Page 40 of The Perfect Divorce

I pull out a chair in front of him and sit. Our knees bump into one another but neither of us acknowledges it. With a needle pinched between my fingers, I hold out my other hand, and he places his in mine, palm up.

His skin is warm and soft with colorful tattoos covering the entirety of his forearm. Up close, I can see what some of them are now. A cross wrapped in barbwire. A rising sun. The face of a woman surrounded by flowers and flames. A skull. And the wordsFear nothing, for fear is nothing but a defect. I wonder if he actually believes that. To have no fear is ignorant. It’s what keeps us on our toes, ensures we’re one step ahead. Knowing his background, it’s clear he’s fallen steps behind more than once in his life, which is why he’s here—sitting across from me in my kitchen. I know what he is, but he has no idea what I am.

I lift his hand, bringing it closer to my line of sight. The skin surrounding the sliver is bloated and red. I press the needle into it, scraping and digging.

“Does that hurt?” I ask, pausing to look up at him. I’ve never seen him this close-up before, and I pick out small details I hadn’t noticed. A small inch-long scar protruding from the arch of his right brow. His facial hair is dense but trimmed close to the skin. There’s a black spot on his iris, like a beauty mark of sorts.

“No,” he says.

I return my attention to his hand and lean forward, dropping my head and flicking my hair over my shoulder. Piercing his skin with the needle point, I push and prod in an attempt to wiggle the small foreign object free. His hot breath sweeps across the tip of my ear and the side of my neck, sending a shiver down my spine.

“You’re tense,” he notes.

“Well, I’m trying not to hurt you.”

“I don’t think that’s even possible.”

I can’t tell if he intends his words to be playful or challenging, so I meet his gaze again, trying to get a read on him. I lock onto the tiny dark spot surrounded by the sage green of his iris. It has the magnetism of a black hole, and I wonder how many people it’s pulled in.

“It is,” I say matter-of-factly, lowering my head again.

This time, I press the needle a little harder into his skin, piercing a new hole for the sliver to exit. You can’t always leave the same way you enter. That’s true for both splinters and people. His forearm tightens and several veins swell up, creating long, purple ridges from his wrist to his elbow. He sucks in air through his teeth, the tiniest wince of pain.

“Did that hurt?” I smirk.

“Not at all,” he lies.

There’s a moment of silence before Alejandro speaks again. “You know, yesterday, I overheard that argument you and your husband were having. The way he spoke to you.” He shakes his head, letting out a puff of hot air. “It took everything in me not to intervene. I wanted to knock him out.”

“It’s good you didn’t.”

“No man should speak to a woman like that, especially a husband.”

“I know... that’s why I’m divorcing him.”

“Really?”

I look up at him, but his gaze is a little lower than mine, staring right at my lips.

“Really,” I say, returning my focus to his hand.

He clears his throat. “If you don’t mind me asking, how long have you two been together?”

“I mind.”

“Sorry,” he says.

“I mean... because it doesn’t matter how long we’ve been together. Time isn’t an anchor. It’s not something to hold you in place just because of how long you’ve been in that place. Like, for instance, how long were you in prison?”

He stammers for a moment. “Ten years.”

“If you’d only been in one year, would you still want to do another nine?”

“Well, no.” Alejandro shakes his head. “But that’s different.”

“It’s really not. We’re all confined in one way or another. Some of us just can’t see the cages we’re locked in.”

The tip of the needle finally forces the splinter out of the fresh hole I pierced into his skin.

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