"Are you okay?"The question was all I could muster up as I blankly and quite awkwardly stared at the ceiling on my bedroom. I"d delayed my flight to the lines for a few hours to attend to Miss Leriva as it seemed she would give way to a break down at any given moment and more than likely follow up with a spree of rather ill-thought decisions.
In the end, it seemed instead that I was the one to make the ill-thought decisions. For whatever reason, I"d taken her to my bedroom instead of my office.
"Are YOU okay?" she asked, I could feel her gaze on me from the other side of the bed, I could sense the worry in her voice so I looked to her.
Her eyes now stood out and seemed to be all I saw whenever I gazed upon her. Her face though was twisted with concern; I could easily make a few guesses about what she was concerned with.
This wasn"t supposed to happen.
"I"m sorry."
"For what!" she gasped out, shuffling under the sheathes before sitting upright.
I do the same, grabbing a pillow and propping my back with it I only shrug as I try to vomit the words, "You were vulnerable, this shouldn"t have happened." I avoid her gaze as I let out the rest, the thought that plagued me all while the mistake happened and I didn"t stop, "I took advantage of you, I"m sorry. I know it me"
"Hahaha!"
My sour look turns questioning as she bursts out laughing. She takes only a moment in her mirth before responding to my questioning look.
"Hasina, I"m about a decade older than you. If anything, you were the one being taken advantage of." The upbeat tone to her voice dissolves as she too begins looking downcast, "I"m sorry. I"m older, way older and I"m pretty sure I knew what I was doing with that whole damsel in distress demeanour. I just-"
Her grip on the sheets tighten, she takes in a breath and calms herself a bit, "I just needed a break."
The simple phrase put everything into perspective. I felt that I especially understood her plight, the eternal looming tiredness, the constant rushing thoughts that only ever spelt doom, the ever-present and ever ringing alarm, living in a constant state of emergency was bound to get anyone tired.
If that was what she was going through then I certainly understood.
"I guess I needed a break too and I was too…tired to care about the aftermath of anything." I place a hand over hers, wrapping her small soft hands in mine with a rather strained smile, "Do you want to talk about it?"
She strained a smile as well, her hesitation was blatant in the way she rubbed circles on the back of my hand but I stayed silent, letting her mull over it and only giving her hand a rea.s.suring squeeze.
"Well, I suppose this has been culmination for a while. And I"ve had no one I trusted in the least not to judge me if I let them in but heh, our whole world might be ending anyway and we might all die this year so…"
She sighed a bit before finally delving into it, "Well, I don"t know if you know this, you probably do cuz you"re the President and all but…I"m a divorcee."
I absolutely had no idea.
She sees my widened eyes and she lets out a chuckle, "You really didn"t know or are you trying to downplay it?"
"No…I actually didn"t, I"m sorry but I"ve never looked into your personal life before…"
She nodded, understanding, "Riiighhtt, way too busy being President."
I couldn"t tell if she was hurt by my ignorance of her personal life or not so I stayed silent, still ready to listen to whatever she had to say.
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"Well, I had my divorce when I was twenty-six, it"s been three years, I haven"t been able to get with anyone, not in a meaningful way anyway, dating was a bust instantly. He was my first reasonable boyfriend in university, barely any issues and nothing I wasn"t fine tolerating at least this was before we started living together before we got married.
Being the caveman I was, always had been, I met all my friends through him, I"d never made any friends of my own, through my own volition, I just kinda accepted anyone who bothered to stick around me long enough and for the most part, that was him and his friends, my girlfriends were his friends as well.
Heh, my therapist said, I had let myself have no life aside from him, honestly, this was true. So true that when it became obvious that he was cheating on me when we"d gotten married, after months of sudden distance and apathy towards me, I tried to kill myself because he chose to go with his mistress rather than his wife. It felt like my world was falling apart with him gone. But in hindsight, this was all my fault, he provided everything social for me, I"d gotten dependent and he"d gotten bored because I had no life outside him, I gave him no joy, I was the most monotonous thing in his life and he was the brightest in mine. I should have let him go long ago."
She wiped her eyes clean of the tears that threatened to fall, sniffling as she did. Before going on to vomit everything else that plagued her.
"Believe it or not, running a multimedia company isn"t at all nice. Not any worse than being a reporter was for me but now I"m on a pedestal. A ready target for the rumours and insinuations of everyone from the janitors to my compet.i.tors. Ha! I don"t even know why I care so much I"m paying the lot of them for their work!
Anyway, it makes me feel like s.h.i.t. They"ve said I"m a snub, never considering I simply prefer being left alone most times and then I feel like s.h.i.t for wanting to be alone all the time cuz then when I"m home I feel so…alone.
Now with the war banging at the footsteps. Well, let"s just say I"m torn between volunteering for the frontlines and taking risks…socially."
I let out a chuckle and took her hands in mine, sure to look her in the eye as I made a promise I wasn"t sure I could keep. "Schelar will be safe and happy. So will you. Would you like to be my friend?"
At my words, she brightened up. "Yes, I"d like that a lot actually."
This…this was new.