“He could have come in for a minute. I wanted to meet him.”
“You did meet him.” He set the table, no longer looking at me.
“O-kay.” I slowly walked into the kitchen. “But I meanreallymeet him. Spend time with him. Do you not want me to do that?”
“Of course I do.”
My heart rate picked up. Something wasn’t right, and my spidey senses were tingling. “Then why hasn’t it happened yet?”
Rodrigo sighed. “Georgia, why are you doing this?”
My mouth had gone dry, and my stomach was twisting. It wasn’t just Lucas. There were other things that didn’t add up. Things I had done my best to ignore over the months, but that this situation with Lucas now brought to the forefront.
“Why won’t you let me come see you at your office?” I asked.
Rodrigo laughed, but it was dry and humorless. “It’s a place of work.”
“But you go there at night. When other people aren’t around.”
“Because I am in class during the day.” His lips turned down.
“Still. If the office is empty when you’re there, there shouldn’t be a problem with me stopping by.”
Grabbing the back of a chair, he looked down. A heavy unease filled the room.
“I can’t help but think…” I licked my lips. “That you’re hiding something from me.”
Rodrigo continued to stare at the floor, a deep crease forming between his eyebrows. “Or perhaps,” he said slowly, “you are just paranoid.”
The insult felt like a slap. “I’m not paranoid.”
He turned his face up, and the antagonism there took my breath away. “I cannot be in a relationship with someone who does not trust me.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but the words disintegrated into dust before they had the chance to be born. Hadn’t Rodrigo ever heard that trust needed to be earned?
He sighed and turned away. “I suppose there’s nothing more to say. You should go now.”
It was like all the air had been sucked from my lungs. I struggled to catch my breath as the room spun.
“That’s it?” My voice shook. “You’re breaking up with me?”
Instead of a response, I was only met with his back. He’d turned into a statue.
This didn’t seem real. Only ten minutes earlier we’d been talking about moving in together. Rearranging our lives and moving across the world to be with each other. And now, in one fraught moment, we were over.
Or perhaps we’d never really been together. Maybe the last five months had been a dream, and I was finally being violently shaken awake.
The Rodrigo who took me dancing and on scenic drives, the one who loved Russian literature and nineties video games, the one who told me I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever set eyes on… that Rodrigo was a sham.
He’d pretended to be someone he wasn’t in order to get what he wanted out of me. And of course he had. I had told him on our second date that I had my reservations about seeing him. Now it seemed he’d just done and said what he thought I wanted.
Until tonight, when I’d gotten too close to the real him. Whoever Real Rodrigo was, Lucas knew him. Likely, many other people did, too. But I never would.
Whatever he was hiding, it didn’t even matter anymore. Be it a girlfriend or something worse.
“Fine.” I bit my lip to stop myself from crying. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “Have a nice life.”
With that, I left the apartment, making sure to slam the door on my way out.