Sighing heavily, she shakes her head. “This is all my fault.”
“It is not all your fault.”
“It’s at least 60 percent my fault. I encouraged Mateo to go after you and I know he’s merciless. You may not have known he would go this far, but I should have. I thought he would do this logically, not by force. He’s been holding back all this time, and then…”
“Well, it’s because I changed my mind on him. I made him all these promises and we started making plans for the future during those three days, and then when I went to break up with Vince… I told him I wanted to stay instead.”
“My brother doesn’t take rejection well. I probably should’ve given you a heads-up. I thought his dead ex was a big enough clue, but…”
“I was just very wrong about literally everything,” I tell her. “And we were both wrong about me. I tried to stop him, I begged him, I tried to… to calm him down, and I completely failed. I couldn’t stop him.”
With a look that verges on sympathetic, she says, “Oh, Mia. I never thought you could stop him. My brother isn’t… I never expected that. I would’ve been shocked if you could stop him. I liked you for him because even when he’s a monster and he does unforgivable shit like this, you still find it in your heart to love him. Do you still love him?”
I nod, but it is not a proud nod.
Nodding once, a bit solemn, she says, “Well, there you go. Then you’ve met my expectations.”
I shake my head in denial. I don’t know if I can explain why she’s wrong. If there’s anyone I can talk to about how I’m struggling with Mateo, it’s probably her. She probably gets it. Meg doesn’t, because apparently she gets sunshine-and-rainbows Mateo most of the time. Don’t know how she lucked into that.
“It’s not like I thought it would be,” I tell her, looking at the table instead of her. It makes my stomach hurt to even say that. Not just because of the price Vince paid for me to have Mateo, not just because with so many months of build-up, there was a lot riding on this, but because it was perfect—for three days. And it hasn’t been since. Not once. No matter how he gets to me, no matter how much physical pleasure he brings me, no matter how accustomed I am to his arms around me, no matter how much I miss him the nights he doesn’t spend with me, nothing feels the way it did before it was broken. Even now that I’m no longer withholding, now that I’m trying to hide my pain from him and shoulder it on my own… it’s just not the same. It doesn’t fill me up. It doesn’t make me proud. It doesn’t make me happy like it did before. Loving Mateo made me feel incredible for those three days. It was like a non-stop thrill ride, even though things were calm. I wanted to bathe him in my love. If every day of my life could’ve been like those three, life would have been a fairytale.
But he ruined it. He spilled blood all over the pages before we could even fill them with our story, and now it just feels wrong.
Grimacing with a faint trace of dread, she says, “I hope I didn’t oversell him.”
“If anyone oversold him, it was Meg,” I say, almost lightly. “But no, it’s not that. It was good before he did what he did to Vince. It was perfect. It was even better than I expected. But I’m afraid we can never get back to that. I just don’t feel the same way about him now as I did before—it’s not that I don’t love him, I still love him, but I feel… horrible for it. I feel terrible about myself for loving him, and I didn’t before. Not like this. I felt bad for hurting Vince, I felt bad for potentially hurting Meg, but I didn’t feel bad for loving Mateo. It’s hard now. I wouldn’t have wanted it this way. If I’d known before I acted that this was the only way I could have Mateo, I would’ve just stayed with Vince and tried harder to make things work with him.” I miss a beat, tears stinging my eyes as I admit, “I miss him.”
Admitting it is a bad idea, because then the sting of tears melts into actual tears, leaking out of my eyes. I avert my gaze, swiftly wiping them away, but more follow.
“I can’t stand knowing this is all because of me. I feel like a monster,” I tell her. “And he told me that night, he told me before it happened… he told me I deserved this. Because he knew what would happen. I believed Mateo would stop if I asked him to, but Vince knew he wouldn’t. He wasn’t a fucking moron. He’s the only person who’s never been fooled by any of Mateo’s bullshit. Me, I buy it every goddamn time, but not Vince. He knew better. If I hadn’t been so faithless, if I would’ve just waited to be with Mateo until after I left Vince, all of this could’ve been avoided. I should’ve never made promises to Mateo when I wasn’t free to make them. That was reckless. I didn’t realize he would take them quite so seriously quite so quickly, but… I should’ve been more careful. I handled it poorly, I handled it like a coward, and now because of me, because of that, Vince is gone.”