Nemo - IV - Baptism

The phone was still on the bedside table.

Several hours had passed since I had arrived at the hotel and, even so, I was incapable of stopping myself from looking at it. It was enough for the screen to remain out of my field of vision for a few seconds for me to end up picking it up again, unlocking it almost by reflex and checking notifications I knew were not there.

One part of me wanted to write to him.

Ask him why. Ask him if it had meant anything to him. If, at least for an instant, he had hesitated before leaving. If he had thought of me on the way home. If he was planning to call me.

The other part refused.

I did not want to give him another victory. I did not want to be the one to seek him out again after everything that had happened. I kept telling myself that, if I really mattered to him, he would be the one to break the silence.

I placed the phone face down, for less than a minute. I picked it up again. I opened our conversation.

I read the last messages. The ones from that same morning, when everything seemed simpler. Then I kept scrolling upward. Photographs, private jokes, endless voice notes, promises that at the time had seemed sincere to me. Every word was a reminder of the person I had fallen in love with and of how difficult it was to reconcile him with the man who had abandoned me a few hours earlier.

My fingers began to type.

"Can we talk?"

I deleted it.

I tried again.

"I don’t understand why..."

I deleted it again.

I took a deep breath and closed the conversation.

No.

I was not going to do it.

If anyone had to say something, it would be him.

I left the phone on the bed again and rested my head in my hands. I tried to convince myself that I could get through the night without writing to him. That all I had to do was resist a few more hours to start regaining control of my own life.

Then it vibrated.

My heart lurched so hard it almost hurt.

I picked it up before it had even stopped ringing.

I did not need to look at the name.

I knew it was him.

On the screen appeared the contact I myself had created months earlier.

My God

There was only one message.

"Good girl, Nemo. You’ve behaved well."

I read it once.

Then again.

And once more.

I felt the air slowly leave my lungs. All the anger, all the rage I had tried to feed over the last few hours began to crack so quickly that I came to hate myself for it.

That message contained no explanation.

There was no apology.

Not a single question about how I was.

And yet, a part of me felt the same relief as a castaway glimpsing solid land.

It was absurd.

One sentence was enough, a minimal sign of attention. And I felt that I existed again.

That message inevi...