The restaurant where Filippo was waiting for me was one of my favorite places in Madrid. A French bistro with a garden courtyard full of pergolas and small private booths glowing in soft candlelight. Plus, the foie gras was insane. As I followed the maître d’ between the tables, I thought what a bummer it was to break up in a place I liked so much. Now I would think about it every time I came back. Then I realized my mind was so made up, maybe it wouldn’t even hurt.
“I’m going to do it,” I had written that afternoon in a message to David that I didn’t send.
Filippo was dressed in a nice light-blue button-up that fit him like a glove. On the table, I spotted a box from the jewelers who had made our wedding rings for our dream wedding. I was sure he wanted to perform some kind of private ceremony, a romantic grand gesture to illustrate that he forgave me. But as much as I wished otherwise, those rings already meant very little to me.
I sat down without kissing him, but I offered him a smile instead, which he reluctantly accepted.
“You look beautiful.”
I was wearing one of the dresses I had bought with David, but I pushed the thought away.
“You look nice too.”
“How’s it going?”
“Good.” I nodded timidly.
“You’re very tan.” He flashed me his Prince Charming teeth. “It suits you.”
“Thank you.”
“What did you do this weekend?”
“Uh…” I fidgeted with the silverware. “I went to a friend’s village.”
“Yeah? Whose?”
“You don’t know her.” I pressed my lips together.
“Did you…change your hair?” He pointed at my hair, which I had let air-dry with my natural waves, a little messy and parted on the side.
“What?” I had trouble understanding. He had been with me for three years, was he seriously asking…? “No, Filippo. This is my natural hair. I always wear it straight, but…I got tired of flat-ironing it. This is me.”
Filippo stared at me, the way he always did when he was waiting for me to rethink something I had just said, but I didn’t open my mouth.
“Are you angry?”
“Did I sound hostile?”
“Kind of.”
David would’ve said, in a poor imitation of the Andalusian accent, holding up his hand with a little space between his thumb and his index finger: “Just a touch, my little bombshell.” And I would have laughed.
“What’s going on?” he cut to the chase.
“Nothing. I have a lot going on in my head.”
“Did you start back at work?”
“No. Not yet. The board thinks I need to take a long vacation.”
“How considerate.” He raised his eyebrows.
“No, not really. They just wanted to get rid of me for a few months.”
“You work too much.”
I sighed loudly. A waiter came over, and I ordered a glass of cold white wine. He asked if we knew what we wanted to order for dinner, and before Filippo could talk, I answered with a firm but polite no.
“You don’t want foie gras? Or that carabinero shrimp dish you like so much?”
David would’ve asked if that was seafood or a naked Italian carabinieri officer swimming in noodles.
Get out. David. Out.
“I don’t want to eat dinner,” I said.
“Do you want us to leave?”
“Filippo…” I stretched my hand across the table, reaching for his. When he squeezed my fingers, I felt a warm, familiar, cozy current that connected straight to my pain. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t know how to tell you that everything got too big for me.”
“I’m sorry too. I thought you wanted a huge wedding. I thought that would make you happy.”
“No.” I shook my head. “But I didn’t even know that myself. I’m sorry it had to go that far for me to realize.”
“We’ll get over it.” He smiled.
“I don’t think so, Filippo. These things always linger internally, and that’s fair because I never meant to break your heart, but that’s exactly what I ended up doing. And you don’t deserve that.”
“Margot.” He squeezed my hand. “It’s just a stupid thing we’ll forget. No, even better…a stupid thing we can laugh about with our grandchildren. We’re going to be happy.”
I bit my lip and pulled back my hand.
“Filippo…”
“No, Margot. I’m not going to let you do this. Are you unwell? You’re feeling a little a lost? It doesn’t matter. We’ll find a way to make you feel better. But don’t throw three years of a beautiful relationship overboard. You and I love each other.”
“You and I need each other. We fit together exactly where the other’s puzzle pieces are missing, in the empty spaces. But that’s not love. That’s fulfilling expectations. Love is something else.”
“Ours is a fairy tale, Margot.”
“Yes, but I never wanted to be a princess.”
Filippo propped his elbow on the table and massaged his forehead with three fingers.
“You’re breaking up with me.”
“It was already broken. I’m just giving us the opportunity to say goodbye well. You deserve someone who loves you the way I didn’t know how.” I struggled to swallow when I realized this was the same thing David wanted for me. “You deserve to find someone who wants four kids and a peaceful life too, who knows how to find a balance with all the things she wants. Who’s not just what’s expected of her.”
“But I love you.”
I grabbed my purse and tried to stand up, but he seized my wrist.
“I deserve more of an explanation than that, Margot.”
“The thing is, you’re not listening to me.”
“All I’m hearing are vague platitudes about how the wedding got too big for you and you discovered that love isn’t what we have. What’s going on? Did you meet someone else? Did you have a wild summer and now you think that’s what life is? It’s not, Margot. Don’t send everything to hell for a summer fling that wouldn’t last the fucking winter.”
“My sister Patricia is getting divorced,” I suddenly burst out. “She fell in love with someone else. She’s going to leave it all to try it out with someone thirteen years younger than her. And you know what? She doesn’t seem crazy or fickle to me. She seems like a brave person who doesn’t want to stay with what she has just in case it’s colder outside the house. And I want to be brave.”
“What does that mean? You want to try your luck with someone else?”
“No. I want to try my luck with myself, to see if I finally fall in love with myself, without needing someone else to tell me what I am and what I’m not. I’m thirty-two, and I don’t even know myself. I don’t even know what I like. How could I possibly know if I want to grow old with you?”
“If you’re doubting it, that means you don’t.”
“Or that I have the balls to ask myself questions, Filippo. We never questioned anything. We followed the plan, we did things how they were supposed to be done, but we never asked ourselves if that’s what we wanted.”
Filippo picked up the box holding our wedding rings and toyed with it in his enormous hands.
“And that’s what you want, Margot?” he tossed out, not looking up at me. “You want to be there, in no-man’s-land, looking for something you might never find? Or do you want to build something real? A family, Margot. A family where you can prove to yourself that you’re not like your mother, which is the only thing I think you’re really obsessed with.”
“I don’t want to have to prove anything to anyone, and that’s the problem. That’s all I’ve ever done in my life.”
“So do whatever you want by my side. And I’ll always support you.” His eyes were shining. “Always. And in me, you’ll have a companion, a husband, a brother, a father, a…”
I lost the thread of what he was saying when I imagined how these comments would seem to David. He would make a scared face and exclaim, “A brother! Please! That’s incest!” I smiled. Sadly, but I smiled.
“Filippo…” I stopped him. “I’m going to do you the biggest favor anyone’s ever done you: I’m asking you to let me go. And do you know why I’m doing you a favor? Because if you try to satisfy me, you’ll make yourself unhappy. And you don’t deserve that. You’re good, reliable, intelligent, thoughtful, polite. You’re handsome and sexy and…”
“Apparently that’s not enough for you.”
“Of course it’s enough. The thing is…it’s not for me,” I shook my head. “It’s for someone else, and I know I’m stealing it. I’m stealing your fairy tale, Filippo, because I’m not your princess. I’m sorry.”
I stood up and picked up my bag, but I couldn’t move. Filippo was staring at the rings in their box.
“You can hate me,” I whispered. “You have every right, and it’ll help you get over it.”
“You don’t deserve for me to hate you.”
“Maybe I do. We’re all the villain in someone’s story.”
He sighed. I put my hand on his shoulder, and he squeezed it for a second. When he let his arm fall onto the table, I knew. I could go.
I cried as I wandered down Velazquez Street. I cried in the taxi I hailed on Goya. I cried in my lobby. I cried leaning on the table in my entrance hall. I cried in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the closet, in bed, and finally in my dreams. I cried for not being capable of being a princess, I cried for having turned my back on the sweetest memories, I cried because, in a convoluted way, I had made my mother right because I was so ordinary that I couldn’t even figure out how to enjoy a fairy tale when it was served up on a silver platter. But, apart from the tears of sorrow I cried over letting him go, I cried tears that were more bitter, hotter, fresher…and those tears were because, whenever I had imagined doing something like this over the last few weeks, David was always there hugging me and telling me he would wait however long I needed to do us right; that he would wait for me because I was worth it. Always. And in his arms, all the words I said to Filippo would have made sense. Or they would have gotten lost. I don’t know.
I cried when I texted in our WhatsApp chat: I broke up with Filippo and I miss you being here. Why did we decide to keep our distance, David?
I cried when I deleted it and closed the app.
The next day, however, I felt like a bird that is terrified of heights but gets tired of plucking out its own feathers and is now going to test what it feels like to fly.
The last post on David’s social media, the only way I had to keep track of him without breaking our agreement, was that photo of our shadows tangled up on the beach in Mykonos, and the caption below it, even though I had read it so many times, still hurt. A lot. I think every time I saw those two letters it hurt even more. “Us.” It encapsulated everything that was, everything that could have been, everything that would never be. It held all the memories that, damn, we hadn’t even seen be born. It was worse being left with the feeling that it could have been better than it seemed. Or maybe that’s what the losers always say to themselves when they see the prize drifting away.
The flowers he gave me were wilting more every day. I poured in a water-soluble aspirin when I changed the water and carefully cut the stems diagonally hoping they would dry beautifully. I often found myself caught off guard when I realized that those flowers would be the only thing I’d have left of a love story that didn’t turn into love.
I don’t know what the hell I’m trying to say. All I know is I became obsessed. With him, with the memories, with the smells, with the hope. And on the second day of singleness, after forcing myself to pack everything Filippo had left in the house into boxes, after writing and deleting five messages to David, I decided that there were things that couldn’t wait. And I went to the office.
Sonia’s eyes almost popped out of her head when she saw me come in, and I don’t think it was just because I hadn’t warned her about my “visit.” I had “played” with my wardrobe, which that rebellious soul (innocently rebellious, to be fair) awakened in me, to pair a houndstooth pencil skirt, which I normally wore with a white blouse, with a pastel-yellow T-shirt and black heels. I was carrying a purse, my hair wavy and parted to the side, and I had only put on mascara.
“What are you doing here?”
“Working.” I smiled at her. “Come in and get me up-to-date.”
I tilted my head toward my office and poked my head into the meeting room. Nobody was there yet.
“You can tell the boss isn’t here.” I laughed.
When Sonia finished reviewing everything, I felt strange. Nothing big had happened in my absence. After all the movies I had played in my head when the board “invited” me to take a long vacation, it actually hadn’t mattered at all. Nobody had tried to meddle in my accounts or bossed my team around or tried any sneaky tricks to embezzle control. They weren’t trying to drive me out and get me to leave, or drive me crazy so they could make themselves comfortable without me. Nothing. Everything was still exactly the same as I left it.
That should have encouraged me to settle down between these four walls, but actually I learned a different lesson: our own worst enemy is always staring back at us in the mirror.
The gentlemen on the board didn’t appreciate having me there and especially in a position of power. That was a fact. But it was also a fact that I had been obsessed with being locked in a power struggle with them. And it wasn’t worth it because in recent years, I had struggled a lot and lived very little. That’s why I always felt more at home in that office than I did in my own apartment—because I never fought to make my life a place to feel comfortable, the way I did there.
The feeling I was filled with when I realized this was mostly tired. Tired of the carpet, the walls, the paintings, the views, my mammoth office, the rigidity of the business, corporate culture, the partners, the reports, the teams, approving and interrogating lines of business… Okay. I had already proven I could do it.
So now what?
I stared at Sonia for a while, looking straight through her, until she got uncomfortable.
“Are you frozen, are you planning a murder, or are you going to tell me you have postvacation depression?”
I smiled, and she smiled back.
“What if I just leave it all?”
Sonia’s smile faded.
“What?”
“What if I leave it all? What if I keep my shares and draw the dividends, but I just dip out and go somewhere else? Or I build something of my own? I could open a bookstore. Write a book about business strategy. Or travel to improve my German or to learn Chinese.”
“I’m not following.”
“What am I doing here?”
“Uh…that’s a rhetorical question, right?”
“Listen…over the last few years, my whole life has consisted of proving to a bunch of misogynist old fogies that I deserve this position beyond just my last name. I’ve spent months packing and unpacking suitcases. I traveled to London so much that I ended up buying an apartment there to create the false impression of being at home there.”
“Well, you met Filippo too and…”
“Filippo and I broke up,” I announced. “I’m not talking about love. I’m talking about myself. I’ve been obsessed with proving stuff to everyone else, but…what do I want? What makes me happy?”
“Uh…” Sonia had a look of terror on her face.
I stood up and looked around me.
“I’ve always wanted to take a class,” I said.
“Margot…” Sonia murmured.
“And the book thing sounds good. A leave of absence? Maybe I could try a startup.”
“Margot.”
“What if I invent an app that cross-checks the data of the places you mention on WhatsApp…?”
“Margot!” Sonia put herself in my path and waved her arms, stunned. “Stop the brainstorm! Calm down for a second. It’s not even nine a.m. and you’ve already thought of, what, ten new businesses? The weird part is you haven’t even mentioned becoming a meditation teacher.”
“That too…”
“Margot…you can’t do everything at once. It’s like going on a diet or quitting smoking. Some brave people do it cold turkey, fine, but, what if you don’t rush into anything? What if you feel and think it all through calmly?”
I glared at her. I was more comfortable in my own mental spiral, in that bacchanalian verbal diarrhea where suddenly I could be whomever I wanted… My wings were eager to test themselves, but they probably still only had a couple of feathers on them.
“This is your home. If you don’t like it, that’s fine,” she said, understandingly, “but don’t give away the keys so you can go sleep in the street. Maybe consider moving instead.”
I rounded the desk and let myself collapse into the chair. I thought. I thought about David, of course, like I always did when I let myself glimpse beyond what I had in front of me. I thought about how making any decision right now would just be part of a tantrum and/or the quest for his return.
Sonia perched on the desk, throwing all protocol out the window, and put her hand on my shoulder.
“Whatever happened on that trip, Margot, use it as a catalyst. You left Filippo. That’s huge. That’s a huge decision. Give yourself time to get comfortable with each step. If you run, the pain and grief won’t be left behind; they’ll just be hiding, waiting to pounce on you when you least expect it.”
I tutted. “Since when did you get so wise?”
“I had a revelation after trying to turn my life into a rom-com. If you bump into a guy with a coffee in your hand, he doesn’t fall in love with you; he just makes you pay for the dry-cleaning.”
I sighed. “Notify everyone on the team who’s not on vacation and call them in for a meeting in my office. Nothing formal. Just to bring us up-to-date and tell them that I’m here.”
“And that you’re not planning on running off and opening a florist.”
A stabbing pain lashed me, in my lungs. I don’t know if I managed to smile.
“Can you order breakfast for however many of us will be there? And count yourself too. Maybe the time has come to start giving you more responsibility, if you want it.”
She nodded, grinning, and walked toward the door. When she got there, she turned back; I was holding my phone in my hand.
“Should I close this?”
“Yes.”
I typed: Today I tried to fly too high and I almost fell. You should have taught me a little more about being free. It’s scary. Like being without you.
I deleted it.
At midday, I got a vase of white roses, but when I opened the card, I didn’t find lyrics from the eighties or an I miss you. Just a Welcome Home, signed by my godfather.