Chapter 4

Jack's POV

Stupid and idiotic Alana. I hate her, I hate that she thinks she can do whatever she wants, and I hate even more that she pretends everything she does is fine. She thinks that just because she's a model, everyone should worship her or treat her in a particular way, but it's not true. I've known girls like her, I've been surrounded by hundreds of girls like her, and none of them have ever been more than just a sexual attraction to me.

This morning, I had a heated argument with my father about her. I told him that she was not the kind of woman I'm looking for, that she was everything I'm not looking for, but he just laughed it off and told me that a businessman needs a beautiful woman by his side, that rich men don't have time to fall in love, and that I won't get anything better on my own. I didn't respond, I just called Benton and asked him to come get me.

As for Benton, he's a guy my age whose thirst for success is as great as mine. We learned everything together, studied together, saw each other every day, and even fell asleep studying for the next day. I worked too hard to get where I am, worked day and night, wanted to be successful, wanted to have money, and wanted to be able to say that I was a millionaire. Because for me, money solves 98% of your life's problems. Everything can be paid for, and most things can be obtained with money. I wanted to be able to live my life to the fullest, and that's why I worked so hard over the last few years.

Benton comes in hurriedly and holds my shoulders.

"Don't be mad, but I brought Alana with me. I found her crying outside the studio, she's not talking or saying anything. I know you hate her and don't want to see her right now, but she's a woman, and she's going to be my sister-in-law soon. I felt bad leaving her there, so I brought her."

I open my mouth to say something, but he pats my back and leaves again, leaving me completely alone with Alana in my house. Less than two seconds ago, I was thinking about how much I hated her and how I wanted to tell her to leave me alone once and for all, to tell her father whatever I wanted. But seeing her in front of me, with her red lips and her eyes swollen from crying, makes my heart ache a little.

"I have to have empathy," I tell myself, indicating that she can sit down.

"Bad day?" I ask, sitting down next to her.

"The worst."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

She looks at me through her lashes and rolls her eyes. "No."

"I didn't think anything could make you cry, let alone in front of me."

My comment seems to make her a little uncomfortable because she shifts in her seat and shrugs. I remember the argument we had, and I feel bad instantly because she's right, I don't know her at all. I've just been judging her based on the things I've been told and what I've found out. I'm not saying that everything I know is wrong, I'm just saying I should have given her the chance to vent to me without her knowing that I know what she's really like. Or maybe I'm just talking nonsense again.

"My penis hurt last night," I say so quickly and naturally that Alana moves her head in my direction and looks at me like I've lost my mind, but at the same time, she laughs. And I like it, strangely enough, I prefer her smiling to her usual bitter face.

"You can't say things like that to a girl."

"We're going to get married, these are things you're probably going to hear when we get married."

"You're right."

I don't know what else to say to her, since the last few times I've been a jerk, I have no idea where to start now. Most of our friends turn to Benton for life advice. He's the best at that shit. I, on the other hand, am the complete opposite. I just stay quiet and don't know what to say or how to act.

"Now do you want to talk about it?"

"Are you going to make fun of me?"

"I'll try not to," I give her a sincere smile, and that seems to convince her. We're not friends, and we don't want to be together, but this feels like a truce.

"I've been with my boyfriend for over two months," she begins and sighs. "You don't know me at all, Jack, and you're probably going to after this, but I don't want you to use it against me. We'll forget about this once the day is over."

"You can keep talking, Alana. Nothing is going to leave this room."

She nods and continues, "I felt like my current partner was the best thing that had ever happened to me. I loved him and liked him. It's complicated for me to love someone, it's hard for me to develop feelings like that for someone else. When I met him, I thought it would be a passing love, because that was something that happened to me frequently. But then I saw him hugging another girl, holding her hand, and dancing with her, and then I knew. I liked him, I liked him more than I wanted to admit. That situation scared me. I ignored him the next day, and he got mad at me for doing so. We spent a lot of time together, and I didn't know I could love someone as much as I did with him."

"Listening to her talk about a guy feels strange, but the way she says it makes me feel like she loved him as if she were transmitting all her feelings to me. I want to know more, I want to know how she got to this point, the point where she has red eyes and a nose like Santa Claus's."

"I thought we had a healthy relationship," she forms a half-smile on her face that she quickly brushes off. "I could truly be myself with him, sometimes I was even childish. I had fun, the term 'boyfriend' didn't bother me. But we argued a lot. I would get angry because several girls wanted to be too close to him and he didn't set boundaries, and I also got angry once because a girl sat on his lap and he didn't move her. I was going to see him happily, and he was with his friends, the scene seemed eerie to me, and yet I behaved normally, I asked one of his friends for something and left. I heard everyone there laughing, and it hurt me. Believe me, it's not nice to see the guy you like with someone else, it made me feel horrible, I didn't want to talk to him. That day I left the studio walking, I put on my headphones and ignored the world. Until I realized he was following me, it seemed a little heavy. I wanted him to leave, but I listened to him, and we fixed that problem. Sometimes when he was angry or even when we were okay, he would make hurtful comments, once he told me that I didn't know him at all, he said that I made him feel like I didn't love him. And those kinds of things gave me a panic attack. Maybe it was because I didn't understand him or because I loved him enough to have a panic attack for him. I don't know, I felt like my heart was breaking a little when he said things like that."

"Time passed, and I ended up believing that the best part of my personality was wrong, I ended up believing that everything I did for him was not enough. And I'm not saying that there weren't good things, because there were. Damn, he would cover my face with kisses and hug me, he would tell me he loved me, and in public, he didn't mind being with me, for me, that was special."

"Alana falls silent for a few minutes, looking at her hands and sighing. I didn't know her relationship had been like this. How could I know? I'm light-years away from really knowing her, I didn't ask her to tell me to use it against her because the second she leaves that door, I'm going to forget it and treat her as usual. That was the deal."

"Her boyfriend seems like a real jerk, it's okay to have had good moments, it was the least he could give her. But a relationship goes beyond good moments, a relationship takes time and effort, it takes love and maturity. What he probably didn't know."

"I ended it with him," she confesses. "I ended it because I felt like it was time to let go of the relationship. I love him, but I need to spend time with myself. He insisted that we didn't break up, a lot. He told me over and over to think about my decision. But there was nothing to think about, I told him I loved him, and he confused it with me wanting to be with him. But those are different things. A day later, today, we talked about it again. Because he wanted to, he told me to reconsider my decision, and I told him I wasn't going to. He said to me that he wasn't asking me, he was telling me. It seemed like the most denigrating thing of all, I was annoyed that he said that because I had already made a decision, and I expected him to respect it, not to say something like that to me. Angry, I replied that he couldn't force me to be with him, and he responded that I did want to be with him, that I wasn't understanding anything he was saying, or maybe I just didn't want to accept it. But the less I accepted it, the more sure I was that I needed to end this relationship."

"I know it's the last thing she'll say because she's waving her hands in the air like the show's over. But it's not, the guy seems totally out of it. It's not possible for a hurt woman to express everything you did wrong and still believe she wants to be with you. I don't like her boyfriend, I don't like how the relationship ended, and I certainly don't like that he said something stupid like that to her. Alana, despite everything, deserves so much more, something more valuable than that relationship. And it's not what she'll have with me, maybe we'll live together and want to kill each other, but it'll be much better than that relationship.

"What do you think?"

"I'm glad you got out of that relationship in time. Is there anything else you want to add? It's your moment to let out everything you're holding inside."

"He told me he wanted me to emotionally depend on him, and he also wanted to emotionally depend on me, and I found that nefarious."

"It is," I click my tongue. "Believe me, you'll never want to emotionally depend on someone, it's the worst thing that can happen to you."

She shrugs and nods.

We stay silent for what seems like an eternity, and when it's nine o'clock at night, I take her home. She doesn't say anything during the whole ride, and before getting out, she only mentions a "thank you" and "From tomorrow on, we'll go back to being what we've been these past few days." It doesn't bother me, it's certainly better to treat each other like this than to pretend we get along one hundred percent.