the Devil and the Sea

60| Mansion party: a good friend

I toss Alejandro a casual apology, grab the first bottle of liquor I can find, and quickly leave. I maneuver the crowd so as not to accidentally touch anyone's sweaty body and climb the stairs to the second floor. On the second floor there are two more bedrooms and one living room with two terraces, and to my surprise these bedrooms are empty, everybody is in the living room.

I choose one of the two bedrooms and step inside silently. Light from a street lamp seeps through the curtains, illuminating the room. I sit down on the dusty floor, lean against the edge of the bed, and feel nauseated. The bottle I hurriedly grabbed turned out to be a whiskey bottle, but I sip it down my throat anyway.

I feel bad because yesterday I gave myself to a guy who needs another girl. Alcohol only increases the feeling of despair. Everything went through one place, and I feel like not a hunter, but a prey.

My plan was to make this the best summer ever and enjoy the time with friends. And make Vincent fall in love with me.

And it was not part of this plan to fall in love with someone with whom there would be no future anyway.

A day has already passed, but I still feel the taste of Vincent on my lips, his palms on my skin. Unfortunately, it only means that I'm too sober. And I put my lips on the neck of the whiskey bottle again.

After a while, Jesus enters the room.

"Here you are." He closes the door behind him.

"I didn't think that you would come looking for me," I smile, glad that he is here.

Jesus comes over and sits beside me, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He turns and looks at me searchingly.

"What?" I look back.

"I just want to know what are you hiding from?" He asks.

Such a simple and at the same time complex question.

I look at him in bewilderment, hoping he won't insist.

In vain.

"You always ended up in our company when you were running away from something: from Mark Ferrer, from problems in your family and college, so on." Jesus is looking for my gaze, and I carefully hide it.

His words brought back unpleasant memories: how I tried to break out of the vicious circle of relations with Mark, and he, finding the right words, urged me to continue. How I left him, wanting to stop playing games, but ended up back in his bed. How I wanted to throw out all the feelings. How I understood that I could not stand another war, and if he broke into my life again, I would be left in the cold. How he won, and I tried to come to terms with it. How I fell to my knees, and tears flowed down my cheeks as hailstones when I finally understood that he did not belong to me.

I still wonder what I would have been like, if I had known then how dangerous guys can be. If I knew that it hurt so much, if I knew that my heart would be smashed to pieces and then glued together, but only to be smashed to hell again, only because he could do it ... for sure I would stay away from Mark Ferrer as far as possible.

Although ... who am I lying to? If he were to declare war on me again now, he would regret it, being among the ashes.

"Tell me, now, after all this time, what brings you here?" Jesus' voice dispels the dead past that is resurrected in memory.

"Now, I'm not hiding from anything anymore," I confidently answer, and with every uttered word I believe more in what I say, "and it was you who forced me to be here."

I giggle, Jesus smiles.

"To be more precise, I'm here because we haven't seen each other for a long time."