a painful divorce.”
“And a public one,” he says.
I look at him sharply. “When we met, you didn’t know I was divorced.”
“No, but I do now, and I’ve been reading about you.”
Oh god. For some reason I don’t want Alejo knowing anything about that. It’s so embarrassing.
“Uh yeah?” I say uneasily. “What about?”
“What a cabrón your ex-husband was.”
I can’t stick up for Stew. At one point I would have tried to, just because that’s what marriage does to you. It makes you become a part of someone until you can’t recognize yourself anymore, until all you see is the other person. In good marriages, that’s a godsend. In bad marriages…it makes you realize you’ve lost yourself and you have no idea how to get your soul back.
For the longest time, I stood up for Stew, even with all his awful, awful wrongdoings, because he was still a part of me. He was a man I loved, and love doesn’t just disappear because someone decides not to love you back. It still survives and exists until you stop feeding it. But that can take time. For me, I don’t think it truly stopped until I signed those divorce papers.
That’s when I stopped feeding it.
“He is a cabrón,” I admit.
“I would never do that to you,” Alejo says, his voice impassioned. He’s gazing at me in such a way that I actually believe him.
“I think all men say that,” I say.
He looks a little ticked off. “I should be happy you’re referring to me as a man, not a boy.”
“Sorry,” I tell him. “I guess I’m still bitter.”
His brow relaxes. “I don’t blame you. When did you know?”
“That he was cheating on me?”
“Sí.”
“Which time?” I ask with a sour laugh.
“I don’t know.”
I can see Alejo is just curious, and I’m sure he already read all about it, so there’s no use pretending it didn’t happen.
“He, uh, I guess started up an affair two years ago. She’s a social media star. You know, one of those influencer types. Much younger than me.”
“But not as beautiful,” he interjects.
I try not to feel flattered. “I suspected something, but I wasn’t sure what. It didn’t feel like he was away or sneaking around, but we were both so busy and you forget to check in with each other. Maybe it was my own fault too, you know? I was lazy about our marriage and we had been dealing with a lot of problems already that I had been trying so hard to bury…maybe I neglected him.”
“Don’t blame yourself.”
“I do. But it depends on the day of the week. I keep circulating the blame. Anyway, I should have caught on and I didn’t.”
“But the media did, yes?”
“Si,” I tell him. “The media did. A bit later. And then two of his affairs came out and that was…” I trail off, closing my eyes momentarily.
It was something I didn’t think I would survive.
Not just the fact that my beloved had cheated on me.
That made me feel small and insignificant.
Made me disposable and weak.
It broke my fucking heart.
No, it wasn’t just all of that.
It’s that the media, those wonderful tabloids that had left me alone for most of my career, suddenly decided I was to blame. They couldn’t blame Stew, they loved Stew. They couldn’t attack the man in charge of their beloved team, so they attacked me.
I was dragged through the fucking mud.
I exhale loudly. Taking my time to calm my heart. Then I glance at Alejo shyly.
“I guess the silver lining is he’s back with the woman from the first affair. So I suppose it wasn’t for nothing. He broke my heart but…”
Alejo purses his lips and thinks for a moment. “Fixed your vision.”
I consider that and nod at the awfully poetic phrase. “Yes. He broke my heart and fixed my vision.”
“And yet,” Alejo says thoughtfully, “that’s not where all your sadness comes from.”
“Maybe the sadness is from realizing I never really got the life I wanted,” I tell him. The words surprise me, and I wish I could take them back, but it’s the truth. The cold, hard truth I’ve never wanted to admit to anyone, not even myself.
I start wrapping his knee back up in the brace and shrug. “Anyway, fun time is over. We’ll continue another, better conversation next time.” I finish it up and step back, hands on my hips. “Need assistance going to your room?” I jerk my head to the crutches stacked in the corner.
He slowly sits up and carefully swings his