Foreword

They say that sometimes you have to decide whether to be who everyone expects or to be who you are, I never knew how to differentiate between the two options, maybe because my life is screwed up enough not to notice when I'm sinking or when I'm on the surface.

Maybe that's why I talked to the wrong people, or maybe it was just losing Devon that ultimately cost me every single one of my good decisions. The weight of the gun on the elastic waistband of my yoga pants says that I am indeed fucking my life up, all the questions crowding my mind, churning in my head and twisting until I feel like I'm drowning in them.

"Is it really worth it?"

The answer is no, it doesn't.

No one is worth so much to send everything to hell, no one is ever worth that much, but I'm not doing this for him, I think it would be easier if I was just that crazy girl, unfortunately I'm not.

I guess we all have to have a limited number of the right ones and I already used up all of mine, I guess in the end my mom was right when she told me that beautiful girls stay with good men and that I would never get one because I wasn't good enough beautiful.

She was right, I didn't meet a good man; I met Devon Divaio and he was the end of me.

On the metal plate in front of my line of sight I read his name in boring letters. "I shouldn't be in his office" I repeat to myself over and over again hoping to regret doing what I think, but there is nothing in me that makes me stop. I wrap my fingers around the knob, they no longer tremble like when the boy handed me the gun in the paper bag, they're steady now the green paint on my fingernails glistens catching the light and I think again, go over it again and again, I breathe and I forget.

I forget that he called the police.

I forget that my face will be on the front page.

I forget about love.

I forget about each and every human being outside of this building.

And finally, I forget what is correct and that is when I finally enter, I become the Irina that my parents created, the Irina from whom they took everything and she was left empty, the Irina that I left behind in South Africa, the Irina who lost all her tears.

I'm not Devon's Irina.

I'm not Rachel's Irina.

I am not the Irina of my parents.

It's me.

Nancy looks at me over her plastic-rimmed glasses, she knows I'm not married to Devon anymore and I shouldn't be here because I'm doing him wrong, I'm the wicked witch who ripped the prince's heart out and never gave it back.

"Miss Mombao, do you have an appointment?"

He used to call me Mrs. Divaio before, that's what I think. Before Nancy would look at me adoringly and she'd offer me coffee, but now she just looks down at my workout clothes, now she looks at my dirty sneakers from walking ten blocks from where the guy handed me the gun.

"No, I don't have one,"

Nancy purses her lips into a grimace and shakes her head repeatedly.

"I'm sorry then, but we can't receive you,"

she purses her lips contemptuously. You should leave.

I take my hand behind my back, under the thermal jacket that covers the butt of the pistol, it is no longer cold as when I put it there, the friction against my skin equalized the temperature of the metal to mine.

"Call him, tell him it's me," I ask, because I don't want to take it that far yet.

Nancy sighs like she's tired of listening to me, like I'm as annoying as a tantrumy kid.

"No, Irina…enough of this. He remarried, he dumped you, and you should accept that he's over,"

she says, like I'm oblivious to my own life.

"Come home." He looks down and continues typing on his laptop.

I bite my lip, to keep from yelling at him that I can't, that I don't have a house I want to go back to anymore because my first house was Rachel's apartment and then Devon and I bought one, but I don't know how to say no. I want to go back there because it smells like him, a year has passed, but I still see his ghost around me. That I love him and hate him hurts me, but I don't want him back.

How do I tell him that I want to burn down that house to see if I can erase him too? Perhaps that is the only way to erase his tracks. I know there's no easy way to do this, so I pull out the gun, reach into my jacket pocket, fingers find the silencer, and adjust it on the barrel. Nancy is horrified she doesn't even move from her chair.

"Empty your pockets," she ordered.

She does leave everything on the desk. When I see him take out his mobile phone I take it and put it in my own pocket. She enters the bathroom.

"Irina, this is not you, she thinks well what you do".

A memory of my father comes to my mind, he was in the same situation as Nancy, my mother took my place. He said exactly the same words to her, maybe we were just that kind of person.

"I'm thinking Nancy, for the first time since I married Devon, I'm thinking and since you keep on touching my ribs with your pathetic failure lectures then I want you to shut your mouth"

"What the hell are you doing?!" What is all this? Devon asks.

He shrugged at me and pushed Nancy's back to finish entering.

"You have to call the police, Mr. Divaio!" She's crazy and dangerous, just look at everything she does!

I want to laugh, Nancy is so scared that she shakes. Devon is furious. he was never one to explode, that was my job.

While he calculated each and every scenario, I acted on instinct. I watch him, biting my lip before a deep laugh wells up inside me.

Nancy may be right and I've already lost my mind; the way her brown eyes study every part of my body as if making sure that I haven't left my ear at home or that I haven't done what all the unbalanced who want to reinvent themselves and cut my hair .

"He won't do such a thing," I tease Nancy. "Not yet, at least."

She looks at him pleadingly, waiting for him to stop me; for him to run to me and take my gun, but true to my words he lowers his head.

"Go into the bathroom, Nancy".

She doesn't understand, she doesn't know that Devon always does what he thinks is best for me, is the way he thinks he'll help me.

When Nancy finally obeys, I close the door and walk to the desk to get the keys so I can lock her inside so she doesn't spoil what I've come to do, all this under Devon's watchful eye, he bites his cheek like when he wants to talk and is contained.

I smile walking past him and stopping long enough to breathe in his scent as we brush shoulders.

In one fluid motion, he traps me with his body against the door, his gaze much more murderous than mine, his cheeks red and his jaw clenched, his hands one to the side of my head and the other squeezing my wrist holding the gun. away from our bodies.

It smells of mint and coffee, it smells of the life that is no longer mine and maybe a little bit of Rachel too.

"We should go inside" I get dangerously close to his lips, testing him, can you still resist me?

This makes him let me go. I guess my lips against hers are more dangerous than a loaded gun.

He still stands in the doorway with his back to me, trusting enough to know that he would never shoot him.

"Go away! You screwed me over enough, Irina. You gave a fucking performance, now leave me alone!"

Every word is demanding. He's not yelling, he's demanding that I stop all this, but I won't, I won't this time. I don't want to save him anymore.

"I'm going to give you what you wanted, a look inside Irina Mombao's head, isn't that what you asked for before?" You begged to understand.

Devon slams the door, yanks the keys out of my fingers and locks them with the same key I locked Nancy in with, the keys missing in her pocket. This is his way of telling me that we are both in the same boat.

"It's too late to regret it."

I let out a laugh, I stop looking at him to study the space. I chose this office, I decorated it and I chose the furniture. Every trinket or book on the surface of any shelf is my handiwork, and it remains exactly the same as it was before he left me.

"I'm not sorry, I still think that you and Rachel are how things should have happened from the beginning."

He leans on the desk and smiles, not gracefully, that smile that is born on his lips doesn't make him look handsome but terrifying. He clenches his fists until the knuckles are white.

"Then what the hell are you doing here?" Have you had enough of Tom yet? You come to keep giving me orders! Do you still feel like pushing my buttons enough to drive me crazy?!"

I ignore his voice, I don't want to fight, I'm tired of fighting; tired of running circles around her getting nowhere. Perhaps the wisest thing to do would be to shoot him now; shut up everything, act. I watch as he sighs pulling every uncontrolled emotion behind the curtain so no one sees him lose control, to tell himself that he is not like the rest of the world, that he is in control of his mind.

To fill his mouth with measured smiles and tell himself that he's not like me when we're the same kind of shit and that's why it never worked.

"You should tell him to redecorate your office, doesn't it bother him that you dance with my ghost all the time?" he laughed. Surely when you sleep with her you're thinking of me, surely when you kiss her you imagine it's me.

I turn the frame of the photo that he turned so as not to see, I know which one it is, I put it there.

"Sometimes I do."

He looked up, meeting his eyes a short distance away, capturing my face in his hands and forcing me to look at him as if that would change something, as if that were the solution. He clenches my jaw until it's painful.

"She's perfect," I say when she brushes her lips against mine, I want to remind her that, although I partly threw her into her arms, he was the one who decided.

He lets me go. It's not mine anymore, it's hers and I want her to remember it because Rachel deserves one of those loves that give you butterflies in your stomach, she doesn't deserve the spent love that I left her, but it's what she wants after all.

"It is, I guess I don't like perfect things."

I squeeze the bamboo frame of the photo and force myself to look at it, in it he and I are behind Rachel, Devon smiles at me and I look at the camera oblivious to him and the world.

"Then why did you marry her?" I ask, even though I already know the answer."

"You asked me to marry her, Irina, after you fucked Thomas in my house, in my bed, you stood in front of me and said: "find a lawyer, ask me for a divorce and marry her."

I say a lot of things when I'm angry.

I take the photo with me to the beige sofa where his patients usually sit, lie down or cry.

I used to make fun of those people unable to fight their own demons, I used to make fun of the fact that they went to someone to tell them what to do and now I'm the one who needs to be told what to do.

I put the gun on the table to the right of the sofa and go back to study the photo, I try to bring it all because I need to tell him all the reasons why I don't love him, I need to explain all the times I couldn't return the loves I love you back, I want to show him that all my love I bet and lost it. That my tears stopped falling years ago, lost in other loves. That I wished he'd come before they broke me, before everyone I've ever loved took parts of me that never came back.

"You and I forced all this, I was not ready for someone like you."

"What are you talking about? Someone who loved you or someone who was good to you?" He occupies the brown leather chair to my left. You are a girl running around with sharp scissors all the time, I don't know how to take care of you Irina! I don't know how not to get hurt around you.

«I am all that, I pushed you away because I don't deserve you; I pushed you away because you deserve someone complete and I lost many pieces on the way to you.

But I don't say any of that and instead ask.»

"Do you remember the day we met?"