Wish You Were Here(63)
I raise an eyebrow. “What’s he paying her with?”
Beatriz cracks a smile, and then I do, too, and we both laugh. I put my arm around her, and she lays her head on my shoulder. We watch a sea lion playing in the distance.
“You know,” Beatriz says, “you could stay. With us.”
I feel myself soften against her. “I have to go back to real life sometime.”
She pulls away, a wistful expression on her face. “For a while,” she says, “didn’t this feel real?”
Dear Finn,
It’s possible you won’t get this postcard until I come home and hand it to you myself. But there are things I need to say, and it can’t wait.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the things we do that are simply unforgivable. Like me not being with my mother when she died, or my mother not being around when I was growing up. Leaving you alone during a pandemic. You encouraging me to go.
I’ve thought a lot about that last one. When you told me you were trying to keep me safe … ?you might just have been convincing yourself it was the smartest course of action. Did you really not think I could manage to stay healthy? Did you actually believe that when the world is falling to pieces, it’s better to be apart from the person you love, instead of together?
I am overthinking this, of course, but these days I have a lot of time to think. And I can’t even blame you. I’ve said and done things, too, that I shouldn’t have.
I know everyone makes mistakes—but until recently I have held everyone to a standard where making mistakes is a weakness. Me included—I haven’t given myself the grace to screw up, to do better next time. It is exhausting, trying to never step off the path, worrying that if I do, I’ll never get back on track.
So here is what I’ve learned: if, in hindsight, you realize you’ve messed up—if you have done the unforgivable—that does not mean that the terrible thing wasn’t meant to happen. Sure, we may wish otherwise, but when things don’t happen according to plan, it may be because the plan was faulty. I’m not explaining this well. For example, take my missing suitcase: I wonder if the person who found it needed clothes more than I did. I wonder how Beatriz would have fared if I had never come to Isabela. I imagine Kitomi having her painting for company all these weeks, instead of it being crated up in a warehouse. I picture all the people you’ve saved at the hospital and the ones you couldn’t, who you still walked with all the way to the edge of death. And that’s when I realize: Maybe things didn’t get fucked up. Maybe I have been wrong all along, and this is where I was always meant to be.
Diana
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
I’m really too tired to rehash everything that happened at the hospital today.
I hope you’re okay.
One of us needs to be.
Two and a half weeks after Gabriel and I sleep together, I come home from a run to find a note slipped under the door of my apartment, inviting me to join him on a hike to a place called Playa Barahona. He says he’ll be waiting at the apartment at nine A.M. tomorrow, in case I decide to come.
Although it would be easier to hide forever, I know I can’t. It is May 9. I’ve been here for almost two months. One day, that ferry will start running again. I can’t avoid Gabriel on an island this small. And I owe him the grace of a conversation.
The next morning, I slip out the sliding glass doors and find him waiting with two rusty bicycles and a thermos of coffee. “Hi,” I say.
His eyes drink me in. “Hi.”
I wonder how it is that you can be so shy with someone you’ve felt moving inside you.
At that, a blush rushes over me, and I cover it with conversation. “Bikes? How far are we going?”
He rubs the back of his neck. “Further than El Muro de las Lágrimas, closer than Sierra Negra,” Gabriel says. “It’s a secret spot. It’s closed to tourists and locals—I haven’t been since I was a kid.”
“Breaking more laws,” I say lightly. “You’re a bad influence.”
At that, his eyes fly to mine.
I turn away, grabbing one of the bikes, and clear my throat. “I saw Beatriz,” I say. “She says things are … ?good.”
Gabriel looks at me for a long moment before he grabs the handlebars of the second bike. “Okay,” he says softly, nodding to himself, as if he recognizes that I am signaling what we will talk about and what we won’t. He starts walking the bike toward the main road, telling me how Beatriz schooled him on the 123 baby tortoises that were stolen from the breeding center in 2018, and how he’s fighting a losing battle trying to explain to Abuela that she can’t go play lotería at church, even if she wears a mask. As we pedal down dusty dirt paths, he tells me that he’s almost finished building the second bedroom at his house—which is good, because Beatriz will be staying with him even after her school on Santa Cruz reopens.
For a half hour or so, we bike in silence.
“The first girl I fell for was Luz,” Gabriel says suddenly. “She sat in front of me in class, alphabetically, and I stared at three freckles on her neck for months before I got the courage to speak to her.” He glances at me. “Do you remember your first crush?”
“Of course. His name was Jared and he was a vegetarian, and I didn’t eat meat for a month so that he’d notice me.”