“Before me, then. I’m sure you haven’t always worn condoms. You seem too blasé about not doing so.”
He ran a hand across his face. “Drop it, malyshka.”
Jealousy rose up in me, piercing a hole through my chest and fueling my blood with bitterness. He’d never been that serious with any of the women I’d seen him with, yet he’d been with one—or several?—without wearing a condom. It made what we were doing feel meaningless. Cheap. The most serious relationship I’d ever seen him in was with Portia, and even then, it hadn’t lasted much longer than the rest.
“Did you use a condom with Portia?”
“Yes.” It was a vehement response. The truth.
Maybe it had been with someone when he was younger. Some teenage Russian hussy. I hated her. Though, I doubted he would’ve had much time for girls while being locked in a prison for most of his teenage years.
I was growing resentful of the questions piling up on themselves, being answered with, “Drop it, malyshka,” and complete evasions. The man had even heard the story of how I’d lost my virginity from my own husband’s lips. It seemed only fair I should hear the same.
“How did you lose your virginity?”
The temperature dipped into the negatives, my breath freezing in my lungs. The air turned bitter, as caustic as the sting of a bee against my skin.
He sat up on the side of the bed and rested his elbows on his knees. Tension pulled tight in his shoulders, his voice emotionless.
“Get out.”
My stomach went cold. “What?”
“I said, get out.”
My throat tightened with humiliation and betrayal.
I got to my feet, picked up a shirt from the floor, slipped it over my head, and headed to the door. I stopped, every cell in my body rebelling at the idea of leaving.
“If you make me walk out this door, I won’t come back, Christian. Not until you have an answer for me.”
He didn’t look at me.
Neither did he stop me.
I shut my apartment door behind me and leaned against it, the emptiness of the place touching my skin. Regret fed on my resolve, until I wanted to turn around and take back the final words that had left my mouth. I wanted to—needed to—go back and fix everything that had gone wrong. Apologize or beg, whatever it took. Thankfully, my pride held steady; I wasn’t going to let him turn me into something so pathetic.
I slept in my own bed that night, for the first time in weeks. It was quiet. A little cold. A tear ran down my cheek, and I told myself I hated him for making me feel this way.
But I didn’t hate him at all.
That elusive feeling, close to panic yet far enough away, was something else entirely.
And, as my heart ached with every breath, I suddenly knew what it was.
“Levàntate!”
I sputtered, shooting up to a sitting position as cold water poured onto my face.
“It is four o’clock, querida! Eres una vaga!”
She’d just called me a bum, but I couldn’t find any energy to complain. I was depressed. And not even because I hadn’t seen or spoken to Christian in two days, but because I thought I loved him. And I wasn’t sure how to deal with the feeling. Where it was supposed to go when it grew too big for my chest. How I would get rid of it if he’d finally realized we weren’t compatible in the end.
He and I were polar opposites. We didn’t make much sense.
But, suddenly, nothing felt right without him either.
Magdalena opened the window. “I told you not to get involved with that man, señorita. You did not listen.”