Giancarlo "Did you take care of the news?" I asked Lorenzo as I stepped out of the resort clinic room in despair. I had only heard the last sentence of what Mrs. Bennett had said and my heart could not stop racing.My chest tightened and I felt like ripping my brain out as I recalled the way her voice had filled with gladness. I ran my fingers through my hair, exhaling sharply as the weight of my thoughts pressed down on me.What did she mean by Claire's marriage to Theodore would be in three days? I stood frozen, my mind struggling to understand the reality that had just shattered my world.I unbuttoned two buttons on my shirt as sweat of desperation flooded my face, clouding my sight and my judgement. A storm of emotion swelled within me, ready to burst at any moment."I did," he replied but with a sharp piercing look. "All news have been blocked. The news is as good as dead," he assured with a warm smile, eyes glistening."Okay," I replied flatter than how I meant to say, bitin
ClaireI couldn't sleep nor eat, my eyes were red from crying. My mother's words hung in my throat like a cloth hanger, pulling me deeper into grief and self-hatred. Tears of sadness pricked at my eyes, misting it at once. I was caught in a mess that was too tangled to escape that I was left both confused and heartbroken.Her words still sounded like a thunder-clap in my mind as the implications sank in. Marry Theodore in three days? How did she even come to such a horrifying conclusion?The accusing look of disgust on her face broke me into pieces then, and was still doing that after hours of her leaving. I clenched my fist, fighting between despair trying to piece together everything like a puzzle.I felt a pang of hatred on myself for cutting short a promising fifteen year old girl's life. My eyes misted again, ready to pass out more tears.Was the party really worth her life? Why couldn't I have stayed back at home? Sadness seeped into my bones, like a winter chill that hesit
Claire The weight of his question hung like a bat in the air, the room growing smaller. I could see the tempest of anger and confusion brew in his eyes, making it darker than usual and leaving me unnecessarily exposed.I clutched the hospital mattress for dear life as I tried to maintain his stare.Why was he asking when he knew everything? Did he want to trap me by hearing the testimony directly from me? I shuddered in fear, growing small from his dark glare."Do you know her?" I asked, cringing at my stupidity. Of course he'd know her. Hadn't mom already informed me of how the marriage was being held just because of that tiny knowledge?"Yes I do," he replied calmly but his gaze spoke the opposite. "She's a distant cousin of mine, who died out of her own recklessness, drunk-driving as usual and nearly killing her best friend too," he said. "The thought of her usually fills my heart with so much anger that I've always tried not to speak about her."What did I just hear? Confusion
Claire"Yes, oh, yes," I beamed with smiles, pushing out of the bed and stepping on Theodore's feet in the process. It didn't even bother me one bit that I could have stepped hard on him and that I should apologize.What mattered was the fact that my dream had come true and I was going to become Carlo's wife. The thought raced my heart with joy, my smile widening and comfort flooded through me.I inserted my fingers into the ring and then hugged him tightly, like my life depended on it. My joyful laughter renting the air, making the moment feel like a precious gift.I could feel my chin hurt from the wideness of my smile. Carlo had made my day. Turned it swiftly into joy. Theodore stood abruptly, flung the bouquet to the ground and stormed out, leaving a trail of petals behind him.I gave his exit a passing glance and then went back to being enveloped in Carlo's love that felt like a warm blanket on a cold night. I nozzled his nose, wishing I could kiss all the part of his body slowl
Giancarlo As I sat at the cafe with Lorenzo to try to schedule how the invitation card was to spread, my heart uplifted in joy. I felt butterflies wallow around my chest.It seemed like a dream that I was to get married to Claire in the next two days. I thought proudly at the incidents that had led to our meeting and I felt like a teenager in love.There was barely a moment where Claire's sparkling eyes of adoration did not come in my mind as a mental picture."What is it about her that makes my heart race," I thought, my body responding to the thought. Was it her smile, stubbornness or just her eyes?Or her soft voice that usually worked miracles between my legs?I couldn't tell so I just let it slide. I didn't need a reason to love her, never will. She was just the one my heart had chosen to spend my entire life with. Who was I to reject the wonderful arrangement?"Should we invite Theodore," Lorenzo asked, eyes reflecting his joviality. I smiled back at him, more because of the r
Claire"You can't possibly do that to your own child!!" I cried out in rage, wishing I could rip out her lips and plunge it into fire."A mother must do everything for her child to obey her," she shouted back. "You've constantly been disobeying and it's only fair everyone knows the truth isn't it?" Her eyes blazed with wickedness and I realized more vividly that I couldn't belong to this woman.I couldn't be her child and she couldn't be my mother. Not after all the embarrassment she had caused me and the constant comparison between me and Elizabeth."Mom, how would you feel seeing me in prison? Would you be happy?" Tears of frustration flowed down my cheeks filling me with a cold wave of sadness."The same way I would've if you had died instead of Emilia," her lips twisted into a kind of intensity that could only be associated with evil.My lips boiled with a loud sob as what she said, sunk into me, pushing me further into a depressed state."Elizabeth is the only one who deserves ou
Giancarlo My head felt like it was going to explode at anytime, banging with every breath that I took and making my stomach churn with a kind of pain that was rib-cracking.My head felt so light and hollow that, with the headache, I could feel an echo in my skull.My memory was as blank as a white board, I almost couldn't recall my name."What must have happened?" I wondered, my chest heaving faster than usual, forcing air out of my bewildered, open mouth.I tried to use the soft bed to soothe my pains but to no avail.If for anything, the pain tripled, making me wish that I could disappear or better still, get seperated from my body."What could have made my body ache this way?" I threw the question to my mind again, hoping some answers could slip out. Try as I may, no knowledge of the past hour nor day showed up. My memory stopped at a short end; when I had hugged and kissed Claire's earlobes after my proposal.I continued raking and scraping my brain, wincing like a wounded chicke
ClaireMy heart broke as his face grew ashen and his body trembled in grief. I didn't mean to hurt him but I just couldn't help it. He had hurt me so much that I began to think that he was in a competition with my mom to break my heart into pieces.Did he even realize what that video had done to me mentally, together with my mother's insensitive words? My heart pumped hard, vibrating my lips with the thought. Fury flowed like goosebumps in my skin and I was ready to say more hurtful words to him that would slice through him faster than a helicopter fan.If only he knew how much I had wanted to give up living and commit suicide. Could my heart ever heal from such a trauma? I wondered helplessly, wishing I had never met him."How could you do that to me?" My voice grew raspy as I spoke. His pale face and red eyes were putting my emotions into a great turmoil and I hated myself for reacting to it.Why should I feel for him, when he had been the one enjoying the sex?He looked up with t
Claire.I woke to a strange toxic gas smell, making my nose get peppery and itching my skin. My nose itched with it too, dragging the hairs in my nose violently. My ears confirmed that something was wrong as there were sharp gasp for breathing, sounding in the roomMy eyes had to haul themselves open to find out what it was. I opened my eyes slowly and tiredly, my head banging with the promise of a bad occurrence and my heart getting foggy in fear.Another sound graced my opened ears. It was a thudding sound that sounded exactly like the fall of a giant and another thudding that could not be mistaken for anything but a footstep. I lifted myself upwards into a sitting position, blood rushing fast in all my body and my mind tattered with savage fear that moved electrically through all corners of my mind.My body began to shake violently and the environment, threatening to spin as I caught the mask appearance of a man and another sprawled figure on the floor. I immediately looked to my
Giancarlo.I widened both my eyes and my mouth as i stared doubtfully at her, heart pounding hard and hands shaking with the mere thought of everything.Could Claire truly do this to me? My heart raced and my blood pressure plummeted as I tried to understand the scenario, mind feeling like it was encircled in a spiky hammer and lips feeling very hot from the burning look in her eyes.Her eyes burnt ever so harshly, furnace of hate and resentment glowing so hard that the blood that bubbled in my mouth had to even still in fear with her fiery eyes.Nothing seemed to make sense, everything was just moving in a zig-zag fashion that it was extremely difficult to track it down.How could she do this to me? I wondered hurtfully. Could this really be her? The thought was icy in my head, sizzling with the fire burning inside me.As if in reply to my mountainous question, her appearance began to change. First, her lips; soft and succulent, were transformed into a darker and more manly lips purs
Giancarlo.I looked intently at the liquid, more in pondering than in horror, the veins in my head popping in and out in worry.With my banging head, it was hard to make connections properly especially when Claire was not even around to make things clearer. Or was she? The idea suddenly popped into my mind as I remembered the balcony, hands moving away from the liquid for a moment and look out to the chairs at the balcony.She could be there and waiting patiently for my return or probably receiving some fresh vegetation air.I moved with slow, unsteady steps towards the balcony, eyes checking backwards to reconfirm that the fading red dot from my eyesight was blood, and head thumping hollowly, feeling as empty as a useless milktin.Even when my tired mind thought that it was blood, I was still too confused to understand the enormosity of everything and make quick moves to a health practitioner.So I lazily walked up to her, like nothin
Giancarlo.I didn't even know what put me to sleep nor how long I had slept. But I certainly did know what brutally hauled me awake, panting like a dog and eyes widened like a pussy. My ears were not even spared from the brutality as my shrieking phone was literally shouting painful waves into my newly awakened senses, circulating pains into my upper body and making me wish there was a way I could just die at once. Its loudness was no doubt the source of my awakening as it continued on tiredlessly proudly teaching me a lesson I was certain to never forget.I looked around, head banging in confusion, hands finding trouble feeling, legs feeling more like there were two planks of wood lying peacefully on them.I was still looking around trying to put two and two together and maybe find an explanation why I was just so confused.Aside from the violently ringing phone that was threatening to rip my head and ears off and plunge it into the vegetations across the balcony, I found it diffic
Giancarlo.Suddenly, everywhere grew hot and suffocating, my chest beating faster than a talking drum and forehead throbbing hard. I tried to think of a time I had actually helped Lorenzo out with something, but surprisingly my mind sang nothing back.I shook my head sharply in disappointment, continuously hoping for just one scenario to surface and save my friendship and brotherhood.My brain was blank and suffering much with the hard exertion, my eyes growing blurry from the many colorful stars that appeared before them and fingers hardening from too much clenching and unclenching.Was there truly no time that I had gone through thick and thin for him? I brooded helplessly, guilt and hurt fighting for a room in my already tired and weak heart and my stomach churning with a promise of a successful nausea.I racked my brain harder, his glare growing more intense, burning through my self-control and leaving me nakedly exposed to his perfect judgement.The result from my intensively ra
Giancarlo.Since when? My pulse pounded hard, throat feeling as dry as charcoal and heart slicing the words into dices of anger and surprise.Was he perchance kidding me? My mind rotated in horrifying surprise, and my eyes dilated as I looked to the floor for answers.How could I have been so blind to not have noticed anything? I wondered deeply, hands moving to my chin in perfect posture.But then, he had barely shown anything to me and Elizabeth had not even been around.Or was she around all the while? Numerous thoughts ran through my mind as his words sunk deep into me, feeling very unwelcomed in my brain."Since when?" I managed to ask calmly, the warring thoughts in my head, buried suppressingly by my self-control but still struggling to raise the rock pressing it down.He turned to look at Claire who had frozen on her track while trying to head to the bathroom and smiled."It's been three weeks now," he replied in a calm tone too, hands clenching by his sides and eyes looking e
Giancarlo.Claire reeled forward almost falling, hands running fast to her knees to act as a tripod stand.I quickly held her back, aching with her from her sisters banging words. Perspiration dropped like trickles of rain down to my legs, feeling more cold than hot as she seemed to wish to haul herself violently to the floor.While I didn't see anything wrong with her, stating her view and turning the table on her mom, Elizabeth certainly saw a thousand things wrong with it and had not hesitated to set the matter straight.Claire began to gasp for breath by my side, falling a little forward to get more air and hands slipping and almost sending her to my the ground.Just as I held her back, she began to cough violently, tears streaming down her eyes and shoulder rising and falling in unison with her chest."Calm down, she'll come around," I tried to reassure her, pulling her up and closer to my chest and welcoming the vanilla scent from her hair. “Don't let her words get much to you.
Claire.I watched as his expression dropped from shock to horror, eyes widening more than they should and lips parted wide.It was seriously embarrassing to think that they had never connected things that far and that a civilian like me was the one rather blessed with the brains to dissolve the case.My heart thumped with a brief moment of joy as surprised danced in their expression, eyes mirroring their lost war and my victorious win.I had managed to change the situation into something useful, hadn't I? I smiled to myself, deep enough that it displayed itself on my face."Uhhm... I think we need to go," the man stuttered embarrassedly, face turning crimson and hands quickly pushing the phone back into his pocket.The lady tried not to meet my eyes and just followed behind in a rush, eyes somewhat bowed and focusing more on her shoes.Were cops supposed to behave like that? I wondered amusingly as they left with their battered pride.I smiled to myself again, giving myself a heartfel
Claire."I don't know, Claire. It seems you're complicating things," the female police seemed to be speaking through her nose as she had suddenly forgotten all formalities and allowed her rage, permanently sit on the surface. I almost burst in laughter with her squeezed red face that looked like she had just received a surprise triple punch on it."Does it really seem like it?" I teased, glowering as her face contorted the more, eyes shooting sharp swords at me and lips forming with a promise of a battering insult.The male cop shot her a calm but commanding glare that sent the insult in her lips back to the pit where they came from and helped fix her shitty face into an emotionless one."I think I've explained it in the best layman terms that exist. If it seems complicated to you, maybe, just maybe it's difficult for you comprehend, not that what I said is complicated," I concluded sweetly, all smiles and little regret dancing melodiously in my heart.Carlo moved into the picture, w