“You think too much, you often find yourself staring at a fixed point and lose yourself there,” he says, the corner of his mouth raised, taking another sip. He drinks as if it were water.
“How do you know? You watch me that much?” I answer playfully, catching him off guard. He watches me when I don’t, interesting.
“Don’t be arrogant, Alicia, leave that job to me. What are you thinking? Please, a short answer, I’m not sure I can process much of what you say right now.”
“Nothing of importance, just how strange this is, I’m not supposed to be here.”
He shrugs and stands up to sit next to me. I move a few inches away. No contact.
He hands me the bottle and I take a gulp. “Relax, Alicia, tomorrow you’ll come up with a good excuse for your aunt.”
“That’s not what I meant.” I stare intently at my feet, nervously shifting on the floor, debating whether to lie to him or tell the truth.
“What are you referring to then?”
“I promised I wouldn’t get myself into these messes. I promised I wouldn’t seek any of this,” I murmured more to myself than to him.
“I don’t understand you, Alicia,” he becomes even more serious and slightly turns his body towards me to look at me. Why is he so handsome? His white complexion is so perfect, except for his scar, and the recent mark from the beating I treated a few days ago. A fleeting image of me touching each of his marks appeared in my mind, but I completely discarded it. His deep eyes looking at me, crystalline from the alcohol, so beautiful it hurts just to look at them.
“Better that way,” I warned him without averting my gaze. I’m not moving anymore. Nothing moves for brief moments.
He wrinkles his nose and shakes his head many times, as if my answer wasn’t what he expected. “No, I don’t understand you, I never do. Everything you do is so uncommon to me. You’re tough, which is understandable given your parents, but I don’t comprehend how you can endure so much from people you don’t know or who don’t deserve it, like…”
“You?” I finish his sentence and he nods.
“Yes,” he stops looking at me and focuses on the wall in front of him.
“I don’t know, I just know that you’re not what you portray.”
“Why do you deceive yourself so much, Alicia?” His bitter smile annoys me. Why is he so intent on demeaning himself?
“You’re the one living a lie here, not me,” my voice starts to sound irritated.
“You don’t know me, how long has it been? A couple of weeks since we met?”
“In a couple of weeks, you’ve known more about my life than any other human being. In a couple of weeks, I’ve seen what no one else could. Your mother…”
“Alicia, my mother is my mother, I’m not like that with anyone else, I wouldn’t do any of that for anyone else,” he interrupts me and stands up to look at me from above. “I know that what you do for her, is out of your sense of duty, since your mother suffers from something similar to mine. I wouldn’t do the same for yours, I’m interested in no one else but her and me. In fact, I only take care of her because there’s no one else to do it, if I could free myself, believe me, I would.”
“You’re funny,” I look at the floor and shake my head many times, stubborn in accepting what he dares to tell me.
His anger increases when he sees my disbelief in what he says. “Look, you…”
Then I exploded, I had to, I couldn’t hear another word or I was going to feel repulsed by the boy. He can’t say that about Alice. He can’t just say that he’d prefer she not be in his life.
“I know you don’t mean what you’re saying! I know you’re lying! I know you’re not as bad as you want everyone to think! You’re not going to convince me otherwise, Donovan!” He’s silent. He doesn’t say anything, he just looks at me wide-eyed. He didn’t expect me to react like this.
He runs his hand through his hair, exasperated, and clenches his teeth hard, I know he’s going to throw my words back at me, but I’m not done yet. “You spit fire every time you get angry, you’re cruel, but there’s more to it, it just bothers me that you’re sinking so deep, you’re getting into a very dark place, you won’t be able to get out.”
He remains unmoved, but I’m sure he’s just thinking of a smart reply, and with the alcohol, it must be horribly difficult.
“I wish someone, when I was entering the shadows, had grabbed me and pulled me out. I saw very traumatic parts of myself there, but there was no one, Donovan. No one. I came out because I couldn’t fall apart, if I did, I would take my mother with me and it wasn’t her fault to pay for my shitty life. I wouldn’t blame her in any way.”
“You don’t know anything, Celina. Stop talking, seriously, stop…”
“I can’t,” I interrupt him. “I’m not telling you this so you can trust me, I’m not telling you to tell me your secrets, not even to be your friend. You said it, we haven’t been talking long, but you don’t deserve what you’re doing to yourself, no one does. Maybe, you had a worse past than mine, but why, when it can get better, do you choose to stay in the shit? Don’t give the people who hurt you the satisfaction of seeing you like this!” I stand up and approach him. He avoids me and heads to the kitchen, stomping and angry.
“Do you think it’s easy?!” He starts yelling. “Do you think everything just disappears like magic?! Yes, sure, for the girl who now lives in a palace, it’s not hard at all to erase her past and live her present, for God’s sake! Can you shut up and stop getting into my damn head?!”
I ignore his words about my current life and focus on others “Getting into his head? What…?”
“It’s not easy! You live with it always, Donovan! But you have to move on!” I chase him until he stops acting like a frenzied lunatic all over the kitchen. He ends up in front of me, his chest almost touching mine.
“This is my way,” he says firmly and defiantly.
“Good for you,” I limit my response.
I’m not going to continue with this, I feel sorry for Alice, but I can’t ignore how Donovan is ruining his life and hurting his mother in the process, I don’t want to be here when everything goes to hell. I don’t want to.
I grab my purse and head for the front door. I’m going to leave. I can’t, I just can’t.
Donovan, grabs my arm and turns me around to face him again, close. “Why do you have to come and make me reflect on my damn life? I live perfectly well! Alice doesn’t lack anything!”
“She doesn’t deserve you to be out of the house all the damn day while you go off doing God knows what!”
“I do it for her! How much do you think her medications cost, eh?!”
I didn’t know that.
I should have deduced it.
Damn it, I should have deduced it.
Donovan releases my arm and leans on the kitchen counter, turning his back to me. He looks defeated. As if my words had been blows. Even when he came home completely injured, I never saw him in this state.
“I’m sorry, but isn’t there another way?” I began to say. No job? Social plans? Anything?
“No! Enough! Shut your damn mouth!” He roared with a broken voice. It’s the first time I feel this, sinking in my stomach and pain in my chest. I can almost say that I’m about to cry. I’m terrible.
Without being able to avoid it, without thinking, I walk fast towards him, throwing my purse far away. My arms wrap around his waist until reaching his abdomen and my head rests on his back. My left cheek touching his shirt. He became rigid, but he didn’t remove me. I could almost hear his heart beating as fast as mine. I had never done this, I also didn’t think I would, it’s new territory for both of us. I like it, and even more, when with doubt, fear, and shyness, Donovan placed one of his hands over mine, which was on his stomach. “I don’t think you deserve this Donovan, none of it.”
“You don’t know what I deserve, Celina, you have no idea of the things I’ve done, you have no idea…”
I interrupted him before he could finish. I closed my eyes, stubborn to hear what he had to tell me. “I don’t care, I don’t want to know, just… I know you don’t deserve it.”
We stayed like that for minutes, literally. I don’t know exactly how many, but my feet start to hurt from standing and being in this position… and I don’t care, neither does he because he keeps his hand on mine, he didn’t make any gesture to retreat, he barely moved and so did I. The only thing I heard in the room was his heart, beating to the rhythm of mine.
“What are you doing here?” He says in a whisper. I don’t know if he intended for me to hear, but I did.
“You brought me here.”
“I didn’t mean that. You’re ruining everything…”