He nodded, hands half in his pockets. “You look well.”
“I am.”
There was silence then, crowded with old wreckage. He glanced around as if expecting security to materialize from ficus plants.
“I’ve wanted to talk to you,” he said.
You almost said no, you’ve wanted access, but the line felt too easy.
“There’s nothing left to say.”
He swallowed. “I was awful to you.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t understand what I had.”
There it was again. Had. Ownership leaking through repentance.
You held his gaze. “That was never the problem.”
He looked genuinely confused.
“The problem,” you said, “was that you believed my value depended on your ability to recognize it.”
He went still.
That sentence, more than any legal consequence or financial collapse, seemed to reach him. Not because it absolved you. Because it indicted the machinery he had mistaken for adulthood.
He looked down. “I’m sorry.”
Maybe he meant it. Maybe he finally had enough distance from the disaster to glimpse the shape of his own emptiness. People are capable of change, after all. Just not always in time to save what they destroyed.
“I know,” you said.
That surprised him.
You adjusted the strap of your bag. “Take care of yourself, Diego.”
