Cruel thin lines

Chapter 1

"Mine was an act of justice.

I stole you a kiss because you spent

months stealing my sleep."

Dedicated to:

The love of my life,

thank you for believing in me. I love you!

All my muses,

because they are just as I imagined them!

Prologue:

“Look at the essence, not the appearances…

The body is just a box and the eyes are the windows of our imprisoned soul.

Look at the essence, not the appearances…

Everything enters through the eyes, say the shallow ones, what we are inside is what really matters”.

Box – Velvety (Estuche - Aterciopelados)

Chapter 1

I wake up and a stitch in my head indicates I passed on champagne last night. I close my eyes; the sunlight that enters through the window feels like sand in them. I blink, I try to open them and something moves by my side.

What the f**k?

This can’t be happening to me. I open one eye wide enough to have a look and I want to kill myself.

There he is, looking at me with an innocent expression on his face. With the mouth I wanted to kiss for so long, his eyes shining and his wild hair.

I close my eyes tightly again and cover my head with the white sheet pretending to hide myself from the world, as if I wanted everything to disappear, but the smell of s*x under the linen proves what I don’t want. I open my eyes and the nakedness of both bodies confirms it.

I hear an overlapping laughter and that ends up driving me crazy. I wake up at one jump, dragging the sheet with me and run to the bathroom. I slam the door shut and stand in front of the mirror.

I look like a raccoon. The beautiful makeup I wore the night before, now decorates my eyes as if I had a mask, I examine my body; my neck has one mark and my right breast another.

Gosh, you’re thirty-eight years old, Eve! How can you be so unconscious?

“Open up, Eve...”

And now what? Who does he think he is to give me orders?

The mirror gives me back that naked image I hate. I look at my body and hate it more. My tears flow making grooves in the black spots of the makeup.

Is he playing with me once again? You never learn, Eve.

At that time, twenty years ago, I was very different from the Eve who entered that party yesterday.

“Eve... Open up.”

At that height, I am on the floor, wrapped and embraced to the sheet, the one that was white and that is now stained with black spots wiping the tears that continue to run without restraint.

Wasn’t that what you wanted, says that little voice in my head that I would kill with no mercy, countless times.

“Eve...” he snorts, “if you don’t open it, I’ll open it using force.”

I still don’t answer, I can’t, I don’t want to. I cling to the sheet, wipe my tears and stand up to face this situation.

My head wanders between sending him to hell and leaving, or spitting in his face all that I have choked for so many years. Maybe both.

I look at the pathetic figure that reflects the mirror, I open the door and I go out.

“Eve… I…” he says, scratching his head.

And like a devilish vomit, I just throw everything away.

“Don’t say anything, Nicholas, what’s the point? After so many years, did you win the bet?”

I listen to myself and I get worse. I’m an adult, dammit! But I’ve been choking on this for so long, that it comes out without me being able to filter anything. And while I keep saying everything that comes into my head, Nicholas looks at me perplexed and I think I see a hint of sincerity when he says he doesn’t, that the bet has nothing to do with it, and he lets me keep talking, spitting out what poisoned me for so many years.

I pick up my clothes, which are scattered all over the room, and go back to the bathroom. I need a shower.

I don’t believe what I just said in that bedroom. I don’t like to argue, I’m bad at it, I never find the right words, I’m rather reserved, but that wasn’t obvious today, in any case it was a monologue; and he knows a lot about it.

I open the tap and get into the shower; I let the water fall so that I can clean myself. The memory of those days comes to me crossing all the barriers that I had created and that, until yesterday when I entered the party, I thought I had kept intact.