Chapter 3_ Misery

Tonight, I put on my perfume and a pale green strapless dress, which, according to Teresa, highlights my eyes. My hair is light brown, almost blonde, and gives the impression of having golden highlights, but I have never colored it.

It scares me a little to talk to Lucian and find out what the hell my sister meant when she said I couldn’t trust him. She didn’t exactly mean it in those words. However, doubt implanted itself in my brain. Now I can only think that he is hiding something from me and that he acted in a way that may affect me or affect our relationship. I am afraid to know that what I thought I had with him was not true.

I never wanted to be stuck in this town. Because it is so removed from civilization, characterized by being accustomed to stability, both emotionally and economically, no one loses their homes and suffers from a lack of food since everyone knows each other. If someone is in trouble, he will always have the helping hand of a neighbor. It is a dream town, that’s what tourists say when they visit us. It is the only good thing we have. From time to time, tourists come and take pictures in the lake to sell handkerchiefs and souvenirs. They take them with a lot of love and as a memory of our town.

During one of these activities that I met him, I saw him from afar, the one who is now destined to be my husband. However, Dario was not as he is portrayed now. He was not called “The Shady One.” He had no nickname. Instead, he was a rich man who lived in a castle in the neighboring village. A guy with a lot of influence in the surrounding areas married to a young woman who was pregnant at the time. Our gazes crossed by mistake; I could see the strength and arrogance leaping across the line that connected us invisibly.

There I knew that this man was a mystery and an enigma to me.

“Tati, Lucian is here,” my mother’s voice makes me turn away from the mirror.

My heart races.

Fear begins to creep up my toes.

A hunger-like feeling settles in my stomach.

I think I’m going to die.

“Tati!” this time, it was my boyfriend, almost ex-boyfriend, who I hear calling out to me.

My eyes fill with tears. How can I break up with him after so long?

I let out a couple of breaths and try to calm down.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

As my mother always used to tell me: “They are lentils. If you want them, you eat them, and if you don’t, you leave them.”

I don’t have an alternative. I feel coerced.

Instead, I am.

I leave the room. My house has three bedrooms; Tere’s, my parents’ and mine.

Almost immediately, I see Lucian. He is wearing a white shirt rolled up to his elbows and gray cloth pants. His unkempt dark hair makes me nostalgic in anticipation. I’m sure that man won’t even let me leave the castle.

“My love, you’re finally coming out. You look beautiful.” He comes closer and kisses me subtly.

I hear my mother’s footsteps as she disappears into the kitchen.

I return the gesture to Lucian.

He has always respected me and has never tried to pressure me into sex. I asked him to wait until marriage.

Now my virginity will be another man’s.

Teresa always told me I was foolish to wait for something imminent and completely natural.

I didn’t.

Sex doesn’t seem so flashy to me and so necessary for the relationship to work.

Even if there is no active sexual relationship, the love must be there.

“We need to talk,” I try to keep my voice slow and cutting.

I don’t want to, but I must.

The smile vanishes from his lips and his blue eyes as deep as the sea.

“What is it, beauty? What troubles you?” His concern shrivels my soul.

“Let’s sit.”

He follows in my footsteps, and we settle across from each other in the living room. My house isn’t as big as some others in town, but it’s cozy, and I’ve always considered it perfect.

“You’re starting to scare me, little flower.” He has always been polite, loving words and affectionate appellations.

It’s something I won’t have with Darío, I’m sure. To the Shady One, I’ll be just an object, a transaction he made with my father.

“I found out something yesterday...”

I notice that he gets nervous and wrings his hands in a gesture more than significant.

“I...”

Is he hiding something from me?

“I was talking to Teresa.” I don’t know why I’m telling him this. I called him to say to him that I’m marrying another man after years of dating him.

But now, a feeling has awakened in me. I could call it a sixth sense, curiosity, or desperation. I haven’t yet determined an appropriate name. Or maybe I desire to have something to break up with Lucian over without feeling like I’ve broken his heart by marrying someone else.

“It was a one-time thing!” he stammers suddenly, rises from the couch, and kneels in front of me with his eyes about to pop out of their sockets. “I swear to you, my treasure, it happened once and never again! I don’t know what happened to me....”

I don’t know what to think. I am sure that he is confessing infidelity to me. However, my heart refuses to believe it.

“You... you...” I stutter, confused. “Are you...”

“Forgive me, please!” he begs me, stricken, unaware that I can’t get out of my stupefaction. “Teresa said she wouldn’t tell you, that she didn’t want to hurt you. That bitch lied to me! I just had too much alcohol! I didn’t do anything to her!”

My heart nearly leaps out of my chest.

“Who? What did you do, Lucian?” I question a little more confidently. His face begins to make me uncomfortable. The way he pleads with me, kneeling and crying, bothers me. “What did you do?”

“She didn’t tell you,” he murmurs, “she didn’t tell you what I did.”

“No,” I understand he means Teresa, “she didn’t want to tell me. She asked me to ask you myself, so start talking, Lucian, what happened? What did Teresa see? What did you do?”

I can’t imagine my sister finding my boyfriend cheating on me. Maybe she just saw him talking to someone. Although things are pretty straightforward: he’s on his knees and remorseful. Something terrible he must have done, at least wrong enough that a man like him, who claims to love me, who knows me better than anyone else, is now in this position.

“Tell her, Lucian.” My sister comes out of her bedroom and folds her arms without approaching him.

It’s a conservative attitude.

“Tere...” I don’t understand anything. “Sis, what happened? What did you see?”

“Me seeing?” Her eyes sadden. “I didn’t see, I felt.”

“Teresa...” Lucian gets up from the floor and walks toward her.

Quickly and instinctively, I stand up and get in Lucian’s way to cover my sister with my body.

“Don’t you dare go near her.”

“It was nothing. She’s just overreacting.”

The man who seconds ago was broken, torn to pieces as he sobbed for my forgiveness, sorry for something I didn’t know, now watches me as if nothing happened.

“You touched me,” my sister yells out in a whisper. “You took advantage of me; you touched me and walked away saying I had provoked you.”

“Tere...” I whisper as I look at her.

I let the heavy tears fall. My little sister looks at me with suffering.

“How long ago?” I ask her voicelessly.

“A month.”

One month since my sister was abused by my boyfriend and I didn’t realize it. She suffered a month ago in silence and out of stupidity. I thought I would marry someday the best man in the world, one that my family loved and with whom I felt good.

“You took advantage of my sister!” I bellow and punch him between the eyes.

My hand begins to burn. I feel angry and eager to land more blows on him.

My sister hugs me and asks me to stop when she senses I intend to hit him again.

“Get out, get out before I kill you right here! “

Lucian looks at me somewhere between confused and angry. I know he didn’t expect such an action from me.

I have been more than the perfect girlfriend, always calm and quiet. I never raised my voice or bothered others.

“Nothing happened. I didn’t rape her, for God’s sake!” he defends himself and rests his hand on his face, which gradually reddens.

I grab my hand, which is burning, and squeeze it hard.

“I don’t care. I don’t care what you have to say. You get the hell out of my house right now.” I shake myself out of my little sister’s arms, who sobs quietly. “Get out!” I push him hard again and again. “Don’t you dare come back! You won’t lay another finger on my sister!” My voice thickens from the crying. I still don’t let go. The fury is even stronger than my desire to cry and vent.

“Tati...” he comments from the doorway, “nothing happened. I stopped. Nothing happened.”

“Go away. Go away and don’t ever come looking for me again. Stay away from my sister, or I’ll kill you myself, even if I rot in jail later.”

I watch him go glumly.

My sister bursts into tears. I go to hug her and give her the comfort I should have offered her a month ago.

“Forgive me. Forgive me for not taking care of you, for not realizing the pig I was with.” I shed tears, too.

It’s official: I’m single and ready to get married tomorrow. The thought comes suddenly, and I almost admonish myself for the unconsciousness of such an absurd idea.

But it’s true.

Half an hour before, I was nervous, as I didn’t know how to tell Lucian that I had to leave him. Now I am only left with the burden of realizing earlier that leaving him was always the best option.