Ruins of Autumn

47• Forever A Secret

    "Is this person bothering you?" He sat on the armrest of the couch on her right side, and she managed to stop herself in time before she looked at him. "I can do something for you if you want."
 
    "The horsing prince is ready for a heroic rescue," Anila deemed mockingly, and he couldn't hide his laughter from that comment. "There's no need. I'm on a date," she explained coldly, without looking at her.
 
    "Anila!"
 
    The way Sidoreli said her name in disbelief at what he had just discovered and as if each letter of her name was part of a wire that bent slightly into the shape his voice wanted found Anila unprepared for the shivers that gripped her spine, and she lowered her gaze, suddenly seized by his intense influence so close to her.
 
    "Don't tell me I was right about your boyfriend," he added. "Which one of my suspicions turned out to be true? The first or the second one? Or was it the third one all along? You..."
 
    "Can you just walk away?" She recovered enough to give him a quick answer, even without tilting her head, and look him in the eye. "No one asked you to talk about my private life."
 
    "I can see why. You have found the person for such a topic. Actually, I expected you to have higher standards..."
 
    Anila widened her eyes at his sneer and gritted her teeth to stop herself from wishing to turn around and slap him in the face. She did not want to fall prey to his provocation anymore.
 
    "At least one level below me," Sidoreli reckoned in a disappointed voice. "Since at the same level, you know for sure that you can't find him, and above that, it's not even discussed," he specified with a smile of pride from such a fact and in humour from the situation he had caused. 
 
    'That's it!' she thought with her patience, reaching the end. 'Pilafi doesn't carry water anymore with this person!'
 
    "I'm on your side, Anila. If he comes and asks to get a tattoo done at my studio, I will tell you right away. And just so you know, I'm a very loyal person."
 
    "Sidorel, get lost!"
 
    She was rather furious because her voice did not sound as threatening as she wanted, but more as an indication that she was barely holding back her laughter from emotions because of him.
 
    She didn't understand why she didn't feel the same sense of disapproval for his flirting as she had for the others, why she didn't think he was playing, but that the tattooist was truly interested in her, and that's why she was prolonging the conversation, why she didn't think that if he knew her past, he would never look at her the same, but that Sidoreli would never find out, and she had no reason to bring it to the surface and destroy such moments between them.
 
    "All right," he agreed, seemingly surrendering. "If you change your mind, just turn your head to my table. I'll be looking at you."
 
    "You will be with your shoulders crushed if you don't get out of my sight within two seconds."
 
    "For your own good, Anila, two seconds pass very quickly, so you don't have to wait for too long."
 
    He left after those teasing words at the table where he had been sitting, and she took a deep breath, more burdened with inexplicable emotions than relieved.
 
    Danieli and Visara returned in time to distract her, and Anila noticed that her sister had been crying. She guessed that it was because of the loss of Amarildo, and she was even more furious that tears were shed for him. She didn't know how long she would endure without yelling at her relatives not to cry about him because he didn't deserve those tears. They had to weep for the people whose lives had been ruined because of him.
 
    Seeing Visara smiling and head over heels in love with Danieli, and the way he looked at her in the same way, she was realising that it was thanks to him that Visara hadn't fallen into depression like Anila and her parents for Amarildo.
 
    At least Visara was in time to live. For Anila, only existence was left.
 
    She looked at the tables at Sidoreli. He had been waiting for her gaze, when he had noticed her standing with the dangling mugs, and had placed his hands on the table, in a gesture of rising, to hold Danieli accountable if she would asked for his help.
 
    His willingness to help her took her by surprise. Why would he fight against someone he didn't know and risk his life for her? What worth did she have? She felt as delicate and soft because of his gesture, as grateful and in need of thanking him for giving her the emotion of having such importance, even if that was only for a moment, to be protected.
 
    Anila sternly ordered him not to move, and he smiled at her reaction.
 
    This game with him was getting out of her hands. As if enduring her own existence wasn't enough, she also had to make room for suspicions that Sidoreli truly found her attractive from the way he seemed to be looking at her, rather than playing with her just to pass the time.
 
    His gaze, when he looked at her again, managed to extinguish all her doubts for a moment and make her realise that Sidoreli was thinking intimately that she was very seductive, and Anila instantly turned her head away from the table with the oath in her mind not to look at him. Her chest was engulfed in flames by the strange reaction of the comfort feeling in her body and the fact that she had liked his stare.
 
    Sidoreli pursed her lips shallowly, attracted by her sensitivity to his gaze, the way she looked so sweet and delicate, and if she found out that he wanted to hurt her, she would break because of her fragility.
 
    Unless she knew the truth about her brother, she wouldn't be destroyed, and Sidoreli was working on that too so that Anila would never find out and everything would be just fine.
 
••••
    Anila kept her eyes fixed on her phone on the table when the waiter brought the orders and placed the cup of blueberry tea in front of her on the yellow table.
 
    She brought her hands up to pick up the cup, but immediately placed them on the couch when she saw her wrists and recalled Blerimi's hands gripping them. The feeling of his strength in her clenched her jaws, and she closed her eyes hard, not wanting to cry in front of Visara and Danieli.
 
    She felt herself falling. She couldn't stop her mind from remembering her screams that night, Blerimi's hand over her mouth, his look...
 
    "Stop!" She silently commanded the brain, but it did not obey.
 
    It insisted that nothing in life could bring back the happiness she had before meeting Blerimi, and she would never find someone who would love her with that kind of past on her back, as Danieli loved Visara. And even if she found him, she wouldn't be able to keep him for too long in her life.
 
    She didn't know what her mind had told her when she decided to marry Eltoni. She wouldn't even have allowed him to approach her, pushed by the fear that she would suffer the same trauma as she had suffered from Blerimi, let alone sleep with him.
 
    And Sidoreli had only complimented her physical appearance for a moment, and then he would not be impressed at all. Even if he continued to have the same feelings for her, Anila was sure that after discovering her past, he would immediately give up on her.
 
    If only she could replace that body she had with another one! All the pain would be over.
 
    "Don't you like the tea, Ania?" Visara was looking at her, worried. "You can order something else, if you want."
 
    "It's good," she focused her gaze away from her so as not to see her hands when she took the cup and then to react strangely, making them both think that she was crazy.
 
    Sidoreli was looking at the man sitting to his left at the table with him and listening intently, occasionally nodding his head in understanding.
 
    He looked at her just at the moment when she looked at the girl sitting in front of her.
 
    He had believed that the feeling of attraction to her, the thought of how beautiful she was and an interesting personality she seemed to have, would quickly fade and two or three teasing words would remove his desire to flirt with her again, but that impression recording to Anila was only getting stronger while looking into her watchful squinted eyes in detail, as if they were investigating an event without leaving out any detail of its, and he wanted to talk to her again, but this time not waiting to meet by chance somewhere and the conversation to be quick since she or he had to leave because of the plans they had made.
 
    He wanted to go out with Anila once. Maybe after that date, he could get her out of his thoughts and his life.
 
••••
    Danieli shook Anila's hand at first when they left the bar and were at the end of their meeting.
 
    "I'm very glad that we met."
 
    Anila read his excited look as if he were shaking hands with his older sister, and she allowed the feeling of familiarity with him to settle in her mind.
 
    "Likewise," she replies.
 
    "Maybe we'll meet in Durrës sometime. If you start liking the city, of course," he added teasingly, and Anila smiled. "Visara has told me, when she talked about you, that you don't like Durrës as a city."
 
    "True," Anila accepted and turned her head to the left, just as Sidoreli was passing by with his two friends, and from the serious look he gave her, it seemed that he had heard what was said about her.
 
    Anila's chest heaved again, and she pursed her lips. He was only finding out what she didn't like, and that made Anila look like a very selfish person.
 
    She distanced herself from Visara and Danieli so that they could have some time alone and say goodbye to each other, and then she returned home with her sister.
 
    "How did he look?" Visara asked after they both entered Anila's room.
 
    "Human," she commented briefly while taking the laptop and sitting at the head of her bed.
 
    "Ania, your turn will come too. I will have the same reaction when I meet your boyfriend. So think before you speak."
 
    "Bold of you to assume that you can threaten me. Even dreaming has a limit, Visara. It's good to respect it if you don't want to be broken from reality."
 
    "Are you talking from your experience?" Visara sat in front of her on the bed, while Anila took her laptop from the bedside table. "Is that why you no longer have the vitality you used to have, Ania? Has reality broken you?"
 
    Anila stared at the turned-on screen as if she hadn't heard her sister because she had been focused on work, and Visara understood the avoidance.
 
    "Why don't you tell me?" she asked, hurt. "That's why you told me the day after you were promoted at work that you're the fallen soldier? Who hurt you? Whose fault was it that you lost the battle?"
 
    "It was just an expression. Don't take everything I say seriously," demanded Anila in an imperative form, without taking her eyes off the laptop.
 
    "No, you're lying," Visara could no longer ignore Anila's depression, and she had begun to understand that it wasn't only because of Amarildo's death. "Talk to me," she placed her right hand on Anila's left knee. "Wouldn't you want me to tell you if I have a problem?"
 
    "This is different." Anila looked her straight in the eyes to convince her with a glance that everything in her life was in order and she did not have to worry, but she was more hurt by Visara's tearful eyes and the pain in them from the state of her sister. 
 
    The two alternatives presented in those moments did not allow her to avoid necessarily choosing one of them: she was either going to pretend to be happy in front of her family so as not to upset them even more, or she would leave home and live alone. Then she could freely express whatever feelings she wanted to show.
 
    "It's nothing, Visara." Anila touched her sister's right hand on her knee. "I just grew up, and I voluntarily belong to the group of people who don't express their enthusiasm for life to everyone but remain distant and at their own pace. That's all."
 
    Visara rubbed her left eye and pursed her lips in disbelief that she was being told the truth.
 
    "Oh, now! Don't do that," Anila begged her. "I'm starting to think that you're deliberately insisting that I have problems, only for me to have real problems later."
 
    "No." Visara immediately countered and smiled at her, turning back into the sweet, positive person she usually was. "I love you."
 
    "I love you too." Anila squeezed her hand and kept her lips arched until Visara left the room. Then she sighed, tired of continuing at the same stage.
 
    Visara was going to university in October and had to be as calm as possible without worrying to be able to focus on her studies. She owed nothing to Anila, who didn't try to express positivity to keep their family at a level of calmness but also dragged her into depression.
 
    Leaving the house seemed like an easier option to implement than trying to live up to life. Living alone was too risky, but maybe the distance would do them both good.