Ruins of Autumn

59• Say Everything!

    That Leonora again!
 
    The same wrapped feeling that Anila had when she had met her in front of the company kept her staring at the ceiling in those moments as she thought about her, but this time the agitation had become a tangled mess with the compulsion of a conversation between them, the need to listen to her explanation, how Leonora had reacted when she had found out about Blerimi's crime, and what he had told her.
 
    In the suffering eyes of Leonora, Anila had read that she had her on her side, but she didn't want to be deceived by her fragile appearance, as if she were a compassionate and innocent person, and Anila was treating her wrong. Leonora was probably used to being treated like a princess, thanks to her external beauty, but that wasn't going to work with Anila.
 
    She was judging. That critic lowered her nose and forced her to look at Leonora with a different mindset. Maybe because of her beauty, she must have been through so much trouble. Perhaps she had been in the same situation as her: enjoying the chance of being in a field of flowers during the warm season of summer without having the slightest idea that, in fact, she was sleeping unprotected in the middle of the heart-freezing winter with the warning danger over her head that, if she didn't wake up from that dream and show caution in time, she would remain forever imprisoned in that winter.

    She had supported her against Blerimi, and Anila needed to show gratitude and not try to attack her to get revenge on someone else. She should know better than anyone, having worn those killing shoes herself. And even if she hadn't worn them, she had to show empathy. That was the right thing to be done.
 
    Anila had seen the situation only from her point of view, and because she had been too busy with the pain felt from her wounds, she hadn't even bothered to imagine for a moment what position Leonora had been in, what feeling she had experienced when she found out her husband's crime, and what had happened between them.
 
    Had she forgiven him? Who had she chosen—the love of her life or the justice that had asked her to sacrifice the happiness built without foundations, which would never have been destroyed if it hadn't been for that storm in their lives? Did Leonora really think that it had been Blerimi's fault and not Anila's? Didn't she doubt that Anila had messed up something and had deserved that misfortune?
 
    A conversation would solve everything, but that conversation required strength to endure walking over sharp pieces of memories during the time she would be with Leonora and think about what her late husband had done to her. 
 
    Automatically, without thinking about it for too long, she took her phone from the bedside table and went on Instagram. She searched for Leonora's name and clicked on the first profile picture, where she immediately recognised her, photographed by the sea, wearing a cherry-coloured blouse with white butterflies from the waist to the left side of her chest, and her head resting on her right forearm. She was smiling with her straight red hair loose over her shoulders.
 
    There were more posts on how to make different hairstyles than photos of her.
 
    She half-lifted from the bed in a daze at one of her pictures of a man she knew, whose red hair and blue eyes reminded her of his reproachful gaze when he had stopped her while she had been crossing the road with the red traffic light on.
 
    He and Leonora were both sitting on a wooden bench with their shoulders resting next to each other. Leonora had curly hair and was wearing a long blue dress with short laces on the left to narrow the dress, short white heels, and a dark blue blouse with the left shoulder slightly exposed by two pieces of sleeve joined at the joint below it. He was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, and white trainers.
 
    Leonora's note under the photo, 'Me with the dark curls and my brother with the watercolor eyes 🌞🌙' answered the thoughtful question of how they knew each other. The tagged account showed that his name was Granit Vitori and the location where the photo was taken was 'Puka'. His talking in the northern dialect that day convinced her almost completely that that city was their birthplace. From the features of their face, she couldn't have understood that they were related by blood. They had only the colour of their hair in common; she seemed docile and huggable, while he seemed like he hated touching.
 
    She had been saved by her brother that day, and she had yelled at his sister? Did Graniti know about her, Blerimi, and Leonora? What if he knew? Had he recognised her that day? What had he been thinking, if so?
 
    She couldn't meet Leonora. She felt very weak in front of her. She hated that she couldn't face her and behaved as if she were guilty, but she couldn't take over the development of that conversation. She couldn't pretend she was looking at thorny rose stems, and those kinds of flowers were at the top, but it was just that she wasn't looking at them, when in fact she was dealing with a cactus. Blerimi would also be there. She would feel his presence and be more traumatized. Then there would be no Sidoreli to pull her together.
 
    Sidoreli.
 
    He had told her to call him whenever she needed him, and in those moments, she wanted to hear his voice and get some advice from him. Maybe he was awake, and he wasn't falling asleep either.
 
    Sidoreli had thought that he had left the phone on the nightstand, but from its distant ringing, he understood that he had forgotten it in the waiting room.
 
    He rubbed his eyes again and again, trying to get up completely, and the phone rang from above the bedside table this time. He turned to his right and reached for the phone. Anxiety took hold of him when he read Anila's name at the top of the screen. Something must have happened, and she was calling him to break up with him.
 
    Had she found out about Amarildo? The end of their relationship was only a phone call away, and avoiding it wasn't an option. He swiped the green phone icon across the screen and answered.
 
    "Hello?"
 
    Anila smiled at the intimacy felt in his sleepy voice.
 
    "Were you sleeping?"
 
    "Yes," he said in the same tone.
 
    He thought he would lose more points if he lied to her, so as not to make her feel bad that she had woken him up and because of that, she would about not calling him again. He didn't know if she had called more than once, but he hadn't been able to hear the call because of his deep sleep.
 
    "Are you okay?"
 
    "Yes."
 
    He recognised guilt in her voice, which was as soft as a lullaby.
 
    "I'm sorry," she apologised. "I woke y..."
 
    "I'm pretending I heard you say, 'Sidorel, I missed you very much.', and I'm telling you that this problem is very easy to solve; you just need to have the desire to solve it."
 
    Her loud laughter gave him more comfort than the double bed he was lying on.
 
    "Couldn't you sleep?" He turned to the left from the window with the white, impermeable curtains closed.
 
    "A dream woke me up—a nightmare, to be more honest," she corrected herself. "I thought I would get rid of the past by ignoring it, but it haunts me every day in my thoughts, and it seems only a matter of time until it reaches me in reality." She also described his situation without knowing it.
 
    "The right thing to do is to face it, but... I understand how difficult that may be." He spoke for both of them.
 
    "A lot," Anila said, stressing.
 
    "How can I help you?"
 
    'By telling her the truth about her brother.' Sidoreli didn't like that suggestion from his inner voice.
 
    "You're very kind." Anila smiled at his willingness. "This is something that requires me not to involve anyone."
 
    "I believe a lot in you. I know that, if you want to, you can achieve any goal you set for yourself. For any kind of help, just tell me."
 
    "Sidorel." She didn't know if it was the words that were said, or the fact that he had said them, or both, that gave her the necessary motivational boost. "Thank you very much for your support."
 
    "Anytime. You deserve it."
 
    "I highly appreciate it. Maybe I forget to express it sometimes, or I hesitate out of insecurity that you may consider it a weakness on my part and take advantage, but it's just a moment. I'm learning to ignore it and trust you," she promised. "Some of my closest people have become my enemies, and that's why I keep my distance sometimes. But surprisingly, I have never felt such fear that you could hurt me. I doubted it, but deep down, I knew that you would never turn against me. You have true feelings for me; that's why we're in a relationship together; because I have such feelings for you too, of course." She laughed lightly, nervous by the expression so bluntly, and remained quiet to hear his reaction to those words, but the silence on the other side of the line worried her. Had she talked too much, and he had fallen asleep?
 
    "Are you listening to me?" she asked, afraid of the silence that she would get in return.
 
    "Yes." His voice overcame the discomfort inside her and normalised her heartbeat. "You have a very beautiful voice."
 
    Anila fell prey to the charm of his soothing compliments and had no doubts that, meanwhile, he had been smiling flirtatiously. If only she had seen that charming arch of lips with her own eyes.
 
    "Thank you." The next day, when they would meet, it aroused her enthusiastic impatience to meet his smile too. "What are you thinking?" She moved the thick curtain a little and looked at the clear sky.
 
    Her belief that he would never go against her without knowing that, in fact, he had been against her long ago was what the tattooist was thinking, and...
 
    "The day you got my attention, I saw you from a different perspective," Sidoreli replied. "When you came to ask me to do a tattoo for your cousin as a gift."
 
    "I remember," Anila laughed, feeling in harmony with those moments. "Everything started there."
 
    "Yes," he agreed with her. "When you asked me if I had a tattoo, I looked more closely into your eyes. I liked their colour and the brightness in them; they had all that vivacity, and because of them, I noticed how beautiful you are. I was surprised—how come I hadn't noticed that before?—and how I hadn't been interested in your presence at all. Then I promptly got the feeling that you're a fair person, an interesting woman, and I wanted to spend more time with you, to get to know you better, to irritate you a little, to see the beautiful revolting face you make, and after that to make you laugh, mostly; then I ended up thinking about you all the time, wishing you were my girlfriend."
 
    "Oh, you artists," Anila was able to say, melting in feverishness from his confession. "You know how to lift someone's soul with words so well."
 
    "Not just with words."
 
    His implication curled her lips, and her heart beat faster than usual in the cage with insufficient space for it.
 
    "I'm not holding you any longer. You have to wake up early the next morning to go to work. Shall we each take our share and go to sleep?" Anila asked.
 
    "What share?"
 
    "I'm keeping the words 'you artists', you get the interjection," she returned with the same coin of implication and laughed at his easy venting.
 
    "Anila."
 
    "Good night," she greeted him in a singing voice and ended the call.
 
    She let her breath hang at the bottom of her throat so that she wouldn't laugh out loud because she had deliberately ended the conversation with Sidoreli at its peak for him to want more and her parents, or Visara, would hear her, and she turned off the phone to sleep under the ecstasy of the conversation with him.
 
    Sleep couldn't shake her decision to face Leonora. They both deserved to overcome that obstacle, and Sidoreli too deserved to have the happiest version of her in his life.
 
    Anila found her work address the next day in a photo of a beauty salon on Instagram, where Leonora was tagged. She looked at the time when the salon closed, and ten minutes before Leonora left the job, Anila had arrived and was waiting outside the entrance of the salon.
 
    Leonora was inside, and so was Blerimi. Anila was on time to leave. Her heart, with the strength of a child, not used to such experiences in life, wanted to run away, while her mind commanded her, like a disciplined master, to not back down from the challenge.
 
    Anila was very strong. She could do this. She only had to create a positive mindset to her advantage, and she would win; Leonora was the only one in the salon. They would meet each other, they would talk, and then they would continue their lives on different paths. Blerimi belonged to the past, and she and Anila were free from him.
 
    Anila didn't know what they were going to say, but she believed that she would be guided by intuition too when she was in front of Leonora.
 
    That confidence flew out of the window as soon as Leonora appeared in the doorway, wearing a white coat, sand-coloured sweater, white jeans, and beige trainers, her hair tied in six Dutch braids, and a dark blue belt bag was on her left arm. She was smiling, beautiful, and strong.
 
    Where had Anila had her mind? Leonora would break her in half.
 
    It would be better to meet her another time when she was stronger, but her feet didn't move, her eyes rebelled and didn't leave Leonora's gaze until she gained her attention, and then Anila was too late to retreat.