My best friend called me at two o’clock in the morning, begging me to come and see my wife in the emergency room.

For her.

I walked to the barista counter and ordered a black coffee with hands that only trembled a little.

I sit at a small table at the bottom, hidden behind my book.

I didn’t approach them.

It was the first decent and respectful thing I had done in years.

Ten minutes later, a shadow fell on my table.

I looked up, my breath stuck in my throat.

Irma stood next to me.

She had a little piece of thick paper, folded.

“I found this by emptying the old office in the storage room last week,” she said, “her soft voice covering the noise of coffee.

The old office.

The old cheap and wobbly wooden office of our very first rented room, with the paint that flaked.

She gently put the folded paper in front of my cup of coffee.

I thought you should have it.

Even before I could open her mouth, she turned around and walked away, while the bell of the coffee door hung when she, Mauricio and his wife came out in the rain.

I lowered my eyes and unfolded the paper.

It was not a document.

It was a photograph.

It was Irma and I, twenty years younger.

We were standing in front of this first dilapidated desk.

I smiled like a madman, wearing a slightly too tall suit, resembling a man who had absolutely nothing in his pockets except hope.

Irma stood next to me, holding a plastic bag containing our cheap street tacos lunch, looking at me as if she was already seeing the skyline I was going to build.

I turned the picture.

On the back, written by his elegant writing completed two decades ago, there were three words:

We start here.

I stared at these words with washed blue ink until the coffee, noise and rain gone out completely.

I didn’t chase her outside.

I wasn’t begging for forgiveness.

I didn’t play regret.

I just sat there, squeezing the photograph, and I finally understood, really, the total extent of my punishment.

It was not the loss of the mansion.

It wasn’t the frozen bank accounts, the lost business, the headlines or the mistress who sold me to save herself.

The real devastating price of my arrogance was that the universe had given me the only person who loved me before the world applauded me… and that I had methodically taught him to live without me.

I carefully folded the photograph and slipped it into my wallet.

Not as a memory of what I once possessed.

But as permanent proof of the fool I had been.

In years, men in custom-made suits will still whisper over a drink, wondering what really happened to Marcial Salgado.

Some will say that a scandal destroyed me.

Some will say that an interested mistress exposed me.

Some will say that my best friend betrayed me to steal my business.

They will all be wrong.

I was not destroyed when Irma finally left me.

I was destroyed the night she was dying and where I chose not to come.

All that happened next was only the world that finally caught up with the man I had already become.

If you want other stories like this, or if you want to share your thoughts about what you would have done for me, I would love to read you.

Your perspective helps these stories reach more people, so feel free to comment or share.