Chapter 8

POV Rio 

Camilla and I met when I was at the lowest point of my existence. If you've never experienced falling into a dark void and being powerless against the gravity that pulls you to the ground, then you probably won't understand what I went through. 

Before fate finally brought  Camilla into my life a lot of girls came and went away. Sadly, in all the relationships that I had before I met Camilla, I always managed to give more than I ever received. Maybe this is what changed me or maybe it was bound to happen that I became a player anyway. 

I stopped caring about labels, "relationship, girlfriend, couple" and made sure that everyone I would get involved with understood that there would never be anything more than the two of us having fun together. It was simply about satisfying each other's physical desires.

If you don't get attached then you can't get hurt. That's what I used to think. I was trying to protect myself from living the same bad experiences I made in my past over and over again. I became an emotionless  machine. Gestures or words of affection meant nothing to me, even if I'd say them. When girls confessed their love to me either while blushing or shedding emotional tears I always thought they were putting on a show. I had been wounded too deeply in love to be able to trust again. 

All the girls with whom I had a serious relationship in the past had cheated on me. All of them without exception. The last serious relationship I had before I went through my dark phase was with a girl that I spent two years with. One day I discovered that she'd been sleeping with my best friend for a whole year while we were together.

I don't know what it is about me that makes girls wanna cheat on me. Maybe I simply look dumb like that. I know I'm not perfect, nobody is, but I can tell that I've alway tried to pour the best version of myself into a relationship. But apparently I lacked something or maybe there was something that I was doing wrong. At the time I didn't really care about finding out if there was really a reason why all my girlfriends had cheated on me. What I wanted was a simple disconnection. I needed to shut down my emotions and I succeeded. I could be having a cozy time with a girl, smiling at her, whispering sweet things, or listening to her vent about having a bad day. I could comfort her, hold her tightly in my arms and reassure her that things would get better. But despite doing all that I still wouldn't have the slightest feeling for the girl.

My heart was gone and it left a void inside my chest. I was very bad at trying to fill up that void. I messed up a lot of times along the way. I became a shadow of myself, leaving only for pleasures and not caring about the emotional aspect of human interactions. In my stupidity I was ready to spend my whole life like this, with my heart closed to everything and everyone, stupidly trying to protect myself to avoid suffering again. I was naive enough to refuse to accept that life is made of suffering just like it's made of happiness; it's made of failures and obstacles just like it's made of victories. Taking the decision to close my heart to avoid the suffering of this world was as absurd as deciding to forever close my eyes on the beauty of this world just because some dust got into them. 

Camilla had to come into my life for me to realize how foolish I was being. She was the type of girl that you can't help falling in love with. Believe me I tried to avoid it. 

She kept coming to the garage where I worked after school back in my hometown to check on her car. That thing was so old that it was a miracle it was still alive after she accidentally put it inside a wall. I was the mechanic who worked on it. I remember being annoyed at her habit to incessantly tap her foot on the floor while she asked the same questions over and over again. How long would it take for the car to be ready? Could it take less time? Am I sure it's going to be as good as brand new once I'm done working on it?

Well, duh. This car might be older than your grandmother. Of course it's not going to be brand new when I'm done with it. 

That's what I wanted to tell her every time she asked the same questions, however I never did. Instead I found a solution to make her stop assaulting me with her questions whenever she stopped by. Most of the time I worked with my earphones in because it helped me to better concentrate when I can't hear the noise of the outside world. What I did one afternoon was to give her my earphones and politely ask her to sit because the more she talked the more I wouldn't be able to work on the car. That seems to be enough to make her stop talking and I thought I had won until barely five minutes had passed and she started trash talking my music.

I could put up with literally anything but that. I had to teach this short fiery girl some manners. From this day every time she came by, we started a debate about which one of us had better musical taste and we vehemently tried to prove our points using strong arguments. Even my coworkers became really entertained by our "debates." 

Come to think of it now, they probably witnessed me falling in love with Camilla long before I could even begin to imagine that such a thing was possible. Without even noticing what I was doing I found myself taking more time than necessary to work on her car. It took me three weeks to finish it, I could have done it in two. And afterwards I pretexted that we needed to celebrate the "rebirth" of her car just to invite her out. 

The foolish guy that I was didn't notice that I was already falling for her since the first time she laughed at me when I tried to explain to her that My Chemical Romance were gods descended from heaven to bless our soul with their music. And I kept falling for her every moment afterwards. 

Camilla and I met because of a car accident and it was a car accident that took her away from me. Fate can really be a bitch sometimes.