“Oh, and one last thing. Can you give me your cell phone for a second?” Alex asks me, holding out his hand.
“Sure,” I say, confused. What does Alex want my phone for?
I open my purse and pull out my cell. He takes it and presses the start button. He remains thoughtful for two seconds, wrinkling his forehead, probably guessing the passcode. Then, he begins to type. I have no doubt he’s going to get it right the first time. He knows me too well.
When he finds what he’s looking for, he goes up to Adrián and smashes the cell phone into my brother’s chest.
“This isn’t me, asshole.”
He turns around, slings his jacket over his shoulder, and leaves the room without another word. Marcos approaches Adrián, takes the cell phone out of his hands and looks at the photo.
“Damn,” he exclaims two seconds later. “How could you not tell it wasn’t him?!”
“I didn’t realize, okay?” Adrián defends himself. “Priscila showed it to me convinced it was Alex, and I didn’t even question it. I barely looked at it! It was supposed to be my brother-in-law fucking another woman! I only saw it was his room.”
“Well, it would’ve saved a lot of trouble if you’d looked better,” River reproaches him.
“I don’t want to play devil’s advocate, and of course I’m not going against you,” Jaime looks at me apologetically, “but why are you holding it against Adrián and not Priscila?”
“Because we’ve lectured Pris enough already,” River says.
“And because we fucking want to,” Hugo pronounces. “You don’t need to worry about Adrián, he knows how to look after himself.”
“Fuck, here we go again,” my friend complains.
The relationship between Hugo and Jaime is at an impasse—the same impasse it’s been at since the day Jaime revealed that he and I had slept together. And of course, my brother uses every opportunity he finds to reaffirm that the one Jaime is really after is Adrián.
An argument is about to start up between them, but Adrián tells them to shut it.
“Stop!” he yells. “I have something to say.” Then he approaches me, and finally I hear from his mouth what I wanted to hear all those years ago. “I do like Alex. I like Alex for you.”
I close my eyes and soak up his words. Too bad it’s too late.
“You’re five years late.”
“I know, but better late than never, right?”
“Yeah, the problem is that Alex doesn’t like me anymore, and my guess is he doesn’t like you either.”
Adrián laughs.
“I’m aware of that, but we’ll see what happens from now on.” He grabs his jacket and prepares to leave, but I can’t allow it.
“Wait.”
“Yes?”
For weeks I’ve been weighing the possibility of coming clean with my brother about the redheads. When I talked to my family, I didn’t want to expose his girlfriend in front of everyone, so I didn’t mention the hospital episode.
During my stay in Boston, as the months went by, I began to realize she’d been cruel. I could say there’s always a reason people act in one way or another, but that’s not true. I don’t care what made her behave like that—if she had something against me, or if she didn’t like me. She didn’t let me see Alex, and not only that: she lied to me. When she told me Alex was okay and would soon make a full recovery, she lied to my face. She wanted to get me out of the way. That’s evil. And there’s no justifying it.
And now, with everything I’ve learned, I’m more certain than ever that Carolina was after Alex, and that her sister knew it. She didn’t tell me straight they were together, that much is true, but she knew that’s what I thought and she didn’t correct me. I made a mistake, but she did wrong. She played me.
“Carmen is not a good person, Adrián,” I blurt without further ado.
“Priscila, damn it, don’t start with that again. Not today.”
“I did go to the hospital, Adrián. I came to see Alex.”