Never Again

Chapter Four - I love you

A few weeks passed and I liked it. We would go out almost daily. He would drive distances to show me beautiful places he liked. Most of them were places where nature was so beautiful in its stillness. One time, he brought me to a natural stone formation, so beautiful. The road passed right through the middle of it and the green grass was surrounding us. We sat on a stone and talked for hours, looking at the mountains in the distance.

Another time, he brought me to see a waterfall. After half an hour of walking through a forest, we finally reached it and we stood there for a while, looking at it in silence. It even had a story. A princess jumped into the water there and died and you could see her face behind the water wall, etched into the stone. I didn't see anything, but the other tourists seemed fascinated by it. Maybe it was just the story getting to their heads, because I couldn't see a thing into that stone.

We would meet in the morning and he would drop me home late at night. We also frequented his apartment and I also got to see his house, which was beautiful and built into an area which was somehow isolated from the rest of the town. That meant peace and quiet.

He completely changed my image about myself. He would always tell me how beautiful I was, how capable I was, how I needed to believe more in myself. He came into my life in a moment when I really needed someone like him to fill a void and he managed to build a strong sense of self-esteem. I was thankful for that.

It was also the time when our relationship started to get curious gazes and ugly rumors. Everyone looked at us as if we were a match made in hell. Everyone was saying that I only stayed with him because of his car, his money... But the truth was I didn't really care. I didn't care about anything. I just cared about him. And, honestly, that car gave me the creeps, because, even though he was a responsible driver most of the time, he sometimes liked to drive recklessly just because he loved it.

I remember a few times.

The first was when we were on a national road. I was looking out the window and didn't really realize how fast he was driving, because you didn't feel the speed into that car. At one point, I looked through the windshield and saw a little bug scatter into a million pieces when it hit it. I looked at the speedometer and, sure enough, it showed 230 km/h, in a 100 km/h area. I immediately told him to slow down and, thankfully, he did.

Another time, he was trying to show his skills around to some of his friends and he sped. There were a lot of cars and he zig-zagged between them as if it were nothing.

Another time, as we were approaching his house, his mother saw his car into the distance and positioned herself in the middle of the road. He wanted to scare her, so he stopped centimeters in front of her. I was shocked at how still she was and that told me she trusted him completely. She scolded him about it and he was laughing all the while.

Another time, a police officer stopped us, because he received a call about him speeding through the town. Ray very calmly played with his nerves and then told him he had a video of the police officer doing some illegal thing with his personal car. That's when he turned around, went to the police car and left. I couldn't believe the audacity.

But, overall, even though I liked to say it was scary, I liked it. I liked it because when the adrenaline kicked in, nothing else mattered. I forgot every one of my problems, every one of my worries. And I needed that sense of danger, I was high on it. I was high on the uncertainty, because we seemed able to do everything, not having a care in the world.

But things soon changed. Leaving the honeymoon phase behind, we entered a time when we would both be not so sure anymore. When we would both say "never again."

It all came down crumbling on me one day, when we were in his apartment. After we had sex, he looked at me with a weird expression into his eyes and my stomach dropped.

"I love you." What? No. You don't. When I didn't have any reaction, he repeated "I love you."

I couldn't bring myself to say anything. Did I want him to love me? I had this tendency to run at hearing those words and I wasn't really sure what to do. Love meant broken hearts. Love implied serious things. I wasn't ready for serious thoughts and I wasn't ready to have my heart broken. Because, even if I knew I loved him back, I knew in my heart that we wouldn't last.

I didn't want to hurt his feelings, so I just got on top of him and kissed him for a while. He seemed okay with my reaction and I then changed the subject, without him seeming to notice anything going on.

I entered my home that night with a smile on my face. But I didn't know if it was a happy smile or a sad one. Yes, I loved him, too much too soon. But I also loved the way he made me feel and I knew that it prevailed. When I got bored of it, I would just move on like nothing happened. That was me as a person and I didn't really want to change it. It meant I wouldn't get hurt.

"I love you" then became a thing which he would always say. I would never have a reaction, besides kissing him. I really hoped he would get it at one point, but he didn't. He continued saying it to me like it meant everything. It did. But I didn't want it to.

Eventually, my parents found out about him. In a small town, people talk. Even though I only told them I was seeing a guy, they soon heard who he was from others. They weren't pleased - drug charges from the past, a brief period spent into a prison until he was released from lack of more evidence, bad reputation. My father was not hearing me out. I tried to convince them that he's good, he's honest and he takes good care of me. I explained to them how strong the psychological difference was between the person I was before meeting him and the person I've become.

They wouldn't have it. I fought them for a while, but then I just pretended I wasn't seeing him anymore, because I was tired of all the discussions.

Finally, he loved me, which meant I couldn't just leave, right? Not at that time. I cared about him enough to not abandon him without answering some of his questions first. I knew it would come a time where I would have to, but I preferred waiting for it instead of speeding things up.

His mother would always mock him, talking about how he didn't deserve girls this young at his age, especially because he had nothing going on in his life. He was using the family's money and his mother seemed to not have a problem with it, besides the occasional mocking. She once told me she likes my beautiful long hair and, even though I wouldn't see too much of her, I liked her a lot.

Never again? Never again what? Never again would I feel like that? Yes, definitely. I would never again feel the things he had made me feel in that period of time. Never again would I feel so fulfilled.