In The Shoes Of A Ballerina

Chapter 5

                    Three days after, she was performing Carmen Suite onstage. She forced herself to cope with the loss of her husband so that her career wouldn’t be at stake. Be professional, Dea, she reminded herself before entering the stage on the first performance night.

 

                Like the usual, she received a lot of bouquets of flowers from her fans – which doubled since she returned – every after the show. She remembered those moments when Gabriel would give her a ride back home but they would stop by a restaurant first to celebrate her wonderful performance.

 

                Now, he was gone. Forever.

 

                She drove straight to her flat after that performance. The moment she opened the door, she was welcomed by that distinctively addictive smell. It smelled of a tinge of an acrid odor which made her eyes watery from the sudden exposure to the confined smell. In spite of that, she found it sweet, refreshing, for in the unpleasant odor she could smell her husband’s perfume.

 

Dea was alone with Gabriel in the flat. Gabby was still with her mother. Dea thought that maybe she’d get him by the end of the week.

 

The night her husband died, she dragged and carried him downstairs, and into the backyard. It was already dark when she got there, but she could imagine how her backyard would look like in daylight.

 

Her backyard was all white, and cold. She was sure the ground was deeply covered with snow. She surmised that it was 15°C when she stepped with her boots on the snow. Dea dragged Gabriel’s carcass onto the far left end of the backyard. She used the shovel she got from her basement to cover her husband’s body with snow to prevent the strong rotting smell.

 

But she couldn’t sleep without him by her side. On the second day of his death and after Dea got home from the rehearsals, she removed his frozen body from the knee-deep snow Dea gathered and brought him up to her bathroom.

 

She gave him a bath while he soaked in the bathtub. She told him stories while washing his body clean.

 

“Remember when we used to treat each other as siblings?” She caressed his face, her eyes longing for his warmth. “I loved that until you introduced Clary to me.”

 

Clary was Gabriel’s first girlfriend. Their relationship was on and off. He was so head over heels in love to Clary that she had played his heart. She’d dump him; then when he’d be ready to move on, she’d come back. And that was the scenario for several times until Gabriel woke up one day with the decision to completely move on from that hopeless relationship.

 

Dea was there, always there for him. She thought that their brother-sister relationship had greatly caused Gabriel to find another girl. But in the end, it was also what brought them to be husband and wife.

 

“You know, it felt so unfair that time. I’ve known you for like forever, and that girl, what, you just met her in junior high.” She laughed then covered his lower extremities with towel. “But it’s okay, Babe. You ended up with me, anyway.” She brushed his wet hair.

 

She pulled him up and onto her mattress. Oh, how she missed this guy. She lay beside Gabriel, right hand supporting her head. Dea giggled, and leaned in to kiss his lips.