71His cheeks were flushed the colour red.
"Please don't be angry," he pleaded with an expectant expression scrawled across his face. I felt ice enter my veins. Never again would I open myself up to more hurt and trouble. I smiled placidly at him.
"Why would I be angry?" I asked him, an oblivious mask setting into place.
"Well…" He gestured first to himself then to the other naked female in his bed. He continued to keep that hopeful look on his face.
"Oh that," I replied coolly, "It is perfectly fine."
He sat on his bed with a look of disbelief. I shifted my weight to my right foot and held his gaze steadily, making sure that no hint of my true feelings was displayed in my eyes. I deliberately let my eyes flick over his body in a calm assessment of the damage that had been done.
"Well, I guess my business is done here," I said and spun on my heel, feeling very calm and control. Relatively speaking, of course. It is not every day that you find your boyfriend in bed with another woman. Then again, since I never let him touch me, should it be little wonder that he fell astray? Perhaps I should have expected this. After all, nobody is loyal these days, are they?
His quiet voice stopped me in my tracks.
"Don't you ever feel anything?"
My spine stiffened and I put one foot in front of the other, heading towards the open apartment door. He didn't know and would never know, which was a pity since he had been the first person who had even gotten this close to me. The problem wasn't that I felt nothing. It was that I felt too much and ironically, because of that fact, the compulsion to protect myself was much stronger in me than it was in others. I ate, breathed and lived as any other person. The only difference was my degree of difficulty in showing my true emotions.
"You never loved me. You never even liked me, did you?" His husky voice crawled over my skin. I swallowed my fury and let the ice take over me once again, never faltering in my steady pace.
"Believe what you want to believe. I'm sure we will continue to have our friendship once you get some clothes on," I purred languidly.
And with that, I took careful, measured steps through the door and out of his life.
.
.
I thought that would be how every single one of my relationships would end up as. Nothing but a tangled web of masks and lies.
I thought my life would always be left in splinters and shards of what I used to be.
I thought the ice flowing through my veins was my lifeline and I clung to it as a baby would to their mother.
.
That was until he came along and knocked me over, literally, and showed me the true meaning of living.