Page 280 of The Lies We Play

Wanting to comfort me, then asking whether comfort has permission.

“Can I?” he asks.

I nod.

He covers my fist with his hand.

Bella keeps shaking inside it.

“Sit down,” he says.

I sit because if I keep standing, I am going to become either too honest or not honest enough.

He pulls out the chair across from mine.

Not beside me.

Across.

That small distance tells me he already knows what this conversation is.

He sits and folds his hands on the table. He looks at me with an expression that is not pity, not anger, not the polished mildness of a man preparing a polite exit.

“I want to tell you something,” he says. “Then you can tell me whatever you feel comfortable with.”

“Okay.”

“I knew.” He pauses. His gaze drops to his hands, then returns to me. “I knew there was something from the beginning. The first time we had dinner. The way you held your wrist when I asked about the tattoo. The way you have never said yes to coming to my parents’ house in Madrid. I knew there was a room in you I wasn’t going to be allowed into.”

I open my mouth.

He shakes his head, gentle but firm. “Let me say it.”

I close my mouth.

“I know because I’ve never told you about my wife,” he says.

Everything in me stops reaching for the next defense.

“She died with our child during childbirth.”

The kitchen tilts, not physically, but in the cruel, emotional way a room can become unfamiliar while you are still standing in it.

“Moises,” I whisper.

He gives me a faint smile. It doesn't last.

“Once I thought I was ready to try to live again, I came to Italy. I told myself it was for the work. For the institute. For the art. Very impressive lies. Better than average. I met you, and I was attracted to you. You are beautiful, yes, but it was not only that.”

His fingers move against each other.

“It was your loneliness,” he says. “I recognized it. I thought maybe we could sit near each other inside it.”

The sentence hurts because it is true.

“I wanted to love you,” he continues. “I wanted it the way a man wants to be allowed inside a house he has been standing outside of in good weather. But I knew the door was not going to open. Not fully.”

He exhales, and the sound breaks something in me I have no right to claim.