by Nivia Borell
My makeup is the final touch—smoky eyes and red lipstick—the look of a woman who wears her marks with pride. I resemble a perfectly-put-together doll, shiny on the outside and empty on the inside. How well it suits me, a lean body of dejection.
I used to think I was pretty, but it was love that made my hazel eyes flicker with life and my lips pink and full from being kissed so often by him. He used to say I was the most beautiful girl on earth, his princess, his goddess. We were so young, stupid, and in love. Now, he can’t even look in my direction without biting back a snarl. The sigh which erupts from my lungs rocks my body.
With trembling fingers, I clamp my black lacquer Hypnose watch around my wrist and put on my lace mask. Its intricate ebony pattern hides my features and lends me a hint of mystery. I slip on my pumps, the black ones with the red sole, while the elegant watch on my wrist is heavy with its constant tick-tock, a clear sign my time is almost up.
The strong knock on the door yanks me out of my train of thoughts. When I open it, I see my dearest friend, Alexander, Quinn’s son. My lips curve into a genuine smile which he returns tenfold. This is how I show this unbelievably handsome man how important he is to me. I crane my neck to take in his tall, strong frame, elegant and perfectly-shaped brows a beauty aesthetician would find hard to recreate, complemented by a sharp outline of chocolate eyes which someone could get lost in—two pools of dark enigma—accompanied by his crooked smile that could melt women’s mind He is my partner in crime, the light to my darkness, the glue to my shattered pieces, and the real in my unreal life.
Alex presses me to him as my head rests in the crook of his neck, and I sense as I let the embrace go on he realizes I’m saying goodbye. It doesn’t hurt. It’s like everything else I experience—nothing is there, it’s as if I’m already dead, yet still stubbornly breathing.
He cups my face with his long, fine fingers, a fallen expression covering his face. His head hangs, and the corners of his mouth turn down. My eyes sink as I tilt my head to the side and sigh. This is what I do to all the people who care and love me. I destroy them because I am the fuel for their suffering and etched in their forlorn gazes is my signature. Destruction should be my middle name. He hides it behind his full lashes as soon as he realizes I’ve noticed.
“Ready, Bria?” he asks me in that deep and rugged voice which is so familiar to me.
It’s been seven years of being ready.
“We’re talking about me, aren’t we?”
I view the pain stretched in his hooded eyes, the turmoil in his soul, and I hate myself more because of my incapacity to feel. For him, I would have given everything I have to summon my heart to beat for someone else.
I owe him so much that I break my rule for him, only for my Alex, for just one moment, for everything we’ll never have. I caress his smooth face, graze across his strong chin and high cheekbones and plant my mouth on his tight lips. I put every fractured part I am in this singular kiss. This is my final goodbye to a man who deserves everything, and not my nothingness, with a hotel corridor, the witness to our stolen intimacy as the lamps broadcast our shadows on the white walls.
Alex encompasses my frame, his hands digging into my flesh as my back hits the wall. His hot mouth sucks my yelp in, lips glued to mine, and his passion ripples on my tongue—the last attempt of a desperate man to bring me back. I feel his heart hammering under my palm, while his moist lips remain pressed against mine. This kiss is for all the years of friendship, for the bond we’ve created, and for everything we will never have. I moan as I feel nothing, like my insides are an emotional blower sending all feeling and sensation aside.
The moment flies by, and I set him free as he releases me. He murmurs, “I love you so much, Bria, and this kills me.”
I wonder what pushes me to continue this peculiar conversation as I keep ascending the self-loathing rope.
“Look at me, Alex, and see me for what I am. You know if I could… God, if I could, I would have given you my all, but I can’t. You deserve someone capable of emotions and someone who can return your love. Love should always be two-sided, Alex, because the other way around only leads to misery.”
His chest is an impenetrable wall covered in a soft black shirt and handmade suit jacket, legs parted and eyes burning. He resembles a gladiator preparing for battle, driven and focused.
“I don’t want someone else or something better. I want you, as incapable of feelings as you are. Don’t you get it? I’ll do everything in my power, I’ll fight with your demons my whole life, but don’t go. Don’t leave me, Bria, and don’t leave yourself.”
My palms find his hard chest as his upper body twitches at the contact, and his eyes plead with me. I tilt my head and answer, “Alex, I think there’s only one thing worse than not being able to feel and comfort the ones who love you, and that’s unrequited love. You can give all you want, but at some point, there is nothing left in you, and what will remain of you then? You can’t offer me closure of my past.”
“But I can give you something, hoping I can stitch you back together.”
My lips tease into a defeated smile. He’s such a dreamer and warrior, and he has a huge savior complex. He is beautiful inside and out.
“What exactly, Alex?”
But at that moment, the air shifts around me as the corner of my eyes catch a pool of steel-blue eyes and the most perfect mouth I have seen and kissed, set in a firm line. His fleshy and soft bottom lip is made to bite and taste, and the perfect bow on the top lip I traced with my finger and tongue repeatedly years ago. Everything stalls as my vision is plastered on a broad frame enclosed in a custom-made dark suit which makes his posture even more imposing than he already is. My breathing halts as a hundred knives stab me in my heart, and my nails gouge into Alex’s arm as his upper arm jerks.
What’s Damien doing here? I didn’t send him an invitation to my party. We had said our goodbyes in a thousand ways, one more painful than the other over the years. So why is he emerging from the suite next to mine? Fate must have a twisted sense of humor, I lament. I am smashed like a baseball between throwing up and fainting as my muscles shiver from within. On instinct, I lean toward Alex in an attempt at something I can’t pinpoint as he shields me. I have seconds to put myself together, but in my stupidity, I forget his capacity to subdue me as he keeps my gaze prisoner to his blazing eyes that are even more prominent due to the dark mask covering half of his face. His stare, akin to fury, vanishes before I can examine it further.
The power he has over me to make me mush is unnatural. Damien’s carved chin cranks, in what is his unique way, a greeting to us, letting his musky and unique scent slap my senses into an undiluted shock stare. I’m left peering at him from under Alex’s twitching jaw. With his hands placed into his slacks pockets, he strides toward us. I’m envious of his noble pace, step after step of flowing precision, taught self-confidence, and layered elegance.
Damien stalls halfway to us and scratches his chin before saying with no inflection at all, as flat as he probably exercised it in the mirror, “Happy birthday, Bria!”
I am left with furrowing eyebrows as I watch him retreating caught in his web of deliberate indifference as though not even recognizing me—us. Anger and the desire to shout at him and punch his perfectly put-together apathy toward me on that portrait of an unrealistically beautiful and rough face surge through me.
Do you remember me? The girl you said you would love until the end of forever. My shattered soul howls but only a sigh leaves my body.
“Bria.” Alex’s stern voice puts an end to my disarray. I crane my head up to see the concern in Alex’s eyes—concern for me and also hatred for the one he holds responsible for everything he can never have.
“I’m fine, Alex.” The lie slips from my mouth like a habit.
“I despise him,” Alex snarls with scarlet cheeks and flaring nostrils.
“You would have loved him like everyone else because he’s the type of person you can’t not lo
ve,” I rant believing every single word.
“Do you still have feelings for him? Are you capable of loving him but no one else? Is this the reason, Bria? Some sort of false sense of loyalty you have toward him?” His brows knit together. The air around us drops to chilly. The quietness has something ghost-like about it as I put my hands around me for comfort and take a step back. My mouth hangs open.
He’s never asked me these questions before. No one ever does, and not even I have asked myself in so long. But the answer is simply, yes. I feel on those few occasions when I see Damien or hear about him as an ache swallows me. I plunge into a miserable agony when it’s his birthday and I stay away, the day of our anniversary, the day I lost the… the day my entire world fell apart.
I shake my head as I pull at the invisible chord wrapped around my neck. He’s the one I loved until it ripped me apart. And because I couldn’t feel anything afterward, the love I had for him morphed into the illness that keeps me alive.
“Alex, are you kidding me? You know I’m not capable of feeling love anymore. I am a lost cause.” But as I say it, I realize it’s only a half-truth. My mind chooses that moment to voice a dreadful truth, and that’s whenever he’s around, Damien makes me feel. Even though it’s fleeting, and even though I don’t understand how he does it, it’s there making my core vibrate with the unfairness of it.
“That’s not true,” he replies dryly.
“Well,” I snap as something deep within me dislodges and becomes wild, “then stop it. My heart is a mess. No operation can fix it to function properly again. I was in a coma for three weeks and had multiple heart attacks when I was only eighteen. I was chained to a hospital bed for almost a year. Plus, the best part… was my brain went into an emotional numbing mode to keep me alive. So stop, for once… just stop.”
“If it were me in your place, would you have given up on me? Tell me the truth, please, because I am going crazy here.”
I see his distress rise. It’s so evident in his slightly trembling voice and sunken eyelids, lines carving indentations in his forehead. I answer as I shrug, “Mostly… because I understand how it is to be emotionally detached, how it envelops you. I’m a shell of a human being. I’m empty inside. God, Alex, you’re irrational for knowing what you know and continuing to hope. I am beyond salvageable.” The words rushing from me are causing me physical exertion as I breathe through my mouth.
“Why did you kiss me, then? If he’s the only one. Why kiss me, too? Why now?” he asks, brows raised.
“It was a gift wrapped in a final goodbye to someone who’s kept me afloat. It’s how I want to thank you for being you. I felt nothing, Alex, and don’t compare yourself to him because sadly, you won’t stand a chance. No one else does, not even you.”
I caress his handsome but fallen square-shaped face and add, “Alex, let me go. If you ever loved me… let it be.”
In an instant, his whole demeanor switches into something raw and untamed. His grip on me tightens. “Bri…” That’s all he says, one word to camouflage the thousands he wants to add, but I got the message loud and clear. The conversation is not over, it’s just a pause.
It will be a long, long night.
Can I make it through?
With what energy?
And the worst part is that Damien’s here hunting me.
“Let’s go, Bri. Your guests await you downstairs. Don’t forget I have you, and I’ll catch you.”
As I step downstairs, I keep counting one step after another until I’m greeted by a vast open space of black masks, crystal chandeliers, and high-end black furniture.
DAMIEN
I’m numb. Hearing the answers to the questions that had haunted me for seven long and painful years delivered in a honeyed voice, I realize my heart can be cracked twice. She ruined me then, and she’s succeeded in ruining me again now.
What did I do to deserve it? I ask myself repeatedly. It seems the universe enjoys fucking with me. Not only is my room next to hers, I also have to come face to face with her.
My plan of sating my curiosity from afar just got screwed up. I didn’t even want to come, but something made me take the jet and fly here for her birthday party out of some sort of sick interest because of the name she gave the party—Oblivion.
I remembered her words from a year ago—that she’d celebrate her birthday again when it was worth celebrating.
Something didn’t seem right.
She’d stopped having birthday parties seven years ago.
So why now?
My inability to come up with an acceptable answer made me leave the comfort of my home back in London for this peculiar event. I’m sure I’m a masochist! Who would have cared in my place? No sane person, I’m sure. But here I am even after everything that’s happened. I still recoil at the memories. Seven years ago, I found the love of my life, my best friend, my soulmate, my future wife in bed with someone else. On that fateful day, something died in me—my heart.
I lost her and my future and became, according to family, partners, and business magazines, a ruthless entrepreneur. Although she ruined me, and I could only hate her, I still longed for personal wealth and my company’s success. I craved to be in control because I knew firsthand what it was like to be without it and transformed the family business into a Forbes top one hundred company. I am thriving, rich, valued, respected… but empty. I buried everything inside never to materialize again, and I put myself under piles of reports and work. She is my only weakness—my love and my hate for her combined in one hacked heart which is my sole fragility.
My heart hammers in my chest as I grip my neck with both hands because now I know where she was that year, the year that never added up to the story everyone kept telling. She was in hospitals, having surgeries and getting therapy. I place my face behind my hands. My head throbs, and pain shrouds my vision.
I swear, if she had died, I would have gone ballistic because in the beginning, I couldn’t live without her. And then, like a starved and crazy person, I found a sick pleasure in perceiving she was there somewhere happy and in love. Only to hear now that she can’t feel a thing because of me and that bastard I saw beside her, the one I thought she replaced me with—my archenemy—was not her lover. No. He was someone much more important—her fucking lifeguard—and she said goodbye to him. What does that even mean?
Witnessing them together took everything in me to squish the anger and jealousy as a stupid and sick part of me still sees her as mine.
Not only have I played my role as well as possible, but so has Bria because for years we’ve fooled each other so damn well.
My ears pick up at their approaching steps, and I feel her in my vicinity with all my senses, her unique flowery and sensual smell draws me in. My heart pounds, a wild staccato expanding in my chest as my shirt uncomfortably stretches. I duck and hide behind the doors leading to the other corridor not to get caught. For a few seconds, my body freezes as the shock overwhelms me, but then I exhale relieved as I watch them pass by the elevator and trudge down the stairs instead. When their steps morph into a distant sound, I choke on my own misery. I’m a twenty-seven-year-old man reduced to a deplorable mess, but I have to put myself together because, for the next few hours, I will be her fricking shadow.
“Let the show begin…” I chant, challenging myself as my steps plunge into action.
BRIA
Reaching the last stair, I lift my gaze, and my eyes survey the surroundings as my lips curve in satisfaction. An ample and decadent ballroom awaits me with the perfect view of the lake. The wide windows and dark floors are immersed in dim lights from the high crystal chandeliers. Elegant wooden tables and black leather chairs surround the dance floor. The highlight is a shiny black bar brimming with the most extravagant liquors to lure one in. I spot some guests either seeking the perfect place to oversee everything or at the bar already indulging.
It’s exhilarating to realize my face is half concealed. For a few hours, I can put a brake on
the pressure of mimicking the social person I haven’t felt in years. Alex leaves me to order our drinks. I know where to find him anyway—in seclusion with a private bar and bartender, the way we like it completely separated from everyone else.
I set myself out to greet my guests, but before I can, someone swirls me around and then wraps his arms around my frame. The tension in my muscles defuse when I identify him—my replacement father, the reason I’m still alive and breathing, and the man I’ll never have the means to show how thankful I am for everything he’s done for me.
I crane my neck to see the brightest smile possible as his arched lips gape to show a perfect set of white teeth. Well, like father, like son, I would say. In his early sixties, the man still looks like time has been his best friend. Only four people know how ill he’s been—him, his doctor, Alex, and me. But his heart is still functioning—a miracle—like me. His light caramel eyes confined by wrinkles of both sad and happy times show pure and unconditional love.
“My baby girl, you look so beautiful, although I don’t think I like the fact you hide yourself behind that mask.”
I fake a pout. “Well, Quinn, it’s a masked party, so it’s rather appropriate, don’t you think? You wear one yourself.”
I point my finger at his face as he adds, “In my case, it’s so I won’t scare the young generation away.”
He winks, and I bask in the familiar sensation of earthy scent and home. My eyes rise and take in his familiar frame starting with his short silver and soft hair, round cheeks, to the lean body covered in an impeccable black suit—his trademark attire. But comfort never lasts as I clasp my hands together and nudge myself to ask, “Is everything going according to plan? Is all settled?”
His mouth sinks, his posture stiffens, and sadness clouds his features. “I will do anything for you, my child, although it’s breaking my heart. I have supported you from the beginning and will do so until the day my heart stops beating. My only comfort is I will know where you are.”