Chapter 4
Joaquin
After flushing the condom, I make my way back to the bedroom and stop in my tracks when I spot Pilar fully dressed in one of the few spare outfits she keeps in the bottom drawer of my dresser. Yesterday, I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but watching her remove the few articles of clothing from the drawer, I realize that’s all I’ve given her.
Here I am, living alone in this huge fucking penthouse and all I’ve given her is a fucking drawer. I don’t even let her keep a toothbrush here.
Nothing.
“Pilar,” I call, my fingers tightening on the door jamb over my head as I stare at her. “What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Baby, let’s talk.”
Pausing, she lifts her eyes to mine.
“Why, so you can say you’re sorry, again? You’ve said it in English and Spanish, what language are you going to use this time?”
I part my lips to reply, but quickly smack them together when I realize she’s right. Another useless apology dies on my tongue as my hands fall from the door jamb and I start for her. She takes a step back and I sigh, dropping my ass onto the foot of the bed. Hanging my head, I try to figure out how to begin.
“I don’t want you to leave,” I say softly.
“I’m tired of adhering to what you want, Joaquin. What about me and what I want?”
I turn my head to look at her. After three years, I should know the answer to the question I’m about to ask her.
“What do you want?” I ask.
She looks taken aback by the question and I immediately rack my brain trying to recall a time when she shared her wants . . . her dreams. This can’t be the first time I’m asking her that question.
“I want the impossible,” she whispers.
I close my eyes.
The baby.
I should’ve prepared myself for that answer. She hasn’t been right since, and while I felt her slipping, I did nothing to reel her in because I thought it was a knee-jerk reaction to the loss.
“You could’ve said no,” I tell her and as soon as the words leave my lips, I realize they’re a mistake. Her mouth drops open and tears well in her eyes. “You could’ve thrown the money in my face and told me to fuck off, but you didn’t, Pilar, and that’s because deep down you know a child deserves more than we’re capable of giving. I can’t take care of you like you deserve, and you . . . goddamn it, Pilar, you could’ve fucking died last night. We’d ruin a child far worse than we could ever ruin each other.”
“How dare you?” she spats.
“It’s true,” I continue.
Anger and despair rage inside of me and every emotion I’ve tried to bury since I found out she was pregnant surfaces. I’m a monster, this I know. I deliver death with my hands and smirk at the sight of blood. But I wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, I aspired to be more than a mediocre mob associate. I wanted to play ball. I was a decent pitcher and dreamed of donning pinstripes and riding on a float at a ticker-tape parade through the Canyon of Heroes with my wife and kids just like Yankee greats Tino Martinez and Paul O’Neil.
Then the mob happened and those dreams died, but after Pilar told me she was pregnant, for a split-second, I was that kid from Brooklyn with high hopes.
“You think I don’t regret it? That part of me doesn’t wish things were different?”
“You don’t,” she argues. “You couldn’t possibly.”
“Don’t fucking tell me how I feel,” I bark.
“Oh, that’s not what I’m doing,” she argues. “I can’t speak on what I don’t know. I have no idea how you feel about anything. You don’t show a single emotion, Joaquin, and you sure as hell never utter one either.”
Scrubbing a hand over my face, I shake my head.
“I cut and bleed just like you, Pilar, and I know it’s easier to place blame on someone else, but you need to quit blaming me for the abortion.”
“Who else should I blame?”
“How about no one? How about you realize we’re both too screwed up to bring a baby into this world? I know it hurts, that it will always hurt, but we did the right thing.”
“The right thing would’ve been loving the child we created.”
This isn’t about love.
It’s about the choices we made in our lives and the consequences that hang over us like a dark veil. Pulling on my boxer briefs, I straighten my frame and glare at her.
“You’re an addict, Pilar, and I’m a fucking criminal,” I shout as I stand from the bed. “There’s no room for a child in all that shit.”
“I wouldn’t have relapsed if I wasn’t looking to numb the pain you inflicted on me. Don’t you get it, Joaquin? Don’t you fucking see . . . loving you is killing me?”
Those words paired with the flashback from last night cut, and the epiphany I had after draining the life from Pablo and holding her in my arms, suddenly flee my mind. I can’t give her more. I can’t be better. I can’t make things right.
I cut and bleed just like you.
“And you know what I finally realized?” she continues. “I don’t want to die. Not for a man who doesn’t love me.”
My eyes snap to hers.
“Is that what you think?” I ask as I take a step toward her. “That I don’t love you?”
She purses her lips and straightens her shoulders as I take another step closer.
“Yes,” she replies. “And for a long time, I thought it was my fault, that I was unlovable, but it isn’t me. I have my faults and I’ll admit I need help, but I’m worthy of love, Joaquin. I am,” she insists as her voice breaks. “You’re the one incapable of love. Receiving it and giving it.”
“You got it all wrong, Pilar,” I growl, reaching her. “I love you and I hate myself for allowing that to happen because it doesn’t matter how deep my love for you runs, I’ll still find a way to break you. In my world love isn’t enough, it’s a casualty and you deserve more than that.”
I pause to stare at her. There have been many nights when I wanted to tell her how I felt, many nights I clamped down the urge. So long as I’m connected, I’m no match for the lost dreams of the boy I used to be. It would be selfish of me to think otherwise.
“You need to let me go,” she whispers, tearing her eyes away from mine. I watch as she wipes away her tears.
Let her go.
The thought is crippling.
“And what happens when I let you go?” I reply hoarsely, my voice sounding broken even to my own ears. “Where do you go then? Do you go score some drugs and pretend we never happened?”
“Don’t do that,” she cries.
“You need help, Pilar.”
“I’ll get help,” she says, lifting her eyes. “I can kick the drugs, Joaquin. I need to learn how to beat you, though, because loving you is my greatest addiction.”
The greatest and apparently the deadliest.
“I do love you, Pilar,” I murmur, losing my will to argue. As much as I want to see her through her recovery and prove how much she means to me, there’s truth in what she says and any way you slice it, the outcome is still the same . . . I’m not good for her.