How much can you question your own existence and how many times can you even look ahead without wanting to go back? My decisions have been all the more absurd, wrong and banal.
The coffee was served that morning, Diego smiled when he looked at me and then returned to his room, while I took a cup, filled it to the brim and sat down by the window of the living room. I watched as the cold winter covered the streets of Manhattan with snow. Things had changed a lot since I became his wife. We met in Michigan in the summer of 1992, his gray eyes seemed unreal and mystical to me, arranged in that big body of dark complexion, I never thought that this encounter would represent the first of many in my daily life.
Bars, drinks, hotels, a kiss, a caress; situations that repeated themselves night after night, "lieutenant Ramírez" as his friends and co-workers called him, only "Diego" as I called him. His life was spent at sea and it was impossible to lead a normal life at his side, but he was always a loving person with me: flowers, gifts, chocolates. I knew how to fill myself with smiles with the banalities that many women were accustomed to, but to me it was the most beautiful thing any man had ever done in the kind of life he led. If I wanted a candy, a flower or a gift, I could receive it yes, but after taking me to bed one of the many men who put one of their dirty bills on the edge of my skirt or inside my bra.
Diego had changed all that, he was the first one who loved me, even though he knew me for who I am.
My nights of charm were replaced by laughter and love in which every Friday I waited for his arrival and felt his warm hands before the surprise of a kiss. It was magical to be by his side, it made me feel... alive.
Three months later he was asking to be my boyfriend, two more months later he had already introduced himself to my parents and then, a year after we met, we had the most beautiful beachfront marriage I could ever imagine, my life had changed and was perfect.
— Rebecca! Come back here, you dirty bitch!
The cup of coffee fell to the ground and I felt the hot drops splashing into the wounds on my legs, which made me squirm with pain. As I could, I bent down and picked up the remains of the glass, cleaned the floor and after leaving everything in the kitchen I lay down for a moment and closed my eyes. I felt the pain throbbing all over my body: arms, legs, head, back, abdomen. Every part of me had a bruise or wound that made me tremble and want to run away from that place, but it was impossible.
Diego looked at me from the room, his once tender and mysterious eyes now possessed a malevolent tone, a void almost as dark as the handle of the knife he now held in his hands.
The sweet man I met turned out to be nothing more than a sociopath and knew that with every step I took toward him now, the marriage I once believed in, was now coming to an end.