Page 66 of The Lies We Play

Moises’s thumb brushes the side of his cup.

“It’s a bad day for Bella?” he asks.

I should lie.

Lying is easy when everyone rewards you for it. A bright smile, a small joke, a tidy little assurance placed in someone’s hand so they can walk away relieved. It is performance, really. My motivation is simple: convince everyone I am fine so they can be comfortable. So I can be useful. So no one looks too closely at the parts of my life held together by routine and nerve.

Still, I hear myself say, “Yes.”

Moises’s face changes only a little. That is one of his mercies. He never makes my pain perform for him.

“Then we go slow today.”

I laugh once. “That is adorable.”

“It was not a suggestion.”

“Careful. Bossy before eight makes you sound like a man with long-term intentions.”

His eyes stay on mine.

The joke slips between us and refuses to stay a joke.

Moises and long-term intentions are not theoretical. They have been arriving quietly for months. A drawer at his place. A toothbrush at mine. Invitations phrased casually but placed with care. His mother asked over dinner whether I preferred the church near the river or the one near the institute. There are some lovely ones in Mexico City—and San Miguel de Ayende too. And of course, Moises coughing so hard he nearly died in a plate of ravioli.

He has a ring.

I know he has a ring because I restored the little lacquered box for his aunt when she came to visit last spring. She wasn’t subtle. I held the box in my hands for three days, touching up the hinge, polishing the worn corners, pretending I didn’t understand why Moises watched me with that cautious, tender look men get when they are trying not to scare the woman they love.

He has a future in his pocket.

I have a graveyard in mine.

What would I tell him if he asked?

Sorry, before you get on one knee, there’s a small administrative complication. I am married. It will be eleven years next February. Also, my husband and the man who used to look at me like he wanted to ruin anyone who hurt me both disappeared from my life after I was broken. So yes, I would love more coffee, but marriage might be legally and emotionally crowded.

How pathetic is that?

No, worse than pathetic.

Cruel.

Moises deserves a woman whose past is not sitting between them with its elbows on the table. He deserves someone who can hear the word “forever” and not immediately wonder whose name she would be betraying by answering.

The truth hurts so much that I choose my lies instead. They don’t make me happy, not exactly, but they keep me moving through this life I have built. They keep the roof above me, the floor beneath me, the mornings arranged in manageable pieces.

A complacent future is still a future.

Some days, that has to be enough.

Moises smiles, but it doesn't reach the part of his face that knows me best. “Come. Before you insult me further.”

“Impossible. I haven’t warmed up.”

See, this is simple. This lie is easy to live, easy to manage with Bella and all the baggage I carry behind me.

Why complicate it with dreams and a past that forgot about me long ago? It’ll never come back—ever.