“Love and respect don’t have to go hand in hand,” I retorted, recalling what a wise woman had once told me. And they say you never meet anyone worthwhile at roadside bars. I still had that woman, Marda’s, driver’s license in my scrapbook.
“That can be true,” he conceded. “I had reasons for being unfaithful. It went beyond sex and love.”
“You loved her?” I exclaimed, feeling sick despite myself. I could blame the wine and the boat all I wanted.
“No, I didn’t. But I had revenge. You of all people should know how far you are willing to go for it.”
“What does revenge have to do with sleeping with someone else?”
“What does revenge have to do with loving me?” he said, his voice collapsing over the last two words so they spun out in a hush.
I slowly sat up, feeling dizzy. “It shouldn’t matter but I did love you.”
“You broke me,” he replied. His eyes went to steel.
I didn’t want to hear any of this anymore. “Why did you cheat on me? And don’t give me that revenge shit. If it was this revenge, this thing, then tell me exactly how it was.”
“Her name was Patricia,” he said.
Oh, so she had a name. A dumb one at that.
He continued, looking down into his glass, “She was a nice girl. Nice enough. Pretty. She liked me. That’s all I needed. She was the sister of Enrique Morrow.”
“Who is Enrique Morrow?”
“Enrique was one of the higher ups in the Los Zetas. Patricia lived in New Orleans, he was in Nuevo Laredo. I got to know her, I suppose in the same way you got to know me. I used her to get to him.”
I stared at him. “And did you get to him? Did it work?”
He nodded and shook the ice in his glass. “Yes.”
“What happened to them?”
He eyed me briefly. “They are both dead. I killed them. Killed her first, in front of him, to prove a point. Held her down and took her hand. Then slit her throat. And made him watch. Then, when I thought he’d suffered enough, I cut off his head. Seemed fitting, considering the Los Zetas practically think they invented the act.”
My mouth dropped open. I needed to shut it. To say I was horrified was an understatement. “You … you did that to the woman you were cheating on me with?” A memory flashed in my head, the one of when I found them together, that terrible act of intimacy, him calling her pet names as they lay beside each other on the bed – my bed – laughing. They looked so … in love. So in touch with each other. That’s what had hurt me the most, more than the sex.
“How could you do that to her?” I said softly. “You … that you were capable of that when I was with you … I …”
He finished his drink then filled up my own glass with more. I was too stunned to wave him off. “This happened a few months after you left.”
“You were just a young kid,” I said, unable to accept it. Seeing him kill his best friend in our kitchen was one thing. But knowing that just a few months after I left him he was the kind of man who was capable of murdering a woman he was sleeping with, pretending to be in love with, in such a brutal way, to prove an awful point was … I didn’t even know what it was.
“Everything changed after you left,” he said, watching me closely. “Everything.”
A burst of indignation flared up inside my chest. “Don’t you dare blame this on me. Don’t you dare!”
“You left without even a note …”
“You fucked another woman, in our bed!”
“I told you, it meant nothing.”
I nearly crushed the glass with my hand. “I didn’t know that at the time! I didn’t know how little she meant to you. How obviously little human life means to you! You did what you did and you never had to do it. Your so-called excuse only makes things worse. Fuck, Javier! All of this for nothing. Just so you could have your fucking revenge and kill people. You’re nothing but a beast, a cold-hearted monster, not even fit to have two legs. Not even worth that heart beating in your chest.”
He was staring at me like he hadn’t even heard a word I said, so I added, with as much venom as I could muster. “You disgust me.”
He blinked a few times, then put his arm around the back of the couch and eyed his watch and the wish tattoo it was covering up. “Well, at least disgust is still something.”
I shook my head, words and sentences trying to come together inside but nothing fit. Nothing made any sense. I downed the rest of my drink in one go.
“You said we ruined each other,” he went on, his voice lower now. “Both of us wouldn’t be here now if we hadn’t.”
I wiped my mouth. “And what makes you think I like where I am?”
He crossed his ankle on his knee, a flash of dark gold skin between his Topside shoes and navy pants. No socks.
“Because I introduced you to your true self. I made you see the world as you were born to see it. You’re not good, Ellie.”