“So? That’s not enough.” Sal’s voice is pained. “You can’t use your son as an excuse anymore.”
“I still love him.”
“So what?” His voice explodes, and the few heads in the bar turn in their direction. The new server watches them from the far end, her face knotted in suspicion and concern. It probably looks to her like Marin and Sal are having a lovers’ quarrel, the way they’re sitting so close to each other, their discussion emotional and heated. “Where has love ever gotten you? You ask me, Mar, love is way overrated. Fuck love. We should be with people we like. And trust.”
“Like you? Sleeping with the new waitress?” Marin turns and gives the new server a pointed glance, then raises an eyebrow at Sal. He leans back, surprised she figured it out. Of course she did. She knows Sal. “You like her, huh? Which will last, what, a few months, tops, until she ends up quitting because you’ve moved on to the next one and now it’s awkward to work together? You’re always one bad breakup away from a sexual harassment lawsuit, my friend. What the hell do you know about marriage, or commitment, or relationships?”
Sal visibly deflates, sagging onto his barstool like she let the air out of his tires. Marin regrets her words instantly. She bit back too strongly, and it’s not okay, because Sal isn’t trying to hurt her. Despite the tough exterior, Sal is as sensitive as they come. He never got married, never had children, and it’s a sore spot she shouldn’t have poked.
“I’m sorry.” Marin takes his hand. He lets her hold it, and a few seconds later, he gives her palm a squeeze. He heals as fast as he hurts, thank god. “I’m a bitch. That wasn’t about you. You didn’t say anything you haven’t said before.”
“Yeah, and I keep hoping one of these days you’ll actually hear me.” The expression on his face reminds her of how he looked when he asked her to come back to him in college and she told him she was dating Derek. Puppy-dog eyes. Downturned mouth, now surrounded by salt-and-pepper scruff. “You’ve always been too good for him, and I hate that you don’t know that. He did this to you before, and there weren’t any consequences, which is why he knows he can do it again.”
“Wow, thanks, Sal.” She dropped his hand. “Blame the woman. So it’s my fault he’s cheating?”
“No.” Sal thumps a hand on the counter. “But it’s your fault you’re staying. He cheated on you the first time while you were pregnant. Who does that? And yet you stayed. You had Sebastian. And now here you are again. Come on, Mar. Who knows how many others there are? Ones that you don’t know about, and never will.”
Sal’s honesty is like a sledgehammer. Blunt force trauma to the heart, no bullshit, no wasted movements, no needless words.
“We’re still married,” she says quietly. “I made vows.”
“So did he!” Sal’s voice is thunderous. It alarms her; he rarely ever raises his voice. She’s still facing the bar mirror, and behind her she sees heads pop up again. The waitress’s gaze laser-cuts her from across the room. She doesn’t even know Marin, and already she hates her because she’s upsetting Sal.
“You don’t have to stay in a bad marriage as penance for what happened with Sebastian, Mar. Don’t you understand that? Neither is your fault. Havana wasn’t your fault. Enough already.”
He doesn’t mean the Cuban city. All best friends have a shorthand way of speaking, and Havana was their nickname for a woman named Carmen, a Nordstrom sales consultant of Cuban descent whom Derek slept with when Marin was pregnant with Sebastian.
After four rounds of IVF, it was her first pregnancy that had gone past twelve weeks, and Marin was both elated and terrified.
Derek swore it was only the one time. Ironically, it was Sal who’d told her. He’d been on a date, sitting at a restaurant at a table by the window, when he saw Derek walk by arm in arm, laughing, with a woman who wasn’t Marin. Sal told her about it the next morning, but she insisted he had to be mistaken, that either it hadn’t been Derek, or Sal hadn’t seen what he thought he