THE ROOMIE (Pedro pascal)

Chapter 7

Pedro Pascal had successfully avoided any kind of close relationship.

Oh, that didn't mean he was antisocial. He had superficial friends that he saw here from time to time, and of course the man was not made of stone. He also had some lovers from here and there, who knew what they were getting into and with whom. He enjoyed the warmth of them at night and enjoyed it well.

Obviously, he wasn't going to spend his whole life denying himself that kind of pleasure. The difference is that he now knew, with the wisdom that only comes with age, that it wasn't worth the complications of what people call love.

That atrocious thing that makes even the most intelligent man act like a fool.

And he knew of fools.

Pedro hadn't always been so cynic, his first few years as an adult had been anything but that. He had spent his twenties indulging in pleasure wherever he could find it. For as all twenty somethings believe, life is short and certainly to be enjoyed. If you add to that the fact that he now had more money and fame than he had ever seen in his life, it was clear that he was going to dedicate his time to a relentless pursuit of pleasure. If there was a perfect place for this type of life, the 90's in New York was it.

It happened when Pedro was twenty-seven years old, one morning when he was trying to cope with a hangover. He and Isaac had played the night before, his friend went home after receiving a call, but Pedro knew that the night was young, so he decided to lose himself in the joys that the city offered.

When the bell rang at his door, Pedro groaned and slowly got up from his bed. He was in boxers and a T-shirt from the night before, and for a moment he doubted if he cared enough to put on pants. Against his will, he grabbed a pair of slacks that were on a chair and dragged his feet towards the door. With his eyes narrowed and hair even more tousled than usual, he opened the door.

Pedro was surprised when he saw Isaac. It was strange that his friend was there so early without notice. It was even weirder that he was crying.

Pedro couldn't remember a time when he had seen his friend cry.

'' Isaac '' He said hesitantly, he had never learned what to do when someone cries, and maybe he never would, '' What- ''

But before he finished his question, Isaac turned to see him with eyes of sadness that he had never experienced. He decided to pull his friend into the apartment, knowing that something was wrong, terribly wrong.

''He's gone,'' Isaac sobbed. ''Diana is gone.''

For a moment, Pedro could do nothing but stare at him. Isaac had always been the happiest person he'd ever met, and ever since he met Diana, he was nauseatingly more. Anyone who had heard Isaac talk about Diana would have realized how much he loved her. She seemed to love him too, it was impossible to believe that she had left him.

''What do you mean she left?'' Finally Pedro was able to pronounce something.

Isaac just stared at him with a lifeless blank expression. His eyes suddenly looked like they were 100 years old. ''She left me a voice note saying she couldn't stay with me anymore,'' he said in a hollow voice. ''I tried to call her a thousand times and she did not answer. When I spoke to her best friend, she told me... she told me...''

''What did she tell you?'' Pedro asked.

''she told me that she had left with another man and that it would be better for me to stop looking for her. '' It seemed that every word he uttered cost him pieces of his soul.

Pedro felt a lump in his throat from seeing his friend in that condition. He tried awkwardly to comfort his friend. Isaac sobbed into his shoulder and Pedro could only hold him while he cried. He couldn't say anything, there wouldn't be anything he could say that would make his friend feel better. He didn't understand what he was feeling either. He had never experienced that type of love.

At that moment he did not know that it would be one of the last times that he would see his friend sober. They both enjoyed drinking, and while it was no reason to be proud, they weren't new to the world of drugs that exists among New York's elite. But Pedro saw how his best friend slowly stopped being him. His body was now just a shell that had remains of the soul of a young man with big dreams, and now it was just occupied by liquor and drugs.

And although Pedro tried to help him thousands of times, he couldn't save him. There was no one left to save.

When Pedro returned from his friend's funeral, he saw his bass, the one with which had started everything. He stared at it for hours and barely blinking. He thought about everything that had happened and felt a combination of anger and sadness. He did not understand how he had lost his best friend of years because of what everyone calls the miracle of "love".

Everyone says that no one can die of love, but he had witnessed it with his own eyes.

That day his view of life changed, and he knew that not ever in the world would he let someone get close enough to hurt him like that. And he had succeeded, until a month ago when he began to share an apartment with Lua.

He couldn't control the rage he felt every time he remembered her. Pedro didn't understand why since the first time he had seen her, he hadn't been able to stop thinking about her. Every opportunity he got; he stole glances at Lua without her noticing. When she wasn't in the apartment, he could sometimes smell her perfume, and he would close his eyes imagining how it would feel to be close to her.

Maybe it was just the desire of wanting what you can't have. Pedro had always successfully achieved the company of the women he had desired. But he knew he couldn't act on that instinct with Lua, he knew it would only complicate things. That troubled him every day. And recently, every night too.