Because You're Different ✔

17. Challenge

June

The sky was so dark and the candlelight so small, I could barely see him sitting there opposite of me. We'd all said we were going to bed. Despite that, the two of us were still here, in the calmness of the California night. I tried to make out stars, but they were hidden, either because of pollution or clouds.

Valentina had been right, I guess. Living here, in the large, modern house where you didn't have to run into someone for hours if you wanted to, I'd had more privacy and time alone than I'd ever had in New York. Would I be able to get used to all the people if I'd ever move back there? I liked having the room to breathe.

"So," I said to Nathan, after we'd sat in comfortable silence for a while. "What do you think about Vale?"

"She's... certainly something."

I laughed. "Yes, she can be a bit much, I know."

He was thinking, turning his glass in his hand like it was a merry-go-round. "Lena could be a bit much as well. Differently, though."

Lena. I think I had her figured out a little by now, creating a picture of who she had been by tying all the broken pieces together they'd given me. "I have an uncle, Antonio," I said, and he looked up, a glint of light in ocean blue eyes. "The one year, he's totally happy and has all these big plans to start his own business. The next, he starts drinking, and abuela has to hide her money. Sometimes he disappears, for months on end. And then he returns, with a whole new plan to start his own book store, or set up a homeless shelter."

"Lena was like that."

So I'd thought. "It's a horrible way to live. Abuela is always worrying about him, whether he's happy or depressed. And when he's gone, she prays more."

He let the glass slip from his fingers. It fell and rolled a few inches before coming to a standstill. "Well, it's not a walk in the park for your uncle, either."

I didn't know what possessed me, if it was the night air making me brave, but I put my hand over his, in the middle of the table. "I never said it was," I said softly, watching those eyes. My fingers tingled from touching his. "I just meant, it can also be hard on the ones who care." He didn't respond, apart from not retracting his hand. Suddenly, I wondered what Valentina would think if she saw us like this. I threw a quick glance at the house; the kitchen was darker than anything outside. "You... you loved her a lot, didn't you?"

This time, he did take back his hand. Had I gone too far? The silence was nerve-wracking all of a sudden, and my body tensed, when: "I don't know. I was always too worried about her to feel anything else." Another silence. I could feel he was gathering the right words. "Sometimes she... sometimes she'd be so happy that she led me to believe it would be okay this time. But it never was."

Poor guy. I couldn't imagine what that must have been like, never knowing what you were in for. "I guess sometimes things are so messed up that there's not really anything you can do."

"Do you believe that?"

"Yeah. I do. My uncle, he's thirty-eight... I don't think he'll ever be just okay. And sometimes, something like that can get too much for a human being to bear."

He nodded slowly. "I still think we could've done more."

"How?"

"I don't know. But it can be manageable, bipolar disorder. Plenty of people are able to live a fairly regular life with it. But Lena didn't exactly have a stable home." A deep sigh. "It was all such a mess, you know. Nothing worked. At some point, she had this new idea to help herself when she got bad. She signed a contract with a care facility that said if one of us felt like she was spiraling down, we could call, and she would be taken in so they could keep an eye on her. The first time I called, she accused me of wanting to imprison her and fled. I looked for her for hours."