Four Week Fiance 2(37)

We were connected in ways I’d never have believed possible, but we were never going to get to be together for two reasons. One reason was the fact that she would hate me once she realized what I was hiding from her, and the second reason was because it confounded me to believe that she could love me and stay with me forever. I wasn’t good enough for her. I wasn’t the man she thought I was and I knew that it would kill me once she found that out and stopped loving me. I could lose everything in the world and not have it hurt as much as loving Mila and losing her when she realized who I really was.





Chapter Eight

Mila


The goat and the fish. That was us. He was the goat: frisky, moody, intelligent, questioning, hard to read. I was the fish swimming toward him, following him, wanting him, waiting for him. Always waiting for him. Every day I woke up and thought about how I wanted to kick that goat, though some days I didn’t want to kick so hard. You don’t kick hard when you love someone.

Every day felt different now. Some days, I could almost pretend that I felt happy, as if I were riding the bull of life and charging down the streets of Pamplona like some bad-ass Spaniard with no fear. Those were the days I loved, feeling high on life, excited to just be me and to experience everything that I could. I craved all of the feelings that went through me: pain, happiness, joy, jealousy, love. All of them made me feel alive, like I had a purpose. And then there were the days that I didn’t want to wake up. Even sitting up in bed was an effort. Thinking of him was a burden. A heartache. A depression. A memory I didn’t want to relive.

Those days were always the same. The thoughts were always the same. The moment etched in my mind was always the same. We're at the lake. It's mid-September. It was a couple of years ago, when I was in college. I’d been so excited to go to the lake house that summer. Some part of me had thought that that was going to be the summer that TJ and I would finally get together. It was late that night, about 11 p.m. I remember the time exactly because he'd told me we had to be there by 9 p.m and I'd been late. We were scared we wouldn't see the constellation, but we still had hope. We were tired, but alert. He wanted to show me Capricornus, the sea-goat. I'd laughed. I'd never heard of a sea-goat constellation. He'd held my hand and told me to just wait. That there were several things I'd never heard of before. And so we lay back and waited. He told me how Capricornus was represented by an image of a hybrid goat and a fish. I joked that he was moody like a goat and he said I was antsy like a fish. I told him that I was on break from college, so didn’t need him acting like a bossy professor. He said I’d be so lucky. I’d just looked at him, confused, and asked him lucky for him to be bossy? And he’d just laughed.

His shoulder had rubbed next to mine gently as we lay looking up at the stars, waiting. The distant stars and moon provided the only light and as I looked over at his shadowed face, I had felt my heart swelling. He looked over at me, gave me a small smile and told me to look back at the sky and to wait patiently. I remember I rolled my eyes at his bossy tone, but I didn't say anything. I liked it when he took charge. And then, just when I thought we were waiting in vain, we saw a shooting star and I felt his hand finding mine and squeezing. We just lay there, staring at the sky, hand-in-hand, and as the cool breeze ran across my face, I thought that this was perhaps one of the happiest moments I'd ever had in my life. I never wanted it to end.

"Do you believe in soulmates?" I had asked him softly, not able to stop myself.

"Soulmates?"

"You know, your one true love?"

"One true love?" He laughed, his eyes looking at me for a few seconds and then away from me. "I think there are many loves for everyone."

"I see." My heart dropped and I gave him my best fake smile and looked back at the sky.

"Why? Do you believe in soulmates?"

"I do," I said earnestly. "I believe that there's one perfect person made for everyone."

"Made by whom?" He laughed again.

"By God," I said stiffly, feeling awkward.

"Oh, okay." His voice trailed off. "Sure thing."

"Or, if you prefer, the universe. I think that there is one perfect person out there for everyone and when you meet them you just know."

"You just know what?"

"That they're the one, of course." I was starting to get annoyed. "You know that they are your true love. The one you've waited your whole life for. The one that just gets you. The one that your heart was made to love. In fact, they're already in your heart. And when you meet them, when you realize that they are the one, then you feel whole, as if everything in life makes sense."

"That's a nice fairy tale." he said with a laugh.

"I don't think it's a fairy tale."

"Well, good luck to you then, Mila. I hope you meet this perfect man, your soulmate, or whatever." His voice had been stiff and the air had gone silent.

That was the moment that I started to question everything. That was the moment I knew I loved him as more than a crush. That was the moment I knew that my fairy tale might never come true.

***

There’s a numbness in pain that I welcome. It’s a welcome change from gut-wrenching pain and emptiness that you feel when you love someone who doesn’t love you. There is nothing worse than the feeling of rejection. There is nothing worse than not being good enough. There is nothing worse than the feeling in your heart when you realize that the man that you love doesn’t love you back; even if you would have bet your soul on it that he did. I didn’t trust my heart anymore, or my brain. They both lied to me. They told me that TJ loved me. I knew he didn’t want to love me. I knew that he’d never told me he loved me, but something in me had still believed it to be true. Something in the way that he smiled, in the way that he looked at me, his possessiveness, that way he held me close, the way he talked to me. All of those things had told me he was the one. But it was all in my head. It was all a dream. A fantasy. I’d gone and made a fool of myself and I was embarrassed and ashamed and devastated. And my heart—well, I was surprised my heart was still functioning.