Por si éramos pocos by Belenuski - Chapter 11 (Part 2)
Title: Por si éramos pocos by Belenuski
Rating: PG-13
NB: Sorry for the long delay. But, on we go...
January 4th
Pepa suddenly sat up in bed and ran to the bathroom. She knelt in front of the toilet and vomited the little bit that she had eaten that night. Tears escaped from the exertion once she finished, and after drinking a glass of water in the kitchen, she laid down on the sofa in the living room with a bad taste in her mouth and her hand on her forehead.
“What’s happening with me?” She asked. “Fucking winter and fucking stress.”
That was it, her nerves were shot. Her nerves and the winter that she was obligated to endure had made her sick, a sickness that, unlike Noah, she hadn’t completely gotten over.
That was it…
_____________________________
Noah was in the house watching tv when she heard a sound originating from the kitchen. If she remembered correctly, her mother should’ve been in bathroom taking a shower. She shrugged her shoulders and walked out of the living room and encountered a hallway that looked much longer and darker than normal. She had never been afraid of the dark, but in that moment, her legs shook because the darkness wasn’t one to which she was accustomed. It was a purple darkness. She had already learned her colors, and the black of night was completely different from this theatrical color.
She was dreaming, and she knew it.
“It’s a dream…” the little one said. “It’s a dream.”
She wanted to go back to the living room where the dream was brighter, even pretty, but the door was gone, she could only continue down the long hallway until she reached the kitchen where, without knowing how, she knew something scary was waiting for her.
As she got closer, she was getting more and more scared, and she felt the first tears fall from her eyes. Paralyzed by fear, she squatted down with a child’s flexibility and covered her ears, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
“I wanna wake up,” she said. “Mamá…I wanna wake up.”
But she suddenly heard a sound from inside the kitchen. A sound that wasn’t very familiar to her, but she did know what it was. A loud baby’s cry echoed off the walls.
Noah opened her tear-filled eyes and uncovered her ears. She stood up little by little and, with slow steps, she finally arrived at the kitchen where the baby’s cry finally stopped and turned into a laugh.
She then saw a high chair where a baby sat, looking at her and smiling. She didn’t really know if it was a boy a girl, the face was blurry, but she could see how it stretched out its arms to be picked up. Noah frowned. She didn’t understand the little one’s gesture since she hadn’t interacted with babies very much before. She approached the baby, preparing to touch it to try and identify its facial features, but a new sound distracted her. Now she wasn’t in the kitchen anymore, she was in the bedroom. Her mother Silvia’s room was rife with black and red stains, blood stains. She saw the baby playing with a gun on the floor and she wanted to get near it to take it away. It couldn’t play with that, it was strictly prohibited. In fact, her mothers had hid their own guns so that she wouldn’t ever touch them. In that moment, the baby lifted its hand, aiming the gun with great dexterity. The baby had transformed into an adult, hidden behind a black trench coat and a hat. She couldn’t see the face, but it scared her anyway…
She leaned back against the wall, frightened. What happened next was quick. She saw shadows all around her that cried and laughed. They moved rapidly and she covered her ears and cried again. Then Silvia appeared, but that person knocked away her gun. It fell to the floor and slid until it was under the armoire, and then the person in the trench coat was finally visible. It was Pepa. Noah let go of her ears and looked at her mother fearfully. She could still see the blood stains and she felt a gun pointing at her, her own mother was aiming at her. Noah began to hyperventilate, she was struggling to catch her breath, and when her little hands clutched her chest, she again saw the baby laughing with the gun in its hand, aiming high once more. Aiming at Silvia.
“No, por favor…” Noah whispered to the little one. But it was in vain. The baby pulled the trigger and she watched, in slow-motion, as the bullet made its way to her mother. “No!”
She sat up sweating.
Her breathing was labored, but she was glad to see the darkness, one that was much more tenebrous than the one she had dreamed. But still, she was alone in her room , in the dark, scared of the shadows her own imagination was conjuring up.
She climbed out of bed hugging Toni, her bunny, and ran barefoot to her mother’s room crying.
The door was ajar, that meant she could walk in without knocking first. That’s how she had been taught.
“Ma…Mamá…,” she called, wiping away her tears.
Silvia opened her eyes. Since she had become a mother, the ability to sleep lightly had become her ally and she could felt her daughter’s presence as soon as she walked in through the door.
“Noah, cariño, what’s wrong?”
“I’m scared,” she said rubbing her eyes.
“Mi amor, come here,” Silvia turned on the bedside lamp, the light bothered her eyes at first, but that way she could get a better look at Noah who was still crying. The redhead sat up, wiped Noah’s face and kissed her on the forehead. “A bad dream?”
The girl nodded. “Can I sleep with you?”
For the first time, her mother had to think about it. Just looking at her, Silvia could see how much her daughter was growing. In one month, she would turn four years old, and though she was still little, she couldn’t let her get accustomed to seeking protection from others whenever she was scared.
“Cariño, you’re a big girl now.”
Noah’s lips drooped and more tears fell from her eyes. Silvia sighed. Dios, she looked so much like Pepa…
“But…but I’m scared…please, just tonight. Please.
Silvia rubbed her face and finally rolled her eyes.
“Come on.”
Noah smiled and climbed into bed with her mother who dried her face and kissed her again. The redhead blamed herself for the little willpower she had, and she promised that the next time her daughter had a nightmare, she would have to sleep in her own bedroom, like Pepa wanted.
January 5th
Pepa
(*) “Ah! Look, mamá!,” my daughter exclaimed.
We were at a park near the precinct. They usually had lights and a giant Christmas tree there this time of year, and the tree had gotten Noah’s attention. I smiled at her as she turned to point at the tree, and I continued to look at her in a bit stunned. Almost four years old, how time flies. Has it really been five years since we decided to have a child together? Four since we had to rush to the hospital? Three since I was the happiest woman in the world? Two since the doubts and lies started to grow…? And seven months since I said goodbye to her, since we separated definitively. Six months and 18 days, to be exact. At what moment do you stop feeling? Why do you stop loving?
I looked at Noah so I could smile again, because she was the one who gave me life. She was my daughter, my reason for existing, the one who kept me from falling into depression, that kept me from going crazy. Because without Silvia, I was lost. If Noah hadn’t been there, I would’ve fallen hard, and I would’ve hit the ground with such force that I wouldn’t have been able to get back up again, but she was there, thank goodness. Even still, during the last few months, when my daughter wasn’t home with me, I wasn’t alive. I tossed and turned in bed at night, I walked the streets like a ghost, and I did just enough to survive knowing that three days later, the most important thing in my life would return, and I had to take care of her and not worry her. And she would arrive holding Silvia’s hand, and I’d greet them both happily. I’d greet Noah, who could give me just one kiss and make me smile, and I’d greet my redhead, who I smiled at even without a kiss.
But eventually, one night, my body couldn’t take it anymore and I got close to her, but she also got close to me.
Suddenly, my solitary routine disappeared, I no longer smiled in the absence of kisses, now I kissed in the absence of smiles. Because I didn’t have a smile that night in December. I had wanted to cry, I felt broken, and without wanting to, I let my emotions overtake me.
It’s just that I kissed her so unexpectedly, and she kissed me back. I wrapped my arms around her, and she imitated me, and unintentionally, we ended up making love in the guest room of Sara’s chalet.
“Noah,” I called to my daughter who was entertaining herself with a rock she found in the grass. She looked up at me. “The sandwich.”
She skipped her way over to me. She was absolutely precious. We had cut her hair not too long ago because it had gotten really long. Now she had short hair again that barely reached her shoulders. In her coal-black hair, she had blue hair clips that brought out her eyes and matched her jean dress. Under the dress, she was wearing a long-sleeve blouse, white, just like her tights. And on top of everything, there was her purple jacket. Silvia always dressed her well and made sure she was covered up, and Noah had left from Silvia’s this morning. In fact, it wouldn’t be until the 7th that she would be back with me, but Silvia and I had both been called into work today and were told it was okay for us to bring Noah. I didn’t get to find out what the news was though, because while Sabina was entertained by Povedilla outside of the briefing room, my daughter wasn’t quite as well-behaved and was turning the place upside down. I left Silvia to attend to things there while I took Noah to the park. To be honest, I brought her out because I needed a bit of air. I was feeling extremely hot even though it was considerably cold out. Could it be a fever?
I sat with Noah’s half-eaten sandwich in my hand, and then I passed it back to her. She took a little bite and was about to take off again, but I caught her by the hood of her jacket.
“A bigger bite.”
“Mami…”
I sighed. When it started like this…
“What?”
“I don’t want anymore.”
“Yes, you do want more, come on.”
“No!” She refused as she skipped back to the grass.
“Noah, you have to eat all of it.”
“No, no, no, no…” she said in a sing-song.
“Do you want me to get angry?”
“Ooh, mamá”.
Silvia definitely was right. When Noah became a teenager, we we’re going to argue a lot…she always had to have a response for everything.
“One…”
“Mamá!”
“Two…”
“Aww, okay!”
Stomping her way back to me, she sat down on the bench beside me and crossed her arms. She took the little bit that was left of the sandwich with teeth clenched.
“Stupid!”
I gave her a little smack on the head., and she responded with a weak kick.
“Noah, to mamá?”
She puffed out her cheeks and took an angry bite out of the sandwich. It was her way of demonstrating her annoyance and feeling of helplessness.
“You haven’t been behaving recently, and you know that the three kings are coming tonight, don’t you? They’re going to bring you a lump of coal.”
“That’s a lie!”
I smiled. I couldn’t help but find it funny to see her angry, it was when she most looked like me. Now, when it came to stubbornness, she definitely turned out like Silvia. Yes, I insist that kids end up taking after those who raised them, whether they’re blood or not.
“Let’s see…what’s going on here?” A voice asked from behind us.
We both gave a start and turned to see Silvia behind us, smiling. I immediately smiled back, in fact, I even felt a few butterflies in my stomach. Wait…butterflies? Impossible…
“Your daughter, she likes to talk back.”
“Oh, well, she’s been doing that a lot recently.” She walked around the bench and sat down beside Noah. “But you know that’s bad, right?”
The girl furrowed her brow and took one last bit of her sandwich. She had eaten it all and didn’t seem willing to respond to her mother’s question.
“What did they say in the reunion?” I asked.
“Can I go play?”
She looked as us both. Whenever she heard “reunion” or “precinct”, she got bored.
“Okay, but only 15 minutes, eh? It’s already getting dark,” I replied to her. We watched her walk away and sit back on the grass, taking out one of her little dolls and talking to it alone, using her imagination. That was one of the things that made me happiest about we raised my daughter. It would’ve been much easier, like other mothers, to just give her a videogame to keep her quiet. But Silvia and I never thought that was a good idea, and now the results were spectacular. A girl with an enormous imagination who was capable of keeping herself entertained for hours which, as she grew up, could lead her to become an artist, or a writer, or even get into music.
“So what happened?” I asked Silvia again.
“There’s two things, one good news, the other bad news.”
“And why couldn’t it be two good news?”
Silvia laughed and I smiled. I loved to hear her laugh.
“The bad news is that the case has advanced some, and on the 7th, we have to go out of town to get more involved in the operation.”
I sighed and slid down into my seat.
“You’re fucking kidding, Silvia…”
“That’s the bad news. The good news is where we’re going.”
I sat up. Well, we were leaving Madrid, and I loved leaving Madrid.
“Where?”
“Guess.’
She looked so terribly excited and her eyes were shining so much that it was making me nervous.
“Where?” I repeated.
“We’re going to the Caribbean.”
My eyes opened wide, but before my excite could escape, I contained it.
“You’re…you’re shitting me.”
“No,” she said with a smile that illuminated her face. Silvia loved the beach, but I loved it even more, if that was possible. “We’re going to the Caribbean, Pepa.”
Then I smiled just as much as she was and kicked my feet a few times to keep from screaming in the middle of the park.
“We’re going to the Caribbean!”
“Yes!”
“That’s great!”
We hugged instinctively and started to laugh. Okay, so we’d be on an operation, but we could enjoy the days before because we would damn well go for more than two days. We’re going to the Caribbean! I pulled away from her a bit.
“Wait, and Noah?”
“With my father.”
“Your father’s not coming?”
“He’ll lead from here.”
I smiled again.
“Can I say something that you’re not going to like?”
“You’re going to say it anyway.”
“No father-in-law and no daughter! Oh, lucky day!”
Silvia started to laugh again and I squeezed her tighter. When I opened my eyes as I hugged Silvia, I could see Noah watching us from afar, smiling. I recalled my niece’s words and pulled away from my ex-wife who was still smiling, full of happiness. I put more distance between us on the bench, but she didn’t notice. Being so close to her made me nervous, something I wasn’t used to. I was supposed the seductress, the sure one. What was happening to me?
“Mamá!” Our daughter called us. “Push me on the swing?”
Silvia responded for me and stood up to find Noah. I stayed sitting there, mesmerized as I watched her walk away and felt butterflies in my stomach as my cheeks flush. I only got flushed when Silvia and I slept together or when I was hot. Shame, embarrassment, and cowardice had no effect on me except during those few first days…when we met again, when I realized I was in falling in love, when we first started getting closer, during the first kiss, our first time…
I blinked a few times to situate myself, but I didn’t stop looking at her. I loved to see her smiling at Noah, with her hair caught in the wind, her face an expression of tenderness…
I placed my hand on my chest to feel my heart beat. And only with this did I finally understand the reason behind these last few nights without Silvia, the reason behind my desire to sleep with her, to kiss her at all hours. Now that I had admitted it to myself, everything that had vanished came back again, the solitude, the sadness, the desire to love but not be able to, the helplessness…And it’s just that, the bad things had vanished and they took love along with them, but now, precisely in this moment, I discovered that they never really had disappeared, neither one nor the other.
Even if I could look at the empty bed five days out of the week and not feel bad, the other two days of feeling alone were still there. Even if sadness rarely appeared anymore, there were times it would show up and it agitated my heart. It’s just that, the bad, it hadn’t gone away, but neither had the love. I was in love with Silvia. It’s not that I had just fallen in love with her now, no. I had never stopped loving her, and now I knew I never would. After getting divorced, after all the fights, the bad moments, I was still madly in love with this woman. And though I knew it on that night of December 30th when I couldn’t avoid it and I slept with her, now I was in complete control of my faculties and in the position to accept it. There was only one problem…what was going on with her? What was she feeling? What was she thinking? And there was something else, something else that made me feel horrible that we divorced, and that was the magic. The butterflies, the tingling sensation had come back. That magic that we had lost, that we had made an effort to regain, that magic that we would’ve found if we had taken a break when she asked me that day in Barcelona. Because I had found it again, I felt it again. Not only did I love Silvia, but the hope and excitement was back and no lie or doubt would ever chase them away again.
“Pepa, it’s time to go,” she called me. I snapped out of my daze. I looked around me, night had fallen. Noche de reyes.
“Silvia, can I ask you something?” Now the part inside of me that was thinking about Silvia stopped to think about Noah, who was still trying to button up her coat by herself and wasn’t listening to me. “I’d like to sleep at your place tonight.” She looked at me a bit alarmed and I quickly explained, “for Noah. I don’t want to miss seeing her wake up on the morning of the Three Kings.”
Her smile reappeared, calmly, and she nodded.
“But no silly stuff, Pepa. Remember that that’s over.”
I smiled.
“No silly stuff, I promise.”(*)
Links to the original story:
http://pepaysilvia.mforos.com/1469855/8481210-por-si-eramos-pocos-01-11-09-23-40/
http://pepaysilvia.mforos.com/1469855/8680673-por-si-eramos-pocos-ii-28-11-09-21-35/
http://pepaysilvia.mforos.com/1469855/8848739-por-si-eramos-pocos-iii-14-02-10-0-55-finalizado/
Rating: PG-13
NB: Sorry for the long delay. But, on we go...
January 4th
Pepa suddenly sat up in bed and ran to the bathroom. She knelt in front of the toilet and vomited the little bit that she had eaten that night. Tears escaped from the exertion once she finished, and after drinking a glass of water in the kitchen, she laid down on the sofa in the living room with a bad taste in her mouth and her hand on her forehead.
“What’s happening with me?” She asked. “Fucking winter and fucking stress.”
That was it, her nerves were shot. Her nerves and the winter that she was obligated to endure had made her sick, a sickness that, unlike Noah, she hadn’t completely gotten over.
That was it…
_____________________________
Noah was in the house watching tv when she heard a sound originating from the kitchen. If she remembered correctly, her mother should’ve been in bathroom taking a shower. She shrugged her shoulders and walked out of the living room and encountered a hallway that looked much longer and darker than normal. She had never been afraid of the dark, but in that moment, her legs shook because the darkness wasn’t one to which she was accustomed. It was a purple darkness. She had already learned her colors, and the black of night was completely different from this theatrical color.
She was dreaming, and she knew it.
“It’s a dream…” the little one said. “It’s a dream.”
She wanted to go back to the living room where the dream was brighter, even pretty, but the door was gone, she could only continue down the long hallway until she reached the kitchen where, without knowing how, she knew something scary was waiting for her.
As she got closer, she was getting more and more scared, and she felt the first tears fall from her eyes. Paralyzed by fear, she squatted down with a child’s flexibility and covered her ears, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.
“I wanna wake up,” she said. “Mamá…I wanna wake up.”
But she suddenly heard a sound from inside the kitchen. A sound that wasn’t very familiar to her, but she did know what it was. A loud baby’s cry echoed off the walls.
Noah opened her tear-filled eyes and uncovered her ears. She stood up little by little and, with slow steps, she finally arrived at the kitchen where the baby’s cry finally stopped and turned into a laugh.
She then saw a high chair where a baby sat, looking at her and smiling. She didn’t really know if it was a boy a girl, the face was blurry, but she could see how it stretched out its arms to be picked up. Noah frowned. She didn’t understand the little one’s gesture since she hadn’t interacted with babies very much before. She approached the baby, preparing to touch it to try and identify its facial features, but a new sound distracted her. Now she wasn’t in the kitchen anymore, she was in the bedroom. Her mother Silvia’s room was rife with black and red stains, blood stains. She saw the baby playing with a gun on the floor and she wanted to get near it to take it away. It couldn’t play with that, it was strictly prohibited. In fact, her mothers had hid their own guns so that she wouldn’t ever touch them. In that moment, the baby lifted its hand, aiming the gun with great dexterity. The baby had transformed into an adult, hidden behind a black trench coat and a hat. She couldn’t see the face, but it scared her anyway…
She leaned back against the wall, frightened. What happened next was quick. She saw shadows all around her that cried and laughed. They moved rapidly and she covered her ears and cried again. Then Silvia appeared, but that person knocked away her gun. It fell to the floor and slid until it was under the armoire, and then the person in the trench coat was finally visible. It was Pepa. Noah let go of her ears and looked at her mother fearfully. She could still see the blood stains and she felt a gun pointing at her, her own mother was aiming at her. Noah began to hyperventilate, she was struggling to catch her breath, and when her little hands clutched her chest, she again saw the baby laughing with the gun in its hand, aiming high once more. Aiming at Silvia.
“No, por favor…” Noah whispered to the little one. But it was in vain. The baby pulled the trigger and she watched, in slow-motion, as the bullet made its way to her mother. “No!”
She sat up sweating.
Her breathing was labored, but she was glad to see the darkness, one that was much more tenebrous than the one she had dreamed. But still, she was alone in her room , in the dark, scared of the shadows her own imagination was conjuring up.
She climbed out of bed hugging Toni, her bunny, and ran barefoot to her mother’s room crying.
The door was ajar, that meant she could walk in without knocking first. That’s how she had been taught.
“Ma…Mamá…,” she called, wiping away her tears.
Silvia opened her eyes. Since she had become a mother, the ability to sleep lightly had become her ally and she could felt her daughter’s presence as soon as she walked in through the door.
“Noah, cariño, what’s wrong?”
“I’m scared,” she said rubbing her eyes.
“Mi amor, come here,” Silvia turned on the bedside lamp, the light bothered her eyes at first, but that way she could get a better look at Noah who was still crying. The redhead sat up, wiped Noah’s face and kissed her on the forehead. “A bad dream?”
The girl nodded. “Can I sleep with you?”
For the first time, her mother had to think about it. Just looking at her, Silvia could see how much her daughter was growing. In one month, she would turn four years old, and though she was still little, she couldn’t let her get accustomed to seeking protection from others whenever she was scared.
“Cariño, you’re a big girl now.”
Noah’s lips drooped and more tears fell from her eyes. Silvia sighed. Dios, she looked so much like Pepa…
“But…but I’m scared…please, just tonight. Please.
Silvia rubbed her face and finally rolled her eyes.
“Come on.”
Noah smiled and climbed into bed with her mother who dried her face and kissed her again. The redhead blamed herself for the little willpower she had, and she promised that the next time her daughter had a nightmare, she would have to sleep in her own bedroom, like Pepa wanted.
January 5th
Pepa
(*) “Ah! Look, mamá!,” my daughter exclaimed.
We were at a park near the precinct. They usually had lights and a giant Christmas tree there this time of year, and the tree had gotten Noah’s attention. I smiled at her as she turned to point at the tree, and I continued to look at her in a bit stunned. Almost four years old, how time flies. Has it really been five years since we decided to have a child together? Four since we had to rush to the hospital? Three since I was the happiest woman in the world? Two since the doubts and lies started to grow…? And seven months since I said goodbye to her, since we separated definitively. Six months and 18 days, to be exact. At what moment do you stop feeling? Why do you stop loving?
I looked at Noah so I could smile again, because she was the one who gave me life. She was my daughter, my reason for existing, the one who kept me from falling into depression, that kept me from going crazy. Because without Silvia, I was lost. If Noah hadn’t been there, I would’ve fallen hard, and I would’ve hit the ground with such force that I wouldn’t have been able to get back up again, but she was there, thank goodness. Even still, during the last few months, when my daughter wasn’t home with me, I wasn’t alive. I tossed and turned in bed at night, I walked the streets like a ghost, and I did just enough to survive knowing that three days later, the most important thing in my life would return, and I had to take care of her and not worry her. And she would arrive holding Silvia’s hand, and I’d greet them both happily. I’d greet Noah, who could give me just one kiss and make me smile, and I’d greet my redhead, who I smiled at even without a kiss.
But eventually, one night, my body couldn’t take it anymore and I got close to her, but she also got close to me.
Suddenly, my solitary routine disappeared, I no longer smiled in the absence of kisses, now I kissed in the absence of smiles. Because I didn’t have a smile that night in December. I had wanted to cry, I felt broken, and without wanting to, I let my emotions overtake me.
It’s just that I kissed her so unexpectedly, and she kissed me back. I wrapped my arms around her, and she imitated me, and unintentionally, we ended up making love in the guest room of Sara’s chalet.
“Noah,” I called to my daughter who was entertaining herself with a rock she found in the grass. She looked up at me. “The sandwich.”
She skipped her way over to me. She was absolutely precious. We had cut her hair not too long ago because it had gotten really long. Now she had short hair again that barely reached her shoulders. In her coal-black hair, she had blue hair clips that brought out her eyes and matched her jean dress. Under the dress, she was wearing a long-sleeve blouse, white, just like her tights. And on top of everything, there was her purple jacket. Silvia always dressed her well and made sure she was covered up, and Noah had left from Silvia’s this morning. In fact, it wouldn’t be until the 7th that she would be back with me, but Silvia and I had both been called into work today and were told it was okay for us to bring Noah. I didn’t get to find out what the news was though, because while Sabina was entertained by Povedilla outside of the briefing room, my daughter wasn’t quite as well-behaved and was turning the place upside down. I left Silvia to attend to things there while I took Noah to the park. To be honest, I brought her out because I needed a bit of air. I was feeling extremely hot even though it was considerably cold out. Could it be a fever?
I sat with Noah’s half-eaten sandwich in my hand, and then I passed it back to her. She took a little bite and was about to take off again, but I caught her by the hood of her jacket.
“A bigger bite.”
“Mami…”
I sighed. When it started like this…
“What?”
“I don’t want anymore.”
“Yes, you do want more, come on.”
“No!” She refused as she skipped back to the grass.
“Noah, you have to eat all of it.”
“No, no, no, no…” she said in a sing-song.
“Do you want me to get angry?”
“Ooh, mamá”.
Silvia definitely was right. When Noah became a teenager, we we’re going to argue a lot…she always had to have a response for everything.
“One…”
“Mamá!”
“Two…”
“Aww, okay!”
Stomping her way back to me, she sat down on the bench beside me and crossed her arms. She took the little bit that was left of the sandwich with teeth clenched.
“Stupid!”
I gave her a little smack on the head., and she responded with a weak kick.
“Noah, to mamá?”
She puffed out her cheeks and took an angry bite out of the sandwich. It was her way of demonstrating her annoyance and feeling of helplessness.
“You haven’t been behaving recently, and you know that the three kings are coming tonight, don’t you? They’re going to bring you a lump of coal.”
“That’s a lie!”
I smiled. I couldn’t help but find it funny to see her angry, it was when she most looked like me. Now, when it came to stubbornness, she definitely turned out like Silvia. Yes, I insist that kids end up taking after those who raised them, whether they’re blood or not.
“Let’s see…what’s going on here?” A voice asked from behind us.
We both gave a start and turned to see Silvia behind us, smiling. I immediately smiled back, in fact, I even felt a few butterflies in my stomach. Wait…butterflies? Impossible…
“Your daughter, she likes to talk back.”
“Oh, well, she’s been doing that a lot recently.” She walked around the bench and sat down beside Noah. “But you know that’s bad, right?”
The girl furrowed her brow and took one last bit of her sandwich. She had eaten it all and didn’t seem willing to respond to her mother’s question.
“What did they say in the reunion?” I asked.
“Can I go play?”
She looked as us both. Whenever she heard “reunion” or “precinct”, she got bored.
“Okay, but only 15 minutes, eh? It’s already getting dark,” I replied to her. We watched her walk away and sit back on the grass, taking out one of her little dolls and talking to it alone, using her imagination. That was one of the things that made me happiest about we raised my daughter. It would’ve been much easier, like other mothers, to just give her a videogame to keep her quiet. But Silvia and I never thought that was a good idea, and now the results were spectacular. A girl with an enormous imagination who was capable of keeping herself entertained for hours which, as she grew up, could lead her to become an artist, or a writer, or even get into music.
“So what happened?” I asked Silvia again.
“There’s two things, one good news, the other bad news.”
“And why couldn’t it be two good news?”
Silvia laughed and I smiled. I loved to hear her laugh.
“The bad news is that the case has advanced some, and on the 7th, we have to go out of town to get more involved in the operation.”
I sighed and slid down into my seat.
“You’re fucking kidding, Silvia…”
“That’s the bad news. The good news is where we’re going.”
I sat up. Well, we were leaving Madrid, and I loved leaving Madrid.
“Where?”
“Guess.’
She looked so terribly excited and her eyes were shining so much that it was making me nervous.
“Where?” I repeated.
“We’re going to the Caribbean.”
My eyes opened wide, but before my excite could escape, I contained it.
“You’re…you’re shitting me.”
“No,” she said with a smile that illuminated her face. Silvia loved the beach, but I loved it even more, if that was possible. “We’re going to the Caribbean, Pepa.”
Then I smiled just as much as she was and kicked my feet a few times to keep from screaming in the middle of the park.
“We’re going to the Caribbean!”
“Yes!”
“That’s great!”
We hugged instinctively and started to laugh. Okay, so we’d be on an operation, but we could enjoy the days before because we would damn well go for more than two days. We’re going to the Caribbean! I pulled away from her a bit.
“Wait, and Noah?”
“With my father.”
“Your father’s not coming?”
“He’ll lead from here.”
I smiled again.
“Can I say something that you’re not going to like?”
“You’re going to say it anyway.”
“No father-in-law and no daughter! Oh, lucky day!”
Silvia started to laugh again and I squeezed her tighter. When I opened my eyes as I hugged Silvia, I could see Noah watching us from afar, smiling. I recalled my niece’s words and pulled away from my ex-wife who was still smiling, full of happiness. I put more distance between us on the bench, but she didn’t notice. Being so close to her made me nervous, something I wasn’t used to. I was supposed the seductress, the sure one. What was happening to me?
“Mamá!” Our daughter called us. “Push me on the swing?”
Silvia responded for me and stood up to find Noah. I stayed sitting there, mesmerized as I watched her walk away and felt butterflies in my stomach as my cheeks flush. I only got flushed when Silvia and I slept together or when I was hot. Shame, embarrassment, and cowardice had no effect on me except during those few first days…when we met again, when I realized I was in falling in love, when we first started getting closer, during the first kiss, our first time…
I blinked a few times to situate myself, but I didn’t stop looking at her. I loved to see her smiling at Noah, with her hair caught in the wind, her face an expression of tenderness…
I placed my hand on my chest to feel my heart beat. And only with this did I finally understand the reason behind these last few nights without Silvia, the reason behind my desire to sleep with her, to kiss her at all hours. Now that I had admitted it to myself, everything that had vanished came back again, the solitude, the sadness, the desire to love but not be able to, the helplessness…And it’s just that, the bad things had vanished and they took love along with them, but now, precisely in this moment, I discovered that they never really had disappeared, neither one nor the other.
Even if I could look at the empty bed five days out of the week and not feel bad, the other two days of feeling alone were still there. Even if sadness rarely appeared anymore, there were times it would show up and it agitated my heart. It’s just that, the bad, it hadn’t gone away, but neither had the love. I was in love with Silvia. It’s not that I had just fallen in love with her now, no. I had never stopped loving her, and now I knew I never would. After getting divorced, after all the fights, the bad moments, I was still madly in love with this woman. And though I knew it on that night of December 30th when I couldn’t avoid it and I slept with her, now I was in complete control of my faculties and in the position to accept it. There was only one problem…what was going on with her? What was she feeling? What was she thinking? And there was something else, something else that made me feel horrible that we divorced, and that was the magic. The butterflies, the tingling sensation had come back. That magic that we had lost, that we had made an effort to regain, that magic that we would’ve found if we had taken a break when she asked me that day in Barcelona. Because I had found it again, I felt it again. Not only did I love Silvia, but the hope and excitement was back and no lie or doubt would ever chase them away again.
“Pepa, it’s time to go,” she called me. I snapped out of my daze. I looked around me, night had fallen. Noche de reyes.
“Silvia, can I ask you something?” Now the part inside of me that was thinking about Silvia stopped to think about Noah, who was still trying to button up her coat by herself and wasn’t listening to me. “I’d like to sleep at your place tonight.” She looked at me a bit alarmed and I quickly explained, “for Noah. I don’t want to miss seeing her wake up on the morning of the Three Kings.”
Her smile reappeared, calmly, and she nodded.
“But no silly stuff, Pepa. Remember that that’s over.”
I smiled.
“No silly stuff, I promise.”(*)
Links to the original story:
http://pepaysilvia.mforos.com/1469855/8481210-por-si-eramos-pocos-01-11-09-23-40/
http://pepaysilvia.mforos.com/1469855/8680673-por-si-eramos-pocos-ii-28-11-09-21-35/
http://pepaysilvia.mforos.com/1469855/8848739-por-si-eramos-pocos-iii-14-02-10-0-55-finalizado/