Billionaire's Bed | ENGLISH - FREE

39

"For heaven's sake, come home, love. Come."

My home.

This is my home?

In his arms, I feel at home, that which I once betrayed. I don't want to feel like a ping pong ball from one side to the other, but I feel alone and scared. I had never before been a victim of insecurity for this to happen to me in the middle of the street for walking alone looking for my mind to be able to sift a course.

I'm in Joshua's arms on the way to bed, but decide to pull away from him. Because when I'm around Joshua I think of Leonardo and when I'm around Leonardo I think of Joshua.

"I need to go take a shower," I tell him. "They dragged me on the street."

And I just fucked another man.

"Sure," he tells me and hands me a warm towel since he has a habit of warming them up before putting them away. He obviously did not long ago.

"Thank you," I say without daring to look him in the eye.

Already in the bathroom, I lock myself in and analyze again the already familiar elements of our old apartment. There is no three-jet shower or glazed restroom where I can hold myself against the glass or Leonardo to fuck me hard from behind.

But here I am again, like the prodigal son in the bible, but this time about who my partner is supposed to be.

I analyze my appearance and think of the women I once read in the novels that I like to read online and in the discount bookstores where the same toxic character always appears, who always made a good life for herself until she fell into the hands of a sick love or of a romantic dilemma where it is difficult to ascertain which of the options is even worse.

If my life could be read by a reader as it is, I would think very badly of myself and it is because I never believed that I would see myself entangled in emotional mismanagement in the face of the cries of my sexual impulses where, on the one hand, Leonardo becomes irresistible to me in what to sex means, but at the same time I know it's a dangerous relationship. He held me tight by the arm, he yelled at me, he tried to believe he owned me and he has cornered me financially as far as my work is concerned...but then I think of his magnificent way of holding me, how it moves me to hear him tell me that he loves me or the way he looks at me naked in his bed as if I were a work of art and all my doubts seem to close in one direction...or rather, in a burst of doubts. To then believe that I can go on alone and I end up running into a trap that fate has ready for me like a son of a bitch who is ready to make me feel tormented.

I take a shower and go out, trying to put my problems behind me. I find Joshua sitting up in bed playing on his cell phone and remember every aspect of him that I dislike. He looks at me on the way to his side and asks,

"Are you feeling okay?"

"I'm fine."

And I go to bed.

Finding out that the sheets are the same as the day I left and that they don't have a very good texture.

"Joshua, haven't you changed the sheets?" I ask him. He continues with the little game next to me even though he has already turned off the lamp next to the bed.

"Um... maybe I forgot. They're still clean"—declares the very scoundrel.

"Ashhh! Joshua, if I don't do it, you never do it!"

He looks at me and his wounded countenance is reflected by the light on his screen, so my alarm signals go off reminding me to call myself sensible: YOU LEFT THIS HOUSE, YOU LEFT IT, YOU DESPISED THIS BED, THESE SHEETS, AND YOU RUN AWAY WITH ANOTHER GUY AND NOW YOU'RE COMING BACK, HOW DARE YOU CLAIM HIM.

"Oh... Forget it," I tell him.

"If you want I'll do it now. Today I went to wash the sheets and towels."

"Yes... Tomorrow you do it" I tell him.

And I try to close my eyes in search of hugging him or something that doesn't make me feel so alone. Alone still by his side!

I came here because I needed not to be so alone or scared or tormented by the screwed-up situation that I had to live in before.

I open my eyes as if they have sand in them since it bothers me that he is playing next to me, that he does not give me the security that I need, he thinks that this is the way I need him to accompany me.

This way he never sleeps and ends up arriving at work too late each and every morning.

It is enough to share a few moments with him to remember each of the reasons that led me to not love him enough. The things that annoy me about him and my dwindling tolerance.

And still, I return to him.

"W...what's wrong?" he asks me, fearing that I'll 'challenge' him again.

I feel like the bad guy in the movie.

And I probably am.

With enough guilt so that the pangs of pain pierce my heart and plant doubts in my head.

"Forget it," I tell him. "I... I was just thinking that I need your advice on a new mobile that I will have to buy."

He smiles.

And I smile at him too.

But I can't stop feeling like the loneliest person in this world...so I come to the conclusion that so many years as a couple have built my own self-esteem, from a very young age, as a more than dependent person without knowing how I carry my own loneliness.

Building my own emotional autonomy.

And maybe it's time to do it once and for all.