For three years I shared everything with him. The rent for the apartment in the Narvarte neighborhood. The grocery bills. The payments when he was short on cash. The visits to the hospital when his mother was sick. The family dinners with his gossipy aunt who already called me daughter-in-law. The laundered shirts. The sleepless nights. The opportunities I let slip by because I was trying to hold together a life that was supposed to be for two.
I had given love, time, money, loyalty.
He couldn’t even offer respect.
I looked at him for a few seconds. Then I nodded.
“You’re right,” I said.
Emiliano smiled with the self-assurance of a man who thinks he’s won because his wife stopped arguing.
He always mistook my silence for submission.
I grabbed my bag, stood up slowly, politely said goodbye to his friends, and walked toward the exit. No one stopped me. Not even him. He didn’t even ask where I was going.
It was drizzling outside. The city smelled of wet pavement, smoke, and fried food from the stalls that were still open. I got in my car and drove to the apartment without playing any music. I wasn’t crying anymore.
I was thinking.
Planning.
At one in the morning, I opened the first cardboard box. Then the second. Then the third.
I packed my clothes. My books. The coffee maker I’d bought. The picture frames with photos of us smiling as if we were happy. Even the plants from the balcony, because even those had survived thanks to me.
Every time I closed a box, his words echoed in my head again.
“You’re not my wife.”
“You don’t belong to me.”
By the time dawn broke, half the apartment was empty.
I left my keys on the kitchen counter.
And a short note, folded carefully:
“You’re right. I don’t belong to you. And you don’t belong to me anymore.”
I closed the door behind me quietly.
But hours later, when Emiliano returned from a club and saw the half-empty rooms, he had no idea that the worst was yet to come.
I couldn’t believe what was about to happen…
PART 2
By eleven in the morning, I already had twenty-seven missed calls from Emiliano.
By twelve, it was thirty-four.
At one, he started sending voice messages.
“Regina, I saw the note. What’s wrong?”
“This is going too far.”
“Answer me, please.”
“Did you really take your things?”
“Regi… no way.”
I listened to the messages without replying, sitting in the living room of my cousin Nora’s apartment in Coyoacán. She was across from me, with a cup of coffee and that sharp look she always had when she wanted to tell me something uncomfortable but true.
“He’s not suffering because he lost you,” she said. “He’s panicking because he thought you were never going to leave.”
And yes.
That was exactly what was happening.
Emiliano was used to me putting up with things. To me forgiving quickly. I expected that with dinner, a warm hug, and a “don’t be like that,” everything would go back to normal. I was the one picking up the pieces while he continued doing whatever he pleased.
But not this time.
That afternoon, I had to go to the apartment for the last few boxes I hadn’t been able to get out in the early morning. Nora insisted on coming with me. When we arrived, Emiliano was already there.
He was wearing the same clothes as the day before, his hair was disheveled, and he looked exhausted. As soon as he saw me, he got up from the couch as if he’d been waiting for hours.
“Regina, finally,” he said. “Enough with the drama.”
I felt nothing when I heard him say that. Not anger. Not sadness. Just a calmness that seemed to make him even more nervous.
“It’s not drama,” I replied. “It’s a decision.”
“Over something stupid at a bar?”
“If you really think it was over something stupid, then you never understood anything.”
