We avoid each other the rest of Sunday, and it’s even harder in his tiny house than it was in my house. As soon as he vacates my room, I go back into it and close the door, and I recluse myself for the rest of the evening. 

I’m sure the whole family knows we’re fighting. They leave me alone about it.

It’s been a difficult but revealing day. 

No matter what I might feel for Tiago, it would never work out. There’s too much of this macho culture ingrained in him. And while I hate fighting, I’m not a pushover.

If he treated me or one of our children the way his dad just treated him, I’d get in the middle of it.

And then we would fight. Like we are now. Except when the newness wore off, when he wasn’t trying to win me back, when we were old and tired and impatient, he would get angry at me also.

I can picture it clearly.

***

Tiago knocks on my bedroom door in the morning before I’ve gone to the bathroom. I run my hands through my hair and open the door. I lean my head wearily against the door jamb and wait to hear what he has to say.

“I feel bad for yesterday,” Tiago says. “I don’t know why we are fighting. I’m not upset with you.”

“I know,” I say. I’m not sure what else to say, and I think it probably doesn’t matter.

I don’t need to tell him what I’ve realized. I’ve got two weeks left in this country, and then it’s goodbye. For good.

“Are you still upset with me?” he asks.

“No. Let’s not waste our time that way.”

“Agreed.” He dips his head and presses a quick kiss to my lips.

My heart squeezes when he does. Whatever I feel for him will never be more than this.

I come out to the table when I’m dressed and ready for the day. Martha is excited because tomorrow she wants to take us back to Itamaracá. We went to the island when I was here two years ago, and I’m a little leery because I got terribly sick from the seafood last time. But it was a beautiful location, idyllic and isolated, and I love the thought of going again.

Rafael and Mario sit watching TV when suddenly the screen goes black. At the same time, the fan whirring above the table stops. Martha and I lift our heads to look at it.

“Que foi?” Rafael says. He gets up and messes with the TV, and I turn to Tiago.

“Did we lose electricity?”

“Maybe.” He says something to his mom, and they wander through the house before returning.

“Yep. No power.”

“Does that happen a lot?” I fan myself with my hand. His house doesn’t have air conditioning, but with the windows open and the fan on, the heat is tolerable.

Not now. Now it’s stifling.

“Let’s sit outside,” Tiago says.

Rafael and Mario grumble but there’s nothing else to do, and it’s hot. Tiago grabs his guitar and we settle in the chairs on the porch. Even though we’re shaded, at first all I notice is the still air and the sweat gathering uncomfortably in the folds of my skin.

But then Tiago winks at me and starts singing, “Quando o sol bater na janela . . .”

I grin and join in, singing the next line because it’s all I know. But his brothers know the rest of the song, and they belt out the lyrics. Tiago moves from that to another Brazilian song. I don’t know the words but it’s catchy and fun. Soon I’ve forgotten I’m hot and uncomfortable.

We spend two hours outside, singing song after song, moving from Brazilian music to classics like John Lennon and then familiar reggae tunes by Bob Marley. Tiago grins at me while he sings, and I’m flooded with so many beautiful memories of being in his room in high school, listening as he played his guitar and sang to me. I put my hand on his thigh and sit close to him.

The electricity announces itself when the TV begins to blare in the sitting room behind us. We whoop and jump and run to Tiago’s parents’ bedroom in the back of the house, the only room with an AC unit. Martha turns it on high and closes the door, and we are a mess of bodies crowding on the bed. I bury my face in Tiago’s shoulder and giggle.

It might be my favorite day yet.

***

Itamaracá is as beautiful as I remember it, but Tiago keeps fighting with his mom. It’s just the three of us, and one time after they argue in front of the beach near the old fort, he walks off all huffy and moody.

She pretends like nothing is wrong and I don’t know how to ask her what they’re fighting about, so I ignore it. But it bothers me how he treats her.

She and I climb the stone ruins of the fort by ourselves, walking over the ramparts at the top and taking pictures by the cannons. Tiago finally comes back and joins us. Martha says a few words and then takes the stairs down. I turn to him.

“Why are you fighting with your mom?”

He shrugs. “She says I spend too much time at home. She wants me to get a job. Isn’t it enough that I go to school?”

“She’s just looking out for you. She doesn’t want you to get fat and lazy.” I poke his stomach.

“I’m not doing either of those things.” He rolls his eyes and shoves my hand away. “It’s none of her business what I do, anyway. I’m eighteen. Almost nineteen. I can do what I want.

“Treat her with respect, even if you don’t agree with her. She’s your mom.”

“She treats me like a child. I deserve space.”

“Well, you still live at home, you still eat her food, you still let her clean up after you. It sounds like she’s treating you the way you act.”

He turns his gaze on me, the irritation apparent in his furrowed brows. “Just because I live with her doesn’t mean she’s in charge of me.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“In Brazil, we live with our parents until we get married. It doesn’t mean we’re still kids.”

“That’s an odd tradition.”

“Not to us. We think it’s heartless that your parents kick you out at eighteen and expect you to make your own way in the world. To pay for the rest of your life when you’re just getting on your feet. They should be taking care of you, setting you up for life.”

“No.” I shake my head. “They’re teaching us independence. We still rely on them for help while we learn to struggle and overcome challenges on our own. So that by the time we get married, we are fully capable and functioning adults.”

“And completely broke, too. Americans get into crazy amounts of debt going to school and getting married. Your system is broke.”

He’s insulting me and my country, and I’m angry now. I fire right back.

“Says the boy from the country where the majority of the people have no education after high school and live below the poverty line. Who’s helping them?”

He tenses his jaw. “You are just the same as always. Judging what you don’t know. Believing that your narrow perspective is the only one. Unable to see that there are multiple ways to be.”

“And you’re as immature as you were in high school. You think you can treat people poorly and it doesn’t matter because they’re your family, and they’re always going to be there. But listen up. Your mom might put up with it, but your wife won’t. You can’t talk to her or your kids that way. Or she’ll be gone.”

“You’d be gone, you mean,” he says.

Fine, if he wants to take it that way. “You got it. I refuse to be in a picture where someone treats me that way.”

“Well, you aren’t—” 

He stops and takes a deep breath. I try to guess what he intended to say. Something insulting. Maybe something about how I’m not who he wants to marry anyway.

Something he knows will cause damage and he won’t be able to undo.

He pushes off the rampart. 

I should let him go. But I’m tired of this. “You can’t just walk away from me, you know!” I follow him. “Just because you don’t like what I have to say. Just because you want me to shut up.”

He turns around. “You are making me angry. So I’m walking away. Now let me go.”

His words are precise and clear and intentional, and I take a step back. Why am I pushing him? Almost as if I’m goading him? If he were Owen, I’d let him go, I’d understand his need to cool off and I would give him space.

I don’t treat Tiago with the same respect, and I feel a flash of shame.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “Of course.”

I suppose it’s a good sign. It’s better that he walk away from his wife when he’s angry, rather than get angrier and take it out on her.

But even better would be if he could control his anger enough to sit down and talk with her.

I’m expecting too much.

I follow his mom’s steps and find her in the gift shop. I peruse the purses made of coconut and the carved figurines, pretending to be interested.

He’s waiting for me when I exit.

“Our cultures are different,” he says. “I didn’t mean to imply that mine is better or yours is worse.”

I know what he meant, and I know his opinion hasn’t changed. I know he also thinks I have a superiority complex.

Just like he always has.

He’s trying so hard to keep the peace. So hard to not be angry with me.

“It’s all right,” I say. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you the space you needed to cool down.”

I don’t say anything else.

More and more I see the conflict between us. If I thought we’d be together for real someday, if I thought I was going to marry him or we might spend our lives together, I’d fight harder. I’d fight for change. I’d fight for him to understand what it is I don’t like. I’d fight for him to see what he needs to do differently.

But I’m not going to.

Some other girl can fight with him if she needs it to be different.