Chapter Eleven
Vera’s flight is at one in the afternoon, and even though I want nothing more than to spend our last hours in bed, our bodies entwined forever, there is far too much to do. Claudia and Ricardo come by before they are off to work, and I have to leave the apartment to get some coffee because my heart can’t take any more tears. Vera has made an impact on these people and they are hurting just as much as I am to see her go.
The drive to the airport goes by too quickly. The last time we went, the future was full of such promise. We were heading to Canada with our friends. Now only she is going, and I am starting to lose faith in her return. If I could, I would manipulate planes and move mountains, but I can only go so far as she will let me. She has to want to return to me.
Return to me.
The words catch in the whirlwind of my mind, tugging at my heart.
Return to me, my star.
I pull into the short-term parking lot and help Vera with her luggage. She came with so little and somehow was leaving the same. Of course she looks beautiful—she looks like her true self. A soft but fitted dress, a cropped cardigan, sandals, and a sunhat she picked up in Biarritz, fit for Bridget Bardot. She is wearing large, cat-eye sunglasses that make her seem older and hide her reddened eyes.
She hasn’t stopped crying since Claudia left. It’s not always a full-on bawl, but it’s a stream of constant sadness. Each time I see a tear escape beneath her glasses, some other part of me dies inside.
Somehow I manage to soldier on though, and after we’ve checked her bags and lingered in a café, it’s time for her to go through security. It’s at this moment when I take back everything I’ve ever thought about being in love and being a hero.
I feel like a coward.
I feel like a real man would grab hold of her and stop her somehow. Escape from the country with his love by his side.
It would be heavenly to do that, to just run away with her and never look back.
But this man, this tired old sap, has the same responsibilities that most men do. I could never leave my daughter. And my daughter could never leave her mother. And her mother could, would, never leave Spain, or even Madrid.
Once again I am tied, that same fucking noose connecting my neck to everyone else’s. Would a hero or a coward cut that rope loose?
I don’t know. I only know myself.
And now I have to say goodbye to the most real thing I’ve ever experienced, the true love of my life.
I can’t even tell her the words.
Goodbye.
Neither can she.
We stare at each other outside the security line, and every time I want to open my mouth to speak, the words fail me, along with everything else deep inside. All I can do is grab hold of her delicate wrists, feel the silk of her white, inked skin, and look at her intently enough so she can read everything I’m feeling.
I wrap her into my arms and she cries once again. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t crying too. There is only so much a man can take, and this is my limit. You take away Vera, you take away my life. I will feel loss. I will weep.
We stand like that in the airport, her purse and carry-on at her feet, and we ignore the masses of people who pass us on each side. For this one moment, it is just us again in our very real, very small world.
But even our world isn’t immune to time.
“I have to go,” she says, lightly breathless. She pulls away from me, severing the connection, and I immediately want to scream, to yell, to tell her that this is wrong, that I can’t breathe without her, and that she can’t go.
It cannot be this way.
And yet it is.
She gives me a half-hearted wave, tears rolling down her face, and heads toward security.
I don’t move. I stay there. She looks behind at me once or twice, and we she sees me, she looks surprised, as if she never expected me to wait.
But I do wait.
I wait.
And I wait.
And I wait.
Until she is through security and out the other end. She tosses me a sad, cornered glance over her shoulder, and already I feel like what we are is beginning to split in two. If she changed her mind, she could get to me.
I can’t get to her.
I watch her until she disappears out of sight. Then I watch the space where she was for a long time after that. Just me, standing in the airport as everyone else passes by me in a blur.
Just a man in love. Just a hero. Just a coward.
Just me.
I am thirty-nine years old. I was a national football hero. I have a young daughter. An ex-wife.
I lived with the woman of my dreams.
I asked her to marry me.
Now she is gone.
And I am nothing but a black hole.