Butterfly's Year

49. Doubts

I didn't want to be the jealous, petty girl who suspects deception and betrayal everywhere. I felt a bit silly thinking that I was jealous over a phone and a single meeting. However, the thought that he might be spending more time with her than he was telling me stubbornly lingered in my mind, returning with various scenarios of their secret meetings, piercing my heart mercilessly.

I had no idea what was happening to me. Many women had passed through Victor's life, and he continued to meet new ones, but only Lena made me feel a clear sense of jealousy and unease. Even though Victor told me "I love you" every day, and I slept with him, nestled against his warm chest, the thought kept returning that she could have it at any moment too. I lacked the certainty that she hadn't gotten too close to him or wouldn't try to do so again. Even if he didn't want it, she could want it and might be able to exploit his weaknesses to her advantage. And then, all my carefully built peace and sense of security would collapse.

To make matters worse, I felt as if my love had distanced himself from me lately. He would still hug me and tell me he loved me every morning and evening, and sex remained high on our list of shared activities, but Victor easily got distracted, his thoughts wandered somewhere, and he stayed late at work. When he returned, he often stayed on the phone, including with Lena.

What seemed like an innocent and supposedly quick-to-implement contract with my boyfriend's ex had grown into a colossal affair, resembling more of a circus than a professional service. The project's completion date for that dreadful woman kept getting postponed, and she constantly invented new things that needed to be changed or improved. It was as if she deliberately wanted to prolong this undertaking indefinitely.

Of course, she didn't report her list of complaints and grievances to the person responsible for the project, but to Victor. Every time she called, I heard her say "hi, sweatheart" in her bored voice in my head. Victor would go to another room or return to the office with his security. He would roll his eyes theatrically, leaving me alone with a little creature weaving improbable scenarios and a new bodyguard.

The attacks on my beloved and the earlier disappearance of my sister remained unresolved, so my love believed my safety was also at risk. Recently, I had been seeing the person responsible for my protection more often than Victor. On top of all this, I constantly worried. I feared for my boyfriend's life, feared that Lena would do something I couldn't handle mentally, and even feared dreaming, as my mind kept presenting me with increasingly gruesome images of Victor's death or, alternatively, the most elaborate positions of his body entwined in a loving embrace with that dreadful woman.

Less than two weeks after hearing Lena's voice calling Victor "sweatheart" over the phone speaker, I came home from college to find the apartment empty again. The bodyguard – who, unlike Alek, practically said nothing and behaved as if he were simply my shadow – professionally retreated to the first door on the left from the entrance and busied himself with his affairs, making sure I didn't leave the apartment alone.

I could have just sat down with my books and started studying for the quickly approaching exams, but studying had been particularly burdensome lately. I would read chapters from medical textbooks, and by the time I reached the end, I realized I couldn't remember what I'd read just a page earlier. So, I would go back to the beginning, focusing all my mental energy on the task, but halfway through, I'd get distracted and try to memorize individual sentences taken out of context.

Given this and the brain fog that had been with me since the beginning of the week, I decided to strip off unnecessary clothing and, dressed only in a white, lace bodysuit, lay down on the vast bed. For a moment, I listened to the silence pervading the entire apartment, uninterrupted even by the buzzing of a fly, and then I fell asleep.