Cuando Volveras

Chapter 12

Is he deadass? A fucking Red Lobster? This man has enough money to feed kids in Africa and he chooses a Red Lobster?! Ok cálmate Natalia, be grateful, at least it's not McDonalds.

We both get out of the car and enter into Red Lobster. The hostess looks up at Anthony and her jaw almost drops to the floor. He smiles at her, making her blush and giggle madly.

"I have a reservation under Santos."

The hostess nods her head and starts to walk to a table towards a secluded area of the restaurant. She serves both of us glasses of water and goes off.

Anthony takes a sip of his water as his eyes wander all around my face.

"Is there something on my face?" I ask him, staring back at him.

He just shakes his head. "Nah, I was just thinking how beautiful you look."

"Boy, I'm not here to be showered with compliments. I'm here because you wanted to talk. So, let's talk."

He moves uncomfortably in his seat and motions his hand towards me.

"Ok. Ask me anything."

Thousands of questions started running through my head. I couldn't even figure out which one I wanted to start off with.

"First of all, how dare you! You have the fucking nerve to leave for mad years and now you randomly show up, 10 fucking years later?!" I whisper loudly.

Anthony looks down at the table and sighs deeply. As he raises his head back up at me, his chocolate eyes were showing signs of regret. He opens his mouth to speak, but I interrupt him.

"Not only that, you cheated on me sooo many times and you always lied to me about it. Like, warn a sister, will you? Oh, and don't get me started about that Sierra bitch. To be honest, I was surprised that you were into white girls. That shit really threw me off."

Snatching the glass of water from the table, he watches quietly as I gulp down the water.

"You wanna know the worst thing about all of this, Anthony? I knew you were sorry. I knew you felt bad. I heard it in all your old songs. You knew you fucked up. But you never had the nerve to come back and apologize to me. And honestly, that part hurt me the most." I end my rant.

All that heavy weight I had in my body finally lifts off me, diminishing into thin air.

He exhales deeply as he runs his hand through his face. The moment I made contact with his eyes, my body felt like putty. Even with this all this hatred for him, for some reason, he can still make me feel vulnerable. But he doesn't need to know that.

"Okay, well lemme start off with what you yelled first. Yeah, it was really petty of me to leave without saying anything because I was young. I didn't have the courage that I have now to face my problems head first." He starts.

I nod my head, signaling him to continue. He redirects his eyes away from me to the table.

"And I'm sincerely sorry for cheating on you all those times. Again, I was young and I had all this money and it all went through my head. At the concerts, all these women from around the world wanted me and I just fell into their traps."

"I thought since you were on the other side of the world that you wouldn't have known. But even then, secrets are never kept quiet. And Sierra, she just wanted me for money. All the boys kept telling me that and I never believed them. That's the only white girl I was into, I swear." Anthony chuckles nervously.

I couldn't help but to chuckle as well to his remark. The man grew up around such a big diversity of ethnic groups. In my life, I never seen him flirt with a white girl.

"I knew white girls weren't in your blood." I mutter as I smile.

He finally looks up and smiles back at me.

"Yeah, after you ended our relationship and after the situation with Sierra, I just kinda stopped chasing women and focused more on music. I mean, there were women still chasing me, no doubt, but I stopped paying attention to that, ya know?"

"And as I kept writing these songs, I always kept thinking about you, Natalia. Everytime I sang a song, a picture of you would pop into my head. You always followed me around. But I never had the guts to talk to you face to face and apologize because I was too ashamed. You didn't deserve to be treated like that." Anthony stops speaking and looks back down at his hands.

"Lenny and Henry were telling me that after you guys finished your first tour, that you went straight to Miami. Is this true?" I ask, more calmed down.

"Yeah, like I said, I was too ashamed to face you so I bought this apartment in Miami. It was beautiful and all but I thought that if I moved away, you would stop coming back into my thoughts and all my problems would go away. And I was wrong. So I continued to write more and more music."

As he spoke, the thought of him pushing me out of his mind made my stomach churn.

Ugh, why am I feeling so butthurt?

"Hey, you think we can go back to my place? I'm not feeling that hungry anymore." I say, interrupting him.

His eyes glows up and he smiles widely.

"Yeah of course. I wasn't feeling seafood anyway. I just thought that you might like it here because you love shrimp. Or, you used to love shrimp. I'm not sure if that changed." He scratches the back of his head as he stands up.

"Actually, I still do love shrimp. I'm surprised you remembered that." We both left our table and head back into his car.

"Mami, of course I remembered. You were stuck in my head 24/7." He winks over at me as we drive back to my apartment.