And I cried.
And I cried.
And I cried.
And my treacherous fucking mind could only think of how unspeakably beautiful the mountains and lake and stars were, and how much I wished Isla could see all of it, and how could she do this to me?
How could she do this to us?
To our families?
To our entire lives? Both the life we had lived thus far together, and the life we had dreamed of and talked about since the time it occurred to us that we could spend the rest of our lives together?
What had happened to my sweet Isla?
This couldn’t have been just a one-off, drunken mistake at a party.
A girl like Isla, who had been largely sheltered and only had me—a guy she’d known her entire life—as her single sexual partner, wouldn’t just randomly decide to let two guys nail her simultaneously. There had to have been some kind of escalation to what I saw in the photo. There had to have been other instances of her fooling around.
And after all, that’s exactly what she said in the hastily punched out messages after she accidentally sent it.
I’ve missed out on a lot of life experiences.
I need the chance to see what’s out there.
I was going to talk to you during the break.
I don’t want to lie to you anymore.
It was clear as day that she’d been experiencing life and seeing what’s out there behind my fucking back while we were separated.
If you really love me like you say you do, you’ll let me go.
And I really loved her. So I let her go.
“Goodbye, amor.”
The last thing she said to me over the phone.
Goodbye, amor, indeed.
Goodbye love.
Goodbye life I had always dreamed of.
Goodbye to everything that I knew and believed.
A year spent in total isolation after that kind of heartbreak will harden a person like nothing else can. It caused the formation of scar tissue so thick, and so hard, and so dead that nothing would ever be able to penetrate me again.
When I returned, I heard from my parents and Philipp that Isla had come by our summer estate about six months after I left, asking if I was there. My parents said she “didn’t look well.” Philipp was far more candid about her appearance, and said she looked like she’d been strung out and used up like an old mop, and that I should be glad I missed her sudden reappearance. That it was clear I’d dodged a bullet. That it was clearer than ever that Isla had become an entirely different person than the one we’d always known and loved.
And that didn’t exactly make me feel better.
It didn’t make me feel anything at all, because I could feel nothing.
So, I left again and enlisted in my compulsory stint in Corwick’s Royal Navy, preparing to live the rest of my life in total service to my country, and still felt nothing.
I continued to feel nothing even years later when it became clear from yet another cryptic text message that I was going to have to marry Isla after all.
MALACHI
Present
ISLA AND HER FAMILY take their sweet time saying their goodbyes while I stand off to one side at the entrance of the palace. Fortuna hugs her and kisses her cheek, then presses her palm to Isla’s still-flat stomach. Isla wears an expression that makes it obvious how much she’s fighting her emotions. Ernesto joins them, kissing Isla’s head and saying something in her ear. Her sisters do the same. Auggie, Graciela’s husband, offers Isla a disconnected pat on the head before crossing the stone-paved drive toward me with his hand extended.
“Always a pleasure to visit your lovely country, Malachi,” he says, shaking with me. “We may return for another visit come spring.”
I nod. “That would be wonderful. We’d be delighted to host you again, or I can arrange for spectacular accommodations elsewhere if you’d prefer. It’s a small country, but there’s a lot to see and do.”
Auggie nods and claps my shoulder before stepping away, and I catch sight of Elle speaking discreetly to Isla while Colin stands just beside them, holding their baby girl. I fight the urge to narrow my eyes skeptically at Elle, as I don’t really know her, and I’m not sure if I like her. Colin is, for all intents and purposes, a surrogate son of Ernesto and Fortuna, and I know him well enough from when he would stay with them back when we were all teens. He’s always been low key and chill and never meddled in their family drama, and I like him. His fiancée, on the other hand, is clearly not any of those things, and I don’t know about her. She’s well-educated, and opinionated, and works with really fucked up people for a living, and she’s obviously been planting ideas in the heads of a number of Isla’s family members.
Case in point, Joaquin, who is now slowly marching toward me with his jaw set, hands in the pockets of his slacks and his shoulders thrown back.
“Don’t forget what I fuckin’ said, Mal,” he says on a low, threatening breath as he stops just in front of me. “I’d have no problem killing you, and Papá is connected enough to keep me out of trouble for it.”
True, he kept your sister out of trouble for it, I want to say, but don’t. None of the other Reyes kids have any idea what kind of seedy shit Isla got involved with right around the time she fucked me over, and I’m not going to be the one to tell them.
I smile placidly. “Oh, I won’t.” I pat the side of his arm. “Safe travels.”
He glares at me. “You turned into a real piece of shit, you know that?”
Yes, and guess who’s responsible for that, I also want to say, but also don’t.
I incline my head to one side. “Así es la vida.”
He grunts as he steps away. “Fuck off.”
He pauses next to Isla, kissing her cheek before they exchange a couple of quiet words, and then he approaches one of the cars to climb in. Isla pleasantly and compliantly returns to my side, and I pleasantly comply with the facade of this marriage and wrap my arm around her shoulders, holding her close to my side.
Elle and Colin are the last to get in the car, and he passes off the baby to her and then ducks inside to wrestle with the car seat. After he finishes futzing with it, they linger outside for another moment, exchanging a couple of chuckles and enamored glances before he strokes her cheek, then the baby’s, and then kisses them both.
I won’t admit how sweet the quick, commonplace affection between the three of them is. I also won’t allow myself to let on to the fact that the mere sight of it is such a contrast to my situation that it feels like the knife Isla drove through my back is twisting and carving that much deeper.
There’s a quiet sniff from Isla, and then the even quieter words, “Querida bebé.”
I know better than to glance at her, but it seems to be a reflex. She glances at me at the same time, and then we’re locked in a melancholic stare that’s like looking through a shattered window at every perfect thing from before.
Before I can think the better of it, I draw her close and settle my lips softly on hers. And I shouldn’t do this because I don’t want her to get the wrong idea. I can’t let her believe that any of it is okay, because it’s not—but suddenly, it’s not about her at all.
It’s about me standing in the rubble of broken hopes and dreams that her choices caused to crash all around me.