Ruins of Autumn

64• Promise Me!

    Anila plunged her writhing limbs deeper into the surface, her lungs screaming for oxygen. With her eyes closed, she exerted more force on her body to get closer to the sea floor and the end at the same time, which was waiting for her there.
 
    The tightening of something in her blouse attacked the water pressure above her and lifted her above the surface of the sea. She opened her eyes, her skin touching the air, and stared down at Sidoreli's wet black T-shirt.
 
    "I was swimming." She sobbed to be filled with breath under his embrace. "I was swimming."
 
    He pushed her forward, studied her whole with his heart in his throat to make sure she wasn't injured anywhere, and brushed her hair away from her face to kiss her. Her soft lips were able to completely bring his soul back to life.
 
    Anila felt the love for him, making her come to her senses for what she had tried to do. She had given in to an obstacle and had given up on their relationship again. She should have called him or waited for some time to pass to heal, but the fatigue of repeating the story didn't let her rest.
 
    What if she had continued her whole life like that? How long would Sidoreli have endured? He would have broken up with her at a time when Anila would surely have started to love him more. Visara would have said that she would never have accepted her sister's sacrifice for her, knowing that Anila had always seen her as an obstacle between herself and infinite freedom by giving up on her life.
 
    Sidoreli stepped back and held her face in his hands. "What happened to you?"
 
    Anila avoided his questioning eyes and had no excuse for lying. The possibility of expressing true feelings in those grey moments, like the clouds between the light blue of the sky and the dark one of the sea, seemed to her to be a curse in her life.
 
    He removed his hands from her face, and panic mixed with anger came over him again. She apologised with tears in her eyes.
 
    "Anila," Sidoreli closed his eyes hard so as not to lose his patience. "Don't ever do this to me again!" He failed to keep his voice down, and a bolt of lightning lit up the sky behind him, the force of which was injected into the fierce, commanding gaze of his eyes.
 
    Anila's vision was further blurred by her loud crying, and he closed the distance between them from the heavy rain, too, by taking her in a tight hug.
 
    The certainty that she was now out of danger for life was hidden from the future, like the sun, by the clouds above their heads. Would she attempt suicide again? Why had she done such a thing just before? What had happened between the time when he had left her house and when they had met again at the company?
 
    Anila seeing the elevator in the apartment building where she lived was the first clue, where he began the search for solving the mystery. Because she had looked at the mirror there, she had been convinced to end her life, or had the person who had caused her the fear of mirrors found her and hurt her again?
 
    It seemed to him that all his quiet life that he had lived until he met Anila, Sidoreli had been prepared to face her challenges with her. He was getting tired, not from the existence of those obstacles but from the fact that she wasn't helping him fight them. Why hadn't she called him when she had been in trouble?
 
    He took her in his arms, without asking her if he could, and pulled her out of the sea. He put her down only when they got close to the car and turned to take her bag and trainers, along with her socks, from the shore. He left them on the ground in front of her, opened the car door, and picked up the black sports duffel bag that Anila had brought with her.
 
    "Change." He ordered bitterly, opened the back door for her, and threw the bag on the seat. "And don't you even think about doing something stupid like you did before."
 
    Anila shuddered more in fear and embarrassment from his harsh look than from the frigid seawater and got into the car.
 
    He stepped away to give her privacy and stood with his face towards the calm sea, though it was raining, and both seemed to him as uncomfortable and negative as the journeys.
 
    The opposite version of the events that happened just before took place without his permission, in his mind. What if he had gotten late into the sea? Anila could have been bitten by some creature or drowned because he had not found her and pulled her out of the water in time?
 
    A half-life; that is what he predicted he would do in her absence.
 
    What made him even more furious was that he wasn't angry with her at all. He understood her. He was ready to sit somewhere and listen to Anila while she explained in detail what exactly had pushed her to fall into that state, to step on her responsibilities and towards her family, and to take her own life.
 
    That where on Earth did that feeling of understanding come from when, in fact, he had to hold her accountable for why she hadn't spoken to him first but had taken away the line to him as if he had no value at all for her, he had no idea.
 
    What had she thought? That Sidoreli would leave her to kill herself? What if they had both passed away? How could Anila not think about his family?
 
    He let out a deep breath, exhausted from all that chaos of events. That woman was going to drive him nuts one day; such a conclusion irritated him even more when he weighed the possibility of risking experiencing that because Anila would change, and he surely wouldn't suffer that badly.
 
    No, this couldn't be love. This was just brainwashing, and he needed to pull himself together. He shook his head in denial, not wanting to continue that way any longer. He could no longer rely on his feelings alone. He had a family who loved him and didn't deserve his loss because Sidoreli refused to take care of himself. It wasn't just his life in that war to be lost, but also their lives, the lives of all those people who loved him and had a part of their soul in him, as Sidoreli had a part of his soul in the existence of his family members.
 
    He had given the other part to her—the part that the sea would have almost taken with Anila and risked drowning him as well.
 
    What was he going to do? How could he break through that impenetrable barrier, which wasn't even shaken by his striking power, let alone be destroyed?
 
    Two seconds after he heard the car door open, he turned around and saw Anila in a black sports suit approaching him.
 
    He walked towards the vehicle with an indifferent look at her when, in fact, he wanted to hug her again and tell her that she was not at all to blame. He understood how much pressure she would have felt; despair had taken advantage of the fragility of her psychological state to convince her that it wasn't worth fighting anymore to stay alive since no one cared about her and no one had any interest in helping her.
 
    "Sit in front." He kept the harsh tone of his voice when he passed her and got into the driver's seat.
 
    She clenched her jaws, intimidated by his disregard, and quietly got into the car. She had wasted all the opportunities offered by Sidoreli. He would never forgive her again. The trip to Tirana would be the last trip between them, and Anila didn't even dare to think about asking for another chance.
 
    She only looked at him once, when she put on her seat belt, and his judgmental annoyance, which distinguished her presence in his eyes as if she were a crybaby, squirming here and there for attention, by playing the role of the victim, hurt her more than the lack of oxygen when she had been underwater.
 
    She had wanted Sidoreli to get rid of her, but not like that, so she would face the consequences of her actions. Death was supposed to have saved her from such a trial. Now life wasn't showing any mercy at all to forgive Anila because she had chosen death over it.
 
    Sidoreli took the phone out of his pocket, glanced at it, and carelessly threw it on the back seat. Most likely, he would have to buy a new one. That would hardly be fixed.
 
    "Can I borrow your phone?" he asked, staring straight ahead, and she immediately took her bag, pulled out her phone, quickly unlocked it, and gave it to him.
 
    Sidoreli was careful not to touch her fingers with his hand and wrote Mateo Nura's number to call him.
 
    "Hello?" The fourth brother, as always, didn't hesitate to answer. If they needed any urgent information, the whole family relied on him, who almost always kept the phone nearby.
 
    "Have you called me today?"
 
    "Yes." Mateo recognised his voice. "Leonardi and Mom texted and called you before, but you didn't answer them, so they asked me if I had talked to you today. I called you a while ago."
 
    "My phone is broken." Sidoreli stopped in time before turning his head towards Anila and understanding if she had heard Mateo and felt guilty. "I'll either fix it tomorrow or I'll buy a new one. Tell the others too. You don't have to worry."
 
    "Why? Where are you?"
 
    "Vlora. I am leaving now for Tirana."
 
    "OK."
 
    He turned off the phone and handed it to her. Anila took it with her head down, held in the prison of sadness with the accusation that it was her fault that his phone had broken, and she saw Sidoreli, worried when he started the car, with Tirana as his destination in mind. If he didn't change the wet clothes he was wearing, he could get sick.
 
    "Won't you wear other clothes?"
 
    His terminating look made her turn her head back with a sob stuck in her throat from his loathing gaze. All the disgust that Anila had suspected Sidoreli would ever have towards her, now she felt like he really had that feeling in those moments, and the look from him a moment ago proved just that.
 
    'As if your satiating presence isn't enough for me, I also have to hear your voice like a locust!' It seemed as if his eyes couldn't have waited to say those words to her, and she didn't dare to look at Sidoreli all the way home, a time that Anila wanted to end, to talk to him, and at the same time not end, because she didn't want that day to be the last time they were together.
 
••••
    She didn't make a sound to protest when he stopped in front of an unknown apartment building in the middle of the night.
 
    "Get out." Sidoreli broke the silence between them without looking her in the eye, and Anila abided.
 
    She took a step behind him to the entrance, followed him tacitly up the stairs, and waited as he opened the dark brown door of a house on the first floor. She expected his instructions on whether she had to wait there or follow him when he pushed open the door on the left and crossed the threshold.
 
    "Come in." Sidoreli commanded sternly.
 
    Anila entered the house with her head down and with the intuition that she would find no mirrors there.
 
    He turned on the hallway light, and she looked intently at the two white doors in front of her, another one to her left, and the black rack of clothes and shoes leaning against the soft purple-toned grey wall to her right.
 
    Sidoreli took off his black T-shirt while heading to the door next to the one on the left, and Anila's look went to his exposed back without any tattoos, the shoulders in which she remembered the threat she had made to him about their crush if he wouldn't leave her alone, but at those moments, besides realising that she had spoken in the air because she didn't believe she had enough power to even exert the force of restraint on his shoulders, that part of the body was manipulating her into thinking that it was adding to Sidoreli's winsomeness even more, and Anila followed him, as if she were subjugated by him to the room where he was entering.
 
    She realised from the furniture in that room that it was the bedroom. A double bed with a royal blue cover was at the top to the left; two maroon bedside tables were beside it; and the white wardrobe was placed opposite it. The bottle-green curtains were closed, and there was no painting on the same colour wall as the one in the hallway.
 
    "You live here?" she asked for certainty, hopeless, that she would receive an answer from him, and Sidoreli left her in that state by ignoring her.
 
    He opened the wardrobe doors and pulled out a black T-shirt to wear.
 
    "Go and take a shower." His sharp talk seemed to Anila as if she were walking on the tips of spikes. "There is no mirror in the toilet."
 
    "Sidorel." She couldn't breathe with him treating her like that.
 
    "We'll talk in the morning," he said, less enraged in his voice.
 
    "No, now," Anila insisted.
 
    "I don't want to talk to you right now," Sidoreli raised his chin. "Go."
 
    "It was just a moment," she referred to the attempt to drown in the sea a few hours ago. "I don't have that thought anymore."
 
    He looked incredulously at the innocence with which Anila had said those words to him.
 
    "Do you have any idea what happened today or not?" Sidoreli approached her with a piercing stare, and Anila felt weaker than him. His rigorous gaze wasn't leaving her space to recover and defend herself. "You could have killed us both!" He recalled it angrily in a raised voice.
 
    "Why did you come, then?" Anila attacked him with the same tone of voice and strong gaze. "No one forced you!"
 
    "Is that so?" Sidoreli asked indignantly. "So, from everything that happened, this is what you understood? That I felt compelled to help you, not that I wanted to, because I was drowning under the water with you, and that's why I came, to save both of us."
 
    Anila sighed in regret for having spoken to him in that way, and her hardened fingers wanted to forcefully run through her head.
 
    "Why did you do that?" Sidoreli demanded an explanation emphatically. "What happened after I left?"
 
    She lowered her head reluctantly. This time she didn't have that much faith that he would understand her, and she doubted that he would rather consider the fact that she was going crazy, and he would ask to break up with her; not that they would stay together anymore if she didn't tell him, but at least she wouldn't get that kind of condescending look at her, as if he had an insane woman in front of his eyes.
 
    "I don't want to talk about it," she said, looking at his chest.
 
    "What do you want to talk about? The marriage you have given up on, I see?!" Sidoreli managed to get her eyes on him with the last question he asked her.
 
    "What?"
 
    "I heard Visara loud and clear when she asked you that day in the company if you were playing with me, and you didn't give her any answer," he said bluntly.
 
    "Sidorel, I have never thought about playing with you." Anila swore, and he chuckled ironically.
 
    "I can't make up my mind how to react now," he showed the dilemma he was in. "Should I be happy that you didn't play, or should I do the opposite, because, seriously, it's not even discussed for you to have thought about marrying me, but you haven't thought, even for formality, that maybe you could love me after the marriage?"
 
    Anila had no excuse to give, and Sidoreli didn't want to tell her that he understood that she had lived a very difficult life and still needed time to completely heal. That understanding until that day towards her had cost him his life the previous afternoon, and he was afraid that next time it wouldn't be shown so much mercy to him.
 
    "Anila, it's all my fault that I insisted on being together."
 
    She denied it, panicked by the course he chose for the conversation to take.
 
    "When you were constantly warning me with your rejections, that for my own good, I had to give up on you," Sidoreli defended his finding, despite her pleading tears not to talk like that.
 
    "In the morning, we will fix everything as it should be, and there will be no more avoiding the truth," he would tell her the whole story with Amarildo. He was too late, even. "We need to rest for a few hours. It was a long day." He ignored her extended hands towards him so as not to leave her, and he exited the room. "I will sleep on the couch, in the living room. You will stay here."
 
    He went to the bathroom first to check if the water for the shower was ready and if there was anything that Anila could think of to use to hurt herself, and he froze, facing the hallway for a second, when he heard a falling sound in the bedroom where she was.
 
    "Anila!"
 
    He ran, alarmed, to the room with his hands on the walls to reach her as soon as possible and felt his soul fall to his knees when he saw Anila in that position with her back leaning against the wardrobe and her face covered by her hands while crying.
 
    "Anila, what happened?" He sat at her level.
 
    "My thoughts are killing me!" She asked for help with her eyes filled with tears, and Sidoreli could only put her hands on her elbows, powerless to erase those thoughts. "I'm very evil!" Anila pressed her fingers into a fist on her head and used hateful force on her hair to pull it out.
 
    "No, no!" He grabbed her hands and, with difficulty, saved her hair from the violence against them. "You're not evil at all. You're a very good person," he caressed the parts of her head where she wanted to pull out her hair, and Anila considered his compliment a lie with a denying shake of her head.
 
    Sidoreli wrapped his arms around her back, lifted her to her feet, and pulled her into a hug.
 
    In that room, he was that evil person, not Anila. Even though he had known how many traumatic events had happened to her in the past, he had behaved rudely with her instead of showing understanding, offering her more support, giving her time to heal, and then asking her what had happened to her.
 
    He pushed her hair away from her tear-soaked face, while Anila kept on crying. He didn't deserve her.
 
    "I love you." Sidoreli didn't care. He would do anything to deserve her.
 
    She looked at him with frozen eyes, as if the present were left out of the blue in place, and only his words were moving in confusion inside her head.
 
    "I love you," he repeated. "I'm sorry. I was completely wrong to be so bitter with you."
 
    Anila denied his remark to himself with her head, put her hands on his face in wonder at the truth in his eyes at the words he had said, and kissed him.
 
    Sidoreli's lips accepted the taste of the salty tears in hers, and he pulled Anila closer.
 
    "Give me your word that you won't repeat today's incident at sea." He fixed his gaze on her, refusing to let her go without taking that word from her.
 
    "I promise." Anila gave Sidoreli her word, certain that she wasn't going to break that promise.