is to realize that I’ve put myself in your hands again so you can tear me apart once more, as if I hadn’t learned a thing.”

Her eyes fill with tears, and that infuriates me even more. I don’t want her to cry. I don’t want her to seem vulnerable. I don’t want to feel sorry for the person who has broken me again so easily.

“I know,” she whispers, almost voiceless.

“No. You don’t know. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have done this. You wouldn’t have played with both of us at the same time.”

The silence grows so thick that even the sea seems to fall silent for a moment, respecting the gravity of what is happening. Miriam stands up slowly and approaches my father. She places a hand on his arm to restrain him, to remind him that this moment is mine.

I remain rooted in place in front of Barbara. In front of my favorite ruin. My worst habit. My greatest love and my deepest wound, all at the same time.

She takes a step toward me and my father tenses up immediately.

“Don’t even think about it,” he growls, his voice low and threatening.

Barbara stops dead in her tracks. When she speaks again, her voice is broken, as if uttering each syllable requires an immense effort.

“I’m not here to ask you to understand me. Or to ask you to forgive me. I don’t deserve it, I know. But I need you to listen to me. Even if you hate me for the rest of your life and never want to see me again.”

It hurts so much to hear her that I can’t breathe. Part of me wants to send her to hell, to scream at her to leave and never come back. And another… another part still needs to know. It needs to understand how someone can look at me the way she did an hour ago, with so much love in her eyes, and yet hide a whole life behind smiles and kisses.

My father watches me closely. I know what he’s thinking. That I shouldn’t go near the fire. That I shouldn’t stand in front of the flame that already burned me until it left scars.

“Lidia,” he says with a gentleness laced with fear, “you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

I look at him. And seeing him like this breaks my heart. My father, who has always been my safest haven, is scared for me, afraid that I’ll break completely.

But this time I can’t hide behind anyone. Because if I don’t listen to her, this wound is going to haunt me like a ghost.

I take a deep breath, trying to fill my lungs. My fingers are trembling. My chest hurts, but I know I need to settle this once and for all. Even if it breaks me completely in the process.

“Dad…” My voice comes out barely a whisper, weak but determined.

He frowns, shaking his head slightly.

“No.”

“Let her,” Miriam pleads.

“Lidia…”