I’d thought I knew her too, but she turned out to be nothing more than a fucking brat. A brat who ended my life, my profession, and me in general.
I went almost two years without having sex. I didn’t want it; I was broken on the outside and the inside, and I don’t know which was uglier—the internal scars, or the external ones. Until one day I stopped drinking at home and started drinking in a bar on the outskirts of town, and there I met a woman. I fucked her, I came, and I did it thinking about Priscila. A damn mess, that’s what it was. I didn’t want a repeat. I’d never been much of a womanizer, and I wasn’t about to start now. I’d take fucking as a way to meet my physical needs, an alternative to using my hand when my body asked for a release. And there I had another reason to hate her: she took away even my sexual appetite.
I didn’t know what to do with my life.
I didn’t have much money—buying the house had taken almost all my savings—but I had my family to help and the dividends my grandfather’s newspaper shares provided me. I could live off that for the rest of my days, but I was fed up with people insisting I had to find something to do. That’s why I started thinking about what sorts of things I liked, but... there was nothing.
Before Priscila, it was just me and the water. Now it was just me.
I spent every day looking at the mandalas and Priscila’s drawings. I didn’t have the courage to throw them away. If her presence disappeared from my house, it’d be like erasing her, and I didn’t want to erase her. I wanted to hate her. So I kept them in boxes under the bed, with all her belongings.
Sometimes—quite often, really—I went to her old bedroom at her parents’ house. I needed to breathe her like a fucking junkie, because her total absence had screwed my head up; not knowing, not having closed our story. The first few times her parents opened the door and saw me on the threshold, they asked me how I was doing, if I wanted a coffee, a soda... They stopped asking after a few weeks, and just let me in. From there to having my own key didn’t take long. They claimed it was for emergencies; of course, my daily drug dose could have been called an emergency.
My relationship with Adrián also died, but I couldn’t hate him like I hated her. Adrián Cabana was with me at the hospital. He came every day, alone or with his family. I never found out why he did it. I suspect it had to do with a desire to redeem his sister’s mistakes. But he was there, and for me, that was enough. It was much more than Priscila—my wife—had done.
When River suggested I could work as a lifeguard at the beach, I thought the idea was absurd; I hadn’t talked to the water in years, years of being mad, angry; I hadn’t been on a beach or in a swimming pool in years.
How was I going to be a lifeguard if I didn’t dare touch the water, not even with my toes?
At first, I spent hours in Jellyfish Cove—I could even see a small portion of the cove from our house—but I stopped going. It hurt too much.
My first swim was in my own swimming pool because, paradoxically, I had one in my garden thanks to my three brothers-in-law. They insisted on finishing it, on working on it together, and they asked me to help them. They said it would keep me entertained, but I didn’t feel like it. So, I watched them as they moved around, doing things here and there, especially inside the shallow space of the pool. A cracked, broken, colorless and lifeless swimming pool. Just like me. Just like my relationship with the water. Until one day when the three of them grabbed me, lifted me from the sofa, took me out to the garden, and threw me in.
Then, I heard a whisper: Hello, Alex.
Maybe I’m just crazy, but I swear it came from the water. In my defense I should say that I didn’t answer, although that was only because I was unprepared.
Pissed, I got out of the swimming pool and pushed Marc into the water. It wasn’t a let’s play kind of push but a take it, you son of a bitch. Then I tried to do the same with the other two, but as I was about to triumph, Marcos was already out—he was fast, the bastard—and again it was my turn to be tossed in.
This second time, they kept me in. I struggled to get rid of them, but they were three against one and I hadn’t done any exercise in a long time—I hadn’t done anything in a long time. And since I had no strength, it didn’t take them long to overcome my resistance.
How long we were in there? I didn’t notice. Hours, probably, because the four of us ended up shivering despite the heat of the day, our skins wrinkled and purple. Until I told them, “That’s it, guys. Enough.”
I told them I was going to take a shower, but I didn’t. I wanted to keep the smell of chlorine on my skin. I undressed and got into bed and slept until the next day. It was the first night that I’d managed to sleep the whole night, and without thinking about revenge; without thinking about doing psychological damage to Priscila.
When I woke up, I sent a message to the WhatsApp group I had with the three of them: “Thanks.” Only that, a six-letter word, but it meant a lot.
Hugo came that same afternoon and asked me a single question: “Do you still feel like hurting her?” I knew he was talking about his sister. Hugo is the most empathetic of the Cabanas. I told him that I did, and he replied with “Okay. How do you feel about taking a dip?” And, for the first time in years, I felt like it.
I accepted, but that day, I didn’t talk to the water; we had guests and it would’ve been rude. And when Hugo left, I went to bed naked again, and again smelling of chlorine. But that night, I jumped into the pool to swim breaststroke. Seven lengths later, I dared to say, “Hello.”
I would never compete again, but I would swim again. It was something that I’d lost along the way, but I could still swim, and I learned that thanks to my brothers-in-law. With that certainty, I got back a part of my life that was missing.
We stopped talking about Priscila.
I stopped looking for revenge.
But I didn’t stop hating her.
I considered the idea of being a lifeguard, and agreed. I did it because I wanted to keep talking to the water and my swimming pool was too small for me.
During the summer, I worked on the beach, putting in more hours than anyone else. I needed to make up for the years I’d been separated from the water. The rest of the day, I didn’t do much: hung out with my brothers-in-law, had some beers with my workmates, or had lunch at my parents’.
Curiously enough, my mother slowed down after my accident; I didn’t ask her to, but she did, and that made me think. Maybe if I’d told her that I needed her in the past, she would have come home sooner. It was too late for that now though. I got along with my parents, I loved them, but I’d learned to survive without them, and you can’t recover at twenty-eight a bond that had never been forged to begin with. No matter how much my mother hugged me or told me she loved me and that everything was going to be okay, I wasn’t comforted; I was so used to living without her hugs that I no longer needed them. The only hugs I wanted were the ones the water gave me—and maybe Marc’s, because my connection with him was special. Still, my relationship with my parents was good.
As for the rest of the town, I barely interacted with anyone. At first, everybody asked me about Priscila, about her job opportunity, and I just left with a nod; then, after the accident, all they’d say was that they were sorry, and give me pitying looks.
And so, the years passed.