18

"Well, thank you!" she couldn't help interrupting him with ferocious irony.

"But for my part, I have the distinct impression that it wasn't so much nearly being raped and killed that affected you the most."

"What do you mean by that!"

"Oh please, don't pretend, you know very well."

"Then let's say I'm an idiot, so I wish you'd state it clearly."

"Then I'll do it. Nicky!"

Hearing his name, Crystal couldn't repress a gesture of unmistakable eloquence, which her fiancé didn't let pass.

"Ah, see, your reaction is so flamboyant!"

 "He saved our lives."

"But I wasn't the one who hit him with terrible, indelible words!"

Crystal was silent for a moment before continuing.

"I was lost so I said things I now regret having said, I..."

But Nathan stopped her by raising an authoritative hand.

"I'm going to stop you right there, darling! The words you just said mean nothing to me!" 

Crystal knew perfectly well that it wasn't him she should be saying it to, but right now, there was only him. That person was absent. But more than anything, he was a stranger, he was just that. They would say that, unlike his brother, he didn't need an accident to forget. He had to forget everything that stood in his way.

Crystal looked at her fiancé, with whom she was still hopelessly in love, so handsome so distinguished, wearing this morning a yellow polo with a green stripe and white shorts, an expensive watch strapped to his wrist. And she, Crystal, wore a short garnet dress with a light floral motif on the left side of the chest. She had tied her hair to the very top of her head. 

Anyone seeing them would have taken them for a perfect couple, as wonderful to contemplate as they were to date. But they weren't. It wasn't anymore. The love was still there, but something broke irreparably. And although Crystal refused to admit it, it had little or nothing to do with last night's dramatic incident. For if it had been someone else, anyone, who had saved them from that fateful fate, then, on the contrary, the event, traumatic as it was, should have brought them even closer together, sealed their already strong and deep union.

But it wasn't to be, it wasn't just anyone who had saved them, and that was the one difference that couldn't be forgiven. 

Nathan was just fussing over his breakfast, drinking half his coffee, while Crystal hadn't even touched her food. She wasn't even pretending anymore. She just sat there, looking at her meal without seeing it, replaying last night's scene over and over again, but above all seeing him again, so beautiful and bloody, so invincible and fragile, so familiar and foreign as ever.

"Do you still love him?"

Once again, Crystal was unable to suppress an eloquent, meaningful gesture, betraying the truth more than with words. The reality. A reality that, at this moment, she would have preferred never to exist.

But that was simply impossible. The most disturbing things were impossible to erase.

That evening, Crystal went out to Leandro's bar. Leandro was there, and even seemed to be expecting her. Although still deeply shaken by what had happened to them, the young woman didn't forget to dress up for her visit to her friend's bar. For the occasion, she'd worn a short, electric-blue Tropezian dress and butterfly pumps revealing her legs, which were as white as they were slender. She was sublime as usual. She took a seat at their table and waited for Leandro to approach her, which he did only a few minutes after her entrance.

"Good evening, Leandro."

"Good evening, darling. You look wonderful."

"Thank you."

She sighed. 

"Leandro."

"I know."

"You know?"

"Yes."

"But how, and first, what do you know."

"What you were about to tell me when you came here, alone."

"And what do you think I was about to reveal to you tonight?"

"According to you!"

Crystal sighed again and lowered her head for a moment in discouragement.

"So to stop playing with words, Nicky..." 

"...came in person to learn me the truth. Or at least part of it."

Crystal gasped and half rose to her feet, plunging her stunned gaze into her friend's calm but melancholy one.

"He's a friend. Nicky came to see you."