Ruins of Autumn

6• Liar

 
    Anila looked at the time on her phone and sighed deeply.
 
    "I can't believe we're in the middle of August. July was just a bit earlier. Why is the time running?" she asked plaintively.
 
    "I'm not ready to get back to university," said Brunilda to her right.
 
    They were going skating.
 
    "Neither am I. I've been thinking for two days about taking a gap year. It's not that I'm in a hurry. I want to enjoy that time of studying."
 
    "By the time November comes, we will have gotten ourselves together. Only Master is left. Let's take that degree and get rid of it."
 
    "I know, I know, it's just... I don't know why I'm not convinced that this situation is also psychological; if I think I won't have the strength, I won't. If I think I'll have it, I will." Anila said as they approached the elevator.
 
    The doors of it immediately got opened, and Brunilda's face turned pale from the anxiety when she saw two women in the cabin.
 
    "Let's wait for the next one," she stopped her best friend from entering the available elevator and pushed her towards the other one on the right. "There were people in there."
 
    Anila obeyed with confused unconsciousness. "What else did you expect? Fireflies?" She laughed at her excuse and was more confused when the elevator doors opened, and there were four men in their forties, dressed in sportive clothes, in that cabin.
 
    She pulled her cousin along, and they entered the lift.
 
    "You can't escape all your life," she criticised Brunilda with a small voice and sat in silence.
 
    The four men stopped on the third floor.
 
    "See?" Anila asked as soon as they got out of the elevator and went to the skating rink. "Nothing happened. All the panic you feel is an illusion. How do you not love yourself at all to put up even a little fight for her?"
 
    As a response from Brunilda, she received the usual one: silence. There was so much work to be done with that girl.
 
    Anila's face lit up, and her eyes widened from happiness when she saw Blerimi standing by the track talking to Rolandi. They had talked that morning about meeting in the evening. She immediately walked up to him with quick steps, not wondering whether Brunilda was behind her or not.
 
    Her cousin stood still with her gaze fixed on Blerimi and got the same energy from him as when she had met him in May. There was a feeling of warning about him—an admonition that he was dangerous. His black clothes, posture, and smile seemed to be the main reason why she silently commented that he was also very suave. He knew how to express the pulchritude he had, and that added points for him.
 
    "How are you?" Rolandi went next to her, and she looked away from her two acquaintances.
 
    "Good." Brunilda gave him the skating tickets for two people, and the employee approached the reception desk, marked the time on the ticket when it was time for them to leave, and gave it back to her.
 
    "Th number of the skates?"
 
    "Thirty-nine both of them."
 
    "Ida."
 
    She didn't turn back immediately, as soon as she heard Anila's voice, and quickly thought about how to escape the meeting with Blerimi, but she had to give up, knowing from the beginning that she couldn't avoid it. She hated such moments when she felt annoyed, even by just breathing.
 
    "Brunilda."
 
    She let out a deep breath, turned back, seeming bored with a distant gaze, and stared only at her cousin, who, as always, was approaching her with a smile from ear to ear, as if she had discovered the secret of eternal happiness.
 
    "This is Blerimi," she introduced him. "My best friend, Brunilda," Anila returned happily to her.
 
    "How do you do?" He extended his hand, and Brunilda accepted it.
 
    "Good," she smiled, and she turned back from the reception to get the skates.
 
    "Listen," Anila stopped her. "Blerimi is leaving, and I thought about the three of us going out and having a drink together. What do you think? We can come back later at the rink; I'll pay for the next tickets."
 
    "That's not a problem, but... maybe you're busy." Brunilda looked at Blerimi.
 
    "No, I don't have any plans for today," he replied.
 
    "OK, then," said Anila happily. "Let's go."
 
    Blerimi walked between the two of them, but Brunilda decided to stay behind. She didn't want a love triangle to be created between them in the future. She weighed the fact that that was just a superstition and that it could only happen if she thought about it constantly, but it was better not to risk it.
 
    She slowed her steps when another doubt struck her. Anila had told her that his name was Blerim Agolli. What if he had lied to her? Why would he have done that? Would it be right to ask her cousin if Anila had seen his identity card? She would be criticised for being paranoid, and maybe she really was acting that way. Blerimi deserved a chance to earn her trust.
 
    "Hi," the waiter said to them a few minutes after they sat down at one of the tables at the end of the bar. "What can I get you?"
 
    "Red Bull," replied Blerimi.
 
    "Monster Energy," Anila ordered, sitting on his left.
 
    "Same as him," was Brunilda's decision, referring to Blerimi's order, that alarmed her cousin.
 
    Had she ordered the same drink as him on purpose, to get Blerimi's attention, because she had started to like him the second she met him? What if Blerimi gave up on her and started being interested in Brunilda?
 
    Anila observed her differently than she had seen her the other times, trying to find out what a man would like about her physical appearance. Prominent dark features made her look like someone who liked to keep her distance from large groups of people, someone who was mysterious and not quick to make friends. Exactly the hard-to-impress type that a man would be too seduced to flirt with.
 
    Compared to her, Anila seemed like a soldier who followed orders, and then she found time to have fun, while Brunilda looked like a commander; she was not easily tempted by games and was a challenge, not easily won.
 
    And, was Anila wrong, or did Blerimi and Brunilda have both similar physical features? The overheard saying that soulmates usually looked very similar to each other only added fuel to the fire, and Anila felt cracks in her friendship with Brunilda from deepening the suspicions that she was trying to impress Blerimi.
 
    No, her cousin was a fair person. She would never stab such a knife in her back. Anila shook her head slightly to banish those thoughts and focused on their conversation.
 
    "We were talking about university with Anila on our way here. I am so sick of scholarly books. As much as I try to love them and be grateful that I have the opportunity to read, I would rather go on vacation to the Maldives."
 
    "For sure, the holidays would be nicer," he said.
 
    The vibration of Anila's phone took her attention away from the conversation.
 
    "Excuse me," she asked, not at all willingly, to get away from them, but she couldn't refuse her boss's call.
 
    Brunilda and Blerimi stayed in silence for a few moments.
 
    "What do you study for?" he asked.
 
    "I have graduated Bachelor's in Mathematics," said Brunilda.
 
    "Have you thought about the profession yet?"
 
    "Professor at the university."
 
    "You will understand how much the teachers have suffered with you," Blerimi said, and she laughed.
 
    "No, no. I have no crime to pay for."
 
    "You'll be very busy anyway, dealing with young people who do not come to the auditorium to study."
 
    "I have thought of the solution for them, too. I will apply the strategy that a professor used with the pupils when I was in my first year of high school. He told us that he didn't care if we wanted to learn or make noise, because at the end of the month, he would get his salary anyway, and he would be OK with his life, while we would risk not preparing for the future and would pay with our families for the difficult and dangerous life we were destined to live because we had chosen to ignore the possibility of living otherwise. He said that to urge us to learn, pushed by anger not to allow him to take the money without working and also to study, so that in the future we would earn more than him."
 
    "He succeeded, didn't he?"
 
    "He did," Brunilda laughed. "We were very motivated."
 
    "Would I be wrong if I told you that being an extrovert has helped you make the choice of working as a teacher easier?"
 
    "I'm an introvert."
 
    "Oh," Blerimi reacted, as if everything was finally making sense. "So that's why Anila is an extrovert."
 
    "What?" Brunilda frowned in confusion.
 
    "She takes heart from you. She knows you're afraid of contact with the outside world, and she gains more power to easily adapt to it. Because if she becomes an introvert too, then no one will be around to motivate her to change. You would both be isolated, if I may call it that, or you would take strength from her fear and become an extrovert. It's like strong people and weak ones. The strong are so because the rest are weak. If they wouldn't be, the strong wouldn't have any uniqueness from the rest of the strong. It's thanks to the weak that they stand out."
 
    The waiter brought the orders and gave Brunilda time to think in confusion about the words of the man in front of her. His explanation only made her think that he was trying to ruin her friendship with her best friend, not that there was any other meaning, and she didn't even want to think that it could be true.
 
    "Anila has always been an extrovert," she confessed harshly. "Before we started hanging out together three years ago."
 
    "And you? When did you start being an introvert?" Blerimi insisted on his guess, certain from her reaction that Brunilda could see he was right, but she didn't want to admit it.
 
    "I'm here," Anila sat happily in the chair.
 
    "Is everything okay?" he asked with a note of concern in his voice.
 
    "Yes."
 
    Brunilda glanced at him for a moment, while Blerimi seemed to be listening intently to Anila and narrowed her eyes suspiciously at the mimicry of his expression, which showed that he was feeling uncomfortable there, as if he was barely controlling his nerves, not to get up and be gone.
 
    Maybe he didn't have good memories of that bar, or he happened to have seen someone there with whom he didn't get along. He looked like her—an introvert with a little tolerance for people who couldn't stop talking. He was listening to her cousin speak, just to not seem rude, not that he had any interest in talking to her. Brunilda didn't see any romantic feelings in his eyes for Anila. It seemed like he was just pretending. Was he really playing, as she was intensely suspecting?
 
    Blerimi looked at Brunilda and realised that she had noticed that something was not right with him. He smiled lightly as a sign of respect for her, but Brunilda didn't fall prey to that pretense. It was as if she had already made up her mind to believe that he had put on a mask and was pretending in front of them, and, although she smiled back at Blerimi in a friendly manner, he wasn't fooled by her either. He had already realised that she had created a negative impression on him, and after that meeting, he also started not to like her.
 
    Blerimi was only hoping that she wouldn't cause him any trouble. Otherwise, he would be forced to change his plan only because of Brunilda.