“Forgive me. I’m going to change. I swear. I’ll erase Camila from my life. We’ll go to therapy. I’ll do whatever you want.”
Mariana slowly shook her head.
“The problem is that you think I still want something from you.”
That sentence disarmed me.
The woman who had waited for me for years with a warm dinner, who defended me before her family, who put her last name, her patience, and her faith into building my life, now looked at me the way someone looks at a door that will never open again.
The lawyer pointed to the papers.
“You must sign acknowledgment of notification and voluntary surrender of the keys.”
“And if I don’t sign?”
Mauricio took a step forward.
“Then this gets uglier. And believe me, Alejandro, it is already ugly enough.”
I looked at him. I wanted to hate him for being on her side, but the truth fell on me like a stone: he had not chosen Mariana to betray me. He chose her because I had abandoned her first.
I signed.
The pen felt as heavy as iron.
When I finished, Mariana held out her hand.
“The keys.”
I took them from my pocket and placed them on the table. The metallic sound was small, but to me it sounded like a sentence.
I walked toward the door.
Outside, my boxes were piled on the sidewalk, next to two suitcases and a black bag full of clothes. The Guadalajara sun shone clean and indifferent, as if the world had not just split apart.
Before leaving, I turned back one last time.
Mariana was standing, barely supporting herself on the arm of the couch. Mauricio was beside her. Not as a lover. Not as a traitor. As the man who had been there when I decided not to be.
“Mariana…” I whispered.
She did not answer.
She only closed the door.
The click of the lock left me frozen.
I stood in front of the house I once called mine, surrounded by boxes, with my phone full of messages from Camila asking if I could see her again.
I did not answer.
For the first time, I understood that the worst loss was not the house, or the money, or the SUV, or even my best friend.
The worst loss was discovering that I had a loyal woman by my side for eleven years… and I traded her for ten days of vanity in an expensive room.
I dragged my suitcases to the corner and called a taxi.
When the driver arrived, he rolled down the window.
“Where are you going, young man?”
I opened my mouth.
But I did not know what to say.
Because there are men who lose their way because of bad luck.
And others, like me, lose it because they destroy with their own hands the only place they could ever return to.
