Page 211 of Ricardo

Too close to something we would have said before, back when he could irritate me across my kitchen table, and I could throw a dish towel at his head without wondering whether it would be the last normal thing between us.

His mouth tightens as if he realizes it too.

I take the bottle. The cap cracks loudly in the quiet car. I take a careful sip, then another. The cold settles my stomach a little.

“Better, thanks,” I say.

I look out the window.

The city blurs beyond the glass.

“I’m sorry,” I blurt out.

His body goes still.

I keep my eyes on the window because looking at him might make the words impossible. “I know you don’t want to hear it. I know saying it doesn’t fix anything. But I am sorry.”

He does not answer.

The tires hum over the road.

I twist the water bottle in my hands. “I miss you.”

That gets him.

I feel it before I see it. The slight change in his breathing. The tension that pulls through him and then locks down.

“That’s enough,” he says.

“No, it’s not,” I say. “I know you don't want to hear it, but if this is the last chance I'm ever going to have to make you hear it, I'm going to take it.”

He is looking at me now, and the coldness is there, but it’s not as strong now. It’s tired and worn now.

“You don’t get to say you miss me like this is something that happened to both of us from the outside.”

The words cut, but there is no cruelty in them.

Only hurt.

“I know that.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

His eyes search mine.

I force myself to stay still under his gaze.

“I made choices,” I say. “So did Ricardo. We should have told you right from the start. Before anything had ever happened. I should have told you the second I started feeling something for him.”

His mouth presses into a hard line.

“I keep going back over it,” he says. “Every conversation. Every time you said his name strangely. Every time he asked about you like he was being casual. Every time I thought I was imagining things because I trusted both of you too much to suspect anything.”

My eyes sting. “I hate that I broke your trust or made you feel foolish.”

“You didn’t make me feel foolish.”