The room I booked for the weekend had a jacuzzi in it. The receptionist told me they had upgraded me to a jacuzzi room and that I had a bottle of complimentary wine waiting for me on the fridge. I thanked politely, went up to my room, took the bottle out(no need for a glass), and looked at the jacuzzi. My mind ran back to the only jacuzzi memory I had, which in fact did not involve a jacuzzi at all. It involved, however, a man I loved and had broken my heart.

We were taking a shower together when I laid down on the shower floor and let the water fall over me. I was crazy like that. But when he joined my silliness, we laid down there together and pretended we were in a jacuzzi. We were laughing out loud and there I thought – Heaven can’t be better than this!

Next to my skin, there was this man, who was such complex to me that I got puzzled just by the idea that we were together. We had postponed our date at first, for about three to four months in a row, because of our work. Somehow the companies we worked for, were connected, and unfortunately, that made us coworkers. I think there’s a policy against coworkers dating for a reason. They know one of the coworkers is usually a mess and that would be chaos. However, in this case, we were both chaos. We were both broken. We were both weird in our ways. And maybe that is why, we had found a home in each other.

When he laughed, my whole world got brighter. When he hugged me, I was not a loner anymore. And that day, on that shower floor, is when I knew I was in love. The man who kept a serious face and was so unapproachable during the day at work followed my stupid ideas with a big smile on his face. And I knew; I knew how love felt.

We didn’t do much! We stayed mostly home, ate junk food, drank beers and wine, watched “How I Met Your Mother” (a series I finished without him later), and made love. Mornings, noons, and nights… I would wake him up and he would hate me for that, but still, he would get out of bed, run down to the pastry shop to buy me breakfast, and come back only to see me “fighting” with the espresso machine in the kitchen. I never learned how that freaking thing worked!

We didn’t do much! We drove around the city, tried new restaurants, and pretended we didn’t hear our friends calling us so we could spend all day hugging on the couch. I’d complain about shopping and he would joke I didn’t need clothes anyway, and pull me closer. He’d complained about work, I’d tell him to screw it and pull him closer.

We spent Christmas with food we ordered because we were too lazy to go out and too lazy to cook. But we would dance. We slow-danced in the living room to the sound of “Don’t Let Go – Ed Sheeran” and he kissed my forehead. Right there, for the second time, I was reassured I loved him.

He, who always kept a side of him hidden;
He, who was always keeping a distance from all the people;
He, who was dark and broken somewhere inside;
He was mine!

And I knew not to question him. I knew to hug him, and simply understand him. I knew to allow his darkness to capture me. I knew to accept him, with no conditions. And he did the same. Quietly he healed me. He was good for my mental health. He hugged me and took the loneliness away…

The third time, I was reassured I was in love, it was soon after we called it quits. I saw him standing on the stairs with a ready-to-go suitcase and a “goodbye look” in his eyes. In all of our time together, there was the first and the last time I said it out loud. Tears filled my eyes. I hugged him tight and whispered, “I love you.” He held me for a long minute, and then let go. Unlike our Christmas song, he did let ho.

It had to pass months, and it took many tequila shots for a “drunk me” to find the courage and text him if he ever regretted the way he put my hope up high. If he ever blamed himself for breaking me. If he had forgotten all about me and the things I remembered so vividly. I wanted to release myself. It was past 2 A.M. – and as Ted at “How I Met Your Mother” says: “When it’s past 2 am, go to bed, because the decisions you take after 2 am are the wrong ones”. And I knew he was right because my phone lit up and I read his long message. I read how he memorized all the details about me, I read how he remembered things I had even forgotten, about me, about our story, about us.

He loved me! In his own damaged way, he cared. He was once again, the man I had fallen in love with. And instead of releasing myself, I felt my heart breaking.

He said it later on, in one of our phone calls. He said it so casually, you’d think he said he was going to buy bread at the supermarket. Exactly five months and 11 days after we’d been together for the last time, after 158 days that we’d broken up, after all those times we shared, in that phone call he said super casually: “And that’s why I love you, fluffy!”

And like everything was being played in a parallel universe, I stood in the middle of my bedroom, in front of a full-body mirror, and saw myself crying.

Once again, I was swallowed by his darkness…

©fiordalipi