Page 166 of Break Point
“I thought I had it under control,” she continues, taking a deep, panting breath and wiping the tears off her face with a tissue, the mask of poised perfection she’d been clinging to for years finally coming off. “The drinking. It just … dulled the edge enough to make the pain go away”
My knees feel weak at her admission.
I reach for the chair beside her bed but think twice before sitting.
I hold off but keep it close in case I plummet. My heart aches as her words scrape the surface of confession and my mind reels to catch up. Over the years, I made peace with her drinking problem only ending in death.
But here I am, hearing her say it.
She’s finally saying it.
Loud and clear.
“I drink too much. I …” She trails off, a quivering sob choking her mid-sentence. “I kept telling myself I could fix it before anyone noticed.”
“We all noticed.” A lump grows in my throat, but I swallow down the feeling threatening to put me in a chokehold.
“I’m fooling myself. I can see that now,” she continues, the words coming out fast and desperate. But then she pauses, slows down. “Sometimes I wake up and realize it’s easier to pick up a drink than facing the day ahead. Or all of you.”
A long moment of silence stretches between us as I let the words sink in.
“I’m sorry,” she finally says. The words ring true, but I’m still wary. “For all the drinking, for missing the match today, for all the times I made you feel like you weren’t enough. For everything.”
She sucks in a panting breath through the sobs.
“You were always enough, Belén. I just … wasn’t.”
Hot tears prickle my eyes and burn down my face.
“Please believe me.”
“Then why wasn’t I reason enough to stop?” My voice cracks on the last word but I clear my throat.
“You were. Youare. I promise you,” she says, the words so believable that they give me pause. “But I am drowning. You don’t understand?—”
“Try me,” I cut in, already softening on the inside but not letting it show. “I’m smarter than you think.”
I’m tired of her taking the easy way out. Right now I want her to be honest. I can’t let her off that easily. Not until I know for a fact this isn’t one of her desperate attempts to fix the façade. I wouldn’t survive it.
She shakes her head; her face contorted with pain. Emotional. Visceral. Unavoidable.
“It’s jealousy,” she concedes, her features drenched in shame. “You have everything I ever wanted. And you are already on your way to surpassing me in every way.”
“But you had already achieved so much at my age,” I say in a feeble attempt to make her remember how great she was, and how her impact is still felt to this day. It matters. It transcends. “I’m just getting started. There’s so much I still need to learn.”
“Exactly. And you’re already better than me. You always have been. I knew it from the moment you held a racket in your hand for the first time and saw how it lit up your eyes.”
Her gaze softens as if she were watching the memory replay in front of her like a movie. She’s looking at me now the way I wish she had while I was growing up. And maybe she did, for a while, when I was still a cute toddler holding a racket with chubby little fingers. But she stopped the day that looking at me became harder and a constant reminder of what she lost. And I don’t think either of us remembers exactly when that happened. Or she does, but I can live without knowing.
“I’ll get help,” she says. “I’ll get better. I’ll come to your matches.”
I shut my eyes and let my head hang for a beat.
I can’t get my hopes up. She has barely admitted to her drinking problem. That doesn’t mean she’s cured. She might still mess up here and there, and I’d rather she take it day by day before she starts making promises she might be able to keep in the future, but not yet.
“I’ve seen them all, you know?” she says at my evident skepticism. “There’s not a single match I’ve missed. Even before they were televised. I’ve watched your tapes. All of them. I just wasn’t strong enough to be there and support you like you deserved. Your dad has been pulling theweight for both of us all these years. That’s one of the reasons I want to get better. I want to be there for you and show you how much I love you. I always have and never stopped. I just hated myself so much that it paralyzed me.”
I love you, too.
