“When you saw me that day on Cuauhtémoc Avenue… why did you try to run?”
Roberto stared at the table for a long moment.
Then he answered honestly.
“Because I loved you enough to survive losing you,” he said. “But I didn’t know if I could survive seeing pity in your eyes.”
The words settled heavily between you.
You reached for your coffee just to steady your hands.
“You never lost my love completely,” you admitted. “I just buried it under what they told me.”
Roberto nodded once, sadly.
“I know.”
“And you?”
He looked out the window toward the moving city.
“I spent a long time trying to kill mine,” he said. “It would’ve made life easier.”
Your eyes stung again.
“But you couldn’t?” you asked.
He gave a small smile.
“No. Unfortunately, I have terrible taste in impossible things.”
You laughed through tears.
The waitress brought fresh coffee without being asked. Neither of you noticed how long you had been sitting there.
Hours, maybe.
Or years.
At one point, rain began softly outside, turning the sidewalks silver. People hurried beneath awnings. The city blurred behind water-streaked glass.
Roberto watched it quietly.
“Do you ever think about who we would’ve been if none of this happened?” you asked.
He considered the question carefully.
“Sometimes,” he admitted. “But not the way I used to.”
“What changed?”
He looked at you fully then.
“I used to think losing our marriage was the greatest tragedy of my life.”
Your breath caught.
“And now?”
“Now I think the real tragedy would’ve been becoming people capable of doing what they did.”
You looked down slowly.
Because he was right.
Pain had scarred you both.
But it had not turned you cruel.
That mattered.
More than revenge.
More than court victories.
More than ruined reputations.
Outside, thunder rolled faintly in the distance.
Roberto checked his watch and sighed. “I have papers to grade.”
“There he is,” you teased softly. “The man who thinks teenagers deserve fourteen pages of feedback.”
“They do deserve it.”
“They barely read the first page.”
“That sounds like a them problem.”
You smiled.
Then, after a small hesitation, you asked the question carefully.
“Would you like to have dinner sometime?”
Roberto tilted his head suspiciously.
“Is this tiny-coffee-related or a separate negotiation?”
“Separate negotiation.”
“Hm.”
He pretended to think deeply about it.
Finally, he said, “Yes. But only if we go somewhere with terrible music so we can judge it together.”
“That seems fair.”
“And no expensive restaurants.”
“You still hate expensive restaurants?”
“I hate paying eighty dollars for artistic foam.”
You laughed again, shaking your head.
God.
