G sighs and smiles. He runs his fingers over my scalp and gives me a fresh jolt of want. “It’s my fault, Tiger. You didn’t know. I shouldn’t have gotten angry. I’m sensitive about it, well, obviously. But I know I can trust you, and I shouldn’t have been such a jerk. Can you forgive me?”

I nod. The script in my head is torched.

“I just wish that you felt the same, like you could tell me anything. I wish you didn’t shut me out. I wish I could know all of you.” Now he gives me a deep kiss and I feel something come loose. When he pulls back from me, my eyes are brimming with tears.

The waiter comes back toward the table, but walks swiftly on when he sees the tears. I wonder if he sees a lot of tears in this dark little bar. I wonder if any bar in this beautiful, sad city doesn’t.

“What is it?” G says, wiping away a fat tear that’s rolled down my cheek.

“My sister,” I begin.

“The one you don’t speak to?”

I nod. He asks what happened and I find I’m still teetering, unsure if I’ll tell him.

“She killed her daughter.”

His eyes get wide, and it’s oddly satisfying because now he sees. I’m damned by my family’s sins just like him.

“Is she in prison?”

I shake my head.

“How?”

“It’s complicated. Life isn’t just.” I smile sadly. “But you already knew that.”

“God, my love, I’m so sorry.” There is no shred of incredulity in his voice, no asking, as some others have: But are you sure? Their disbelief driving deeper the stake of the betrayal I feel despite my certainty. He grew up as the son of murderers and I am the sister of one. He knows what it is to care about someone evil, to buckle under the strain of holding such an unbearable love.

He pulls me close to him, and I’m quietly weeping. I’m not going anywhere.

Liz Can Explain

THAT FRIDAY, G meets me in the Plaza Dorrego. He no longer seems concerned about people seeing us together, about appearing taken. I imagine our connection is deeper now, now that we both know what the other is. At the café in the square, he pulls his chair close to mine and kisses me in public like we’re teenagers, cutting me off in midsentence. I know the clock is ticking, and that everything has only become more complicated, but my talent for denial is well-developed. I reckon I’m too early in the pregnancy to feel anything, and so the fact of it remains abstract, surreal. Perhaps I’m not even really pregnant, or perhaps it will just resolve itself. Isn’t it common to lose a pregnancy this early on?