[ thirteen ]
"James, do you hear yourself?" I asked, a hint of disbelief and outrage to my voice. I couldn't believe he was thinking about presents at a time like this. "You just broke up with your girlfriend and you ask me if I got your presents?"
He groaned at my scolding words, "Oh, Ari! Didn't you just hear us in the apartment? We're over. I have my freedom back." As he said those last words, I realized how he seemed almost happy to announce that he wasn't with Giselle anymore.
"You told her you needed time to think." I pointed out with a defiant shake of my head. "That doesn't mean you're breaking up with her. Look, I need to get out of here. I have to get back to the news station." Grabbing my handbag and sliding it off my shoulder, I zipped it open and stuffed my voice recorder into it. Now I had no story for tomorrow, unless I were to write about their supposed break-up and wedding cancellation. I sucked in a breath to calm myself after all the yelling I had witnessed in their apartment and ran a hand through my long brown hair. Turning away from James, I headed down the long hallway, hoping I remembered the way out of the apartment building.
I reached the stairs that led to the lower floors when James stopped me once again. "Arista, we need to talk about us." He pleaded.
"No." I shook my head, refusing to listen to him. "You need to go back there and make things right with your girlfriend. And you need to stop sending me presents. I can't accept anything from you."
"You didn't like the polar bear?" He wondered innocently.
"It has nothing to do with the polar bear!" I yelled, losing my patience for a moment.
"Tell Toni to stop sending you things too then." James argued.
"This isn't about Toni and I. This is about you and Giselle." I told him, my eyes began to sting with the warmth of oncoming tears. With each passing second it was more and more difficult for me to remain calm. "When people find out you're not with her anymore, they'll think someone came in between the two of you. I don't want people to think I came to Madrid to separate the both of you." I sucked in a breath when I felt like my voice started to shake with emotion.
James grabbed one of my hands in two of his. His dark brown eyes glistened with sincerity as he spoke. "How can you ask me to go back to someone I don't love? Do you want me to be misrable the rest of my life?"
"Why'd you date her in the first place?" I asked him, doubtful that there was another reason for their relationship other than the fact that they could have been in love. "You must have liked something about her." I was insistent, hoping that would get me a truthful answer from him.
"She made my career look good! That was all it was. And in return I made her career look good. We were using each other, like an accessory. But there was never love in our relationship." He swore, his hands squeezing mine gently, but with an urgency that displayed something in his brown eyes that looked like anguish or emotional distress. "You don't know how much I suffered when you left me." It was until after the words were out that I knew he was remembering the time he spent in the deepest of his sorrows.
Shaking my head, I informed him. "Of course I know it, James. But back then I thought I was doing you a favor by leaving."
"How could you think that, Ari?" He asked.
"I don't know." I cried, my voice became pained. My mind was reliving the memories we shared and later the memories of my time without him. Now there were tears streaming down my face and a lump in my throat made it dificult for me to speak. "There were so many things going through my head when I made that decision." And though two years had passed since then, there was still the same fear. It was the very same fear that drove me away from him the first time and the same fear that impeded me from being able to put into words everything I wanted to say to him.
"I need to be with you." He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it with desperation while his words escaped his lips in between tear soaked kisses. "Can't you see I'm a much better person when you're around?"
Pulling my hand out of his reach, I cupped his face in my hands. "That's not healthy. You need to be a better person for yourself, James. You need to go back to being your old self."
"I can't." He told me. "You have my heart, you are the good in me. That's why I was such a bitter person when you left. There are people who one absolutely needs in their life and you're one of them for me."
"James-" I started.
"If you don't love me anymore just tell me." His lips quivered, close to erupting into a sob. His face was a shade of pink just like it had been that day when Colombia was eliminated from the world cup in Brazil. He was trying hard not to cry. "I'm just letting you know right now that I'll never accept you going out with Toni, or anyone for that matter. What we had was too special to let go."
"I didn't come here to date anyone." I heaved a tired sigh. "I came here to do an internship for six months. Then I'm going to return to my country."
"You're not staying?" He sniffed, his eyebrow knitted together in confusion at the news.
I shook my head in response. "No. I can't stay in a place that brings me so many bad memories."
"We could create new memories together." He assured me in a hopeful tone.
Pulling my hands away from his face, I bit down hard on my lip. Things between us were not the same as they had once been. We were older now and things were no longer as simple. He was a world famous footballer, and I was just the same girl from Envigado, trying to make a name for herself. "Please, James. Let's just keep things professional between us." My proposal came out as more of a desperate plea.
The last thing I needed at my internship was drama and James brought a lot of it with him. There was the fact that he was seen as a badboy by the media and then there was the fact that his girlfriend Giselle was famous. If it were to be found out that he had left her for someone else, I knew it would be the talk of the town on gossip magazines.
I turned to walk away from him just as his pained words called after me. "Arista, please don't do this to me again." He begged. My feet felt as heavy as led and my hand gripped the cold railing of the staircase. My body didn't want to leave him there on his own. It was like it was resisting and opting to keep me in that hallway with James.
But I forced myself to walk away.
And for the second time I left him there. But this time I had a solid purpose. I didn't want to be the one to separate him from his girlfriend. As a young girl, I remembered watching soap operas with my mother all the time. I would often scoff at the protagonist of the series, how she was portrayed as a saint when really she was the one waltzing into the main male protagonist's life when he was set to marry someone else. Then that someone else was later portrayed as an antagonist when in reality, wasn't the antagonist the one who ruined a relationship? I always thought I would hate if that were to happen to me, but being the cause of someone's break up was even worse. I didn't want to be the reason he was leaving Giselle.
I wanted to finish my degree. It was what I had been working very hard to get when I returned to Colombia. With my internship, I would be ready to go out into the real world. It was the experience I needed. If I let drama into my life, it could end up ruining everything I had ever worked for.
My last reason for leaving him was that I didn't want the world to think I was going to use him to get ahead in life.
Maybe that was another mistake I was making, letting him go once again and walking away from the one man I have loved since we were kids. Maybe that was why I was once again filled with a familiar feeling of shame.
-
sorry for this one, i'm not too thrilled about the way this update turned out, i just felt i needed to update.
i seriously have five wattpad windows open. one is open to 'arabella', one to this story, one to two of my other stories. and i feel a bit of a writer's block coming on. i have been honestly working on these updates for days.
hopefully this writer's block will go away soon.
thank you all for reading and supporting. it means a lot to me.
i love you.
-clary xx
