One Night Only

Lillie

“Why are you so defensive with me? I just said what I thought.

“It just makes me despair that you are so naive to believe that the Devil is going to fulfill all your whims. If you want to be with him, you must know very well the kind of man he is and get used to his life. He will not leave things to be with you.

“I’m not interested in anything about him anymore” he cut his sermon short. Between him and me, whatever happened between us is over.

“That’s what I’m telling you, Lillie, you need to grow up and stop throwing tantrums. Not because she doesn’t answer your stupid messages or toxic girlfriend calls are you going to end their relationship.

What’s the matter with him? Why are you telling me these things?

“I’m not toxic at all! – I raise my voice. That’s my decision, period. I’ll be leaving the country soon, and if he comes back here, he won’t find me, if he’s still interested in looking for me.

“What? Where will you go?” His tone changes and the features of his face show concern.

“I will go to Germany together with my family and will not return. I will take my studies in that country. Maybe I’ll stay and live there. Then I’ll find some good job when I graduate.

“You can’t just leave like that, you have to wait for him to come back and they can talk things over properly. Don’t be so impulsive.

I let out a laugh for your comment. Now I’m the one who feels irritated and upset.

“You tell me, that you left your home to go to work as a dancer in a bar. Now you’re picking on a mobster for his money.

His eyes widen in amazement. I know I opened my mouth too wide, but she provoked me.

“About my family you know why I did it, and about Ivan, everything has changed. You don’t know.” She’s pointing her index finger at me, annoyed”. I came happy to tell you everything, because he would take me as his wife and not as another whore, and you come out with your negative comments only because you can’t trust your boyfriend, in the relationship that a mafioso can offer you, and you blame me for my words when you are the one who is closing yourself to an opportunity and waiting for him to explain why he was absent.

I’m not interested in hearing more. I thought I could trust my friend, have her support, and even if the distance had separated us, our friendship would still be intact, but again I was wrong again. This definitely makes me not regret the decision I made.

“What I shouldn’t have done was to give him the entrance into my life, or rather, not to have met him, but he insisted on chasing me all the time until he got what he wanted. “I do not know if I will regret these words, but without thinking they come out of my mouth”. I curse the day I bumped into him and met him.Text property © Nôvel(D)ra/ma.Org.

“I hope that one day you will not regret what you say, because that would be very devastating for you.

“If you have nothing more to say, I have to go, I left to go see my mother” I reply curtly.

“Fine” he nods. May you be lucky in your new life, in that other country.

“The same goes for you.

We didn’t say anything else nor did we say goodbye as I had wanted it to be. I didn’t want this. I’ve lost my friend. Maybe I will never hear from her again or maybe time will erase everything we said to each other at that moment and we can one day fix everything and talk like we were before, best friends.

I walk away from there and head to the subway.

Minutes later he arrived at the hospital. I’m still thinking about the conversation I had with Mika. It torments my mind. It’s something I’ll never get over. She means a lot to me and it’s all over between us. The tears I had held back come out one by one. I cry in silence.

I walk until I reach the door of Mom’s room. The men in black are here, but they are somewhat removed from the entrance of the room. How strange, they never get that far away. I open the door quietly. I don’t want to make any noise, because maybe my mother is sleeping and I can wake her up by carelessly entering. However, when I open the door slowly until I leave it half open, I hear some voices. It’s Mom talking to someone. I move a little closer, but without completely entering the room. I can make out the other voice; it’s Mr. Lionel’s. But what worries me is that it is not a friendly conversation, but they argue. I stop and turn my attention to that very lively chat.

“I already told you that I won’t tell her anything” Mom says.

Who are they talking about?

“Elena, don’t make me decide. I’ve been waiting for years to see her, to meet her and to be able to tell her who I am” Lionel replies.

In short, they are talking about someone, but I don’t understand who.

“I said no. You can’t come in after almost twenty years and tell her everything. You would end up destroying her completely.

“And you think I decided this? You know well that I did not choose for you to banish me from my duties.

Obligations? What does Mom have to do with this man?

This confirms to me that their relationship is not just a simple friendship. There’s something else between them, and I’ll have to listen to the end to figure it out. I know it’s not good to listen to other people’s conversations, but I have to find out what they’re bringing. They can’t hide things anymore.

“Understand, Lionel, for her, her dad is Alexis” he names my late father “a father who is already dead, and she must continue to believe that way if we don’t want her to get hurt.”

Oh dear, I don’t want to believe what my ears hear and my mind imagines, but I need to know the truth of this.

“But I have the right, I’m his father.

My suspicion is confirmed. Are you referring to Alex or maybe to…? Not to me, I don’t think. However, all that makes me think about how I was born. My father had already died, and for that reason my mother did not give me his last name, but my sister does have it.

It can’t be true. It can’t be that I’m the daughter of another man and not the one I thought I was all these years. Now I understand my doubts about the family of the one I thought was my dad. I didn’t get to see pictures of him either. That’s the reason why Alex and I don’t look much alike. No, please, let it not be true, let it just be absurd ideas of mine that I make in my head.

“You lost that one when you left, leaving me pregnant and with a little girl of almost seven years. Maybe Alex wasn’t your responsibility, but Lillie was, and you lost that right years ago. “Mom ends up confessing the truth.

The tears are coming back to me. It’s like a bucket of cold water on my body, which freezes me without being able to react or blink. It’s overwhelming, unnerving. With her confession I realize everything that she had invented. My own mother, the one person I have trusted the most, the one I believed would never hurt me, was hiding a secret that would completely change my life, but not because I was interested in meeting that man. I don’t even know who this man is, whether he’s good or bad, why he left and left a pregnant woman while she was expecting his child. They are doubts that occupy explanations, but that should not matter to me, and the truth is I don’t want to know anything.

After a few moments I react and step back a little. The door is left somewhat open. I feel dizzy, my head is spinning. I need to get out of here, but I can’t walk much.

When I take a few more steps while backing up, I feel that the dizziness increases. My eyesight gets cloudy and I stagger a little. I’m about to fall. When I think I’m about to land on the ground, some arms manage to take me in the air, preventing my fall. I don’t know who he is, but I still lift my head to see him. My eyes can’t decipher the face well, because I see blurry. A voice is calling me, but I can’t distinguish it either.

When my gaze is fixed on that face completely, I become paralyzed again. I bring my hand to his face to try to check if it’s really him and not a dream. When I think it’s him, his attractive face is the one I see.

“Dante -I whisper as I play it.

My eyes are closing slowly. I feel them heavy. The dizziness won’t go away.

I fall into a deep darkness, unconscious.