Clare rolls her eyes. “I forgot about that.” She shrugs. “Well, let’s go together, then. That way neither of us has to go alone.”

•

It’s almost been a week since it ended, and I’ve been wondering how I could’ve actually believed that Matías was sincere, that he was in any way real. How did I not see through him?

I leave the café where I’ve been all afternoon, and as I’m walking across the pedestrian thoroughfare, I spot him. I try to keep walking, to look down at the to-go cup in my hand, but I can’t stay focused. Without meaning to, I walk toward him, as if a rope is pulling me. I stand in front of him and say nothing.

“Give me five minutes,” he pleads. I cross my arms and stay quiet. “Two minutes. Please.”

“Speak.”

“I keep remembering.” He looks away. “The little red lights.”

He goes on to say things that sound sincere but that I can’t let myself believe, as much as I want to. They sounded sincere before, and I believed them before. To my frustration I understand his behavior: I’ve been that person, the one holding two people hostage in case I were to lose one.

“I wish you knew how much I love you,” he says to me.

“Of course you love me,” I snap back, if only to keep my ego intact. “I have no doubt that you love me.” I begin to laugh crazily. “I gave you the most authentic parts of me,” I tell him. At least this is what I want to believe, that I’ve practiced healthy intimacy with him, despite how much I’ve actually withheld. I want to him to think that I allowed him every point of access, every vulnerability, and that he’d allowed me his, too, that we had guns to each other’s head and he just happened to shoot first. “You don’t get to love me anymore.” I push past him and walk home, alone as ever.

I arrive home to his name once again in my inbox. And, of course, I open the email. “The trip to New York was real. My concern when you were upset about your mother was real. My pride when you read on stage was real.” The sentences come at me like knives, each one cleaving deeper and deeper into my chest. “You cannot fake the affinity we have, and I very much wanted us to last. I finally met a woman I loved, and who loved me, and who made me happy, and whom I made happy—and I hurt her beyond repair. I did the terrible things I did because I was a mess. If we had met six months from now, when I’d fully recovered from the hang-ups of my marriage, everything would’ve been different.”