GINA

I didn't answer immediately. I was in no mood to think. I just wanted to escape everything and go into bliss. Dennis could use logic to analyse the situation but he had been the one who had cried for days in my arms trying to understand how a woman he had loved and married could not endure staying with him.

I was the one who held him steady when he thought life was not worth pushing through.

So yeah, he could be the logical one now because he was nor being directly affected but there had been times when nothing he did or said was logical at all.

"Yes, Ken should be the one leaving but I am the one going to do that, Dennis. I don't want to stay in an apartment where I am reminded of how I had been made a mockery of. How a man and his wife mocked me for giving my all. The thing is I don't understand how he is being able to take care of his wife and kid when he is being taken care of by me."

"He could be stealing from you and you would not know."

"No, I would —" I paused mid denial as I paused to think of all the times I didn't find some transactions on my account settling. I had not told Ken my personal account details even though I didn't find him suspicious or anything, but could it be that he had found a way to get them and had been stealing from me slowly but steadily in the last six months.

"Shit." I muttered.

"What?"

"It could be true, what you said. I am so fucking done with men. Shit."

"Calm down, Gina. I know how you are sad and hurt and angry right now. But please, don't make any hasty decision that is going to be binding."

"After all I have experienced from guys right from when I was a child all because I wanted this love people raved about. You think I am hasty?"

"Gina—"

"You think I love being used as a fool? That I enjoy guys taking advantage of my emotions so damn easily?"

"No one does but—"

"No, Dennis. I have an option to stop being treated this way and I am going to use it. I am so fucking done with men."

I stood up abruptly after I had said this, dusted my clothes and turned to face the door.

"I am going in. I have to sleep a while before I begin to pack my things."

Dennis stood up as well. "But you are not going to sleep, are you?"

I sighed as I twisted my key into the lock of my door to open it. Dennis knew too well that sleeping tonight was a fantasy never to be reality.

"You would not sleep." he stated, answering his own question. "You would toss and toss on your bed wondering how come you never saw or noticed anything. You would wonder why love made you obvious to the signs. You would think, 'at least something should have been there to tip me off, to show that the relationship was a facade…always had been. To show that this love was an illusion, that I was giving my all to someone who planned to not only give me nothing in return but to try to destroy me . You would doubt yourself for long, your intuition, your essence. Everything. You would wonder that since you were not able to get this love thing right, to have mistaken it for the real thing, if you would ever get anything right at all. You would question yourself in everything you do, even in the things that once felt natural to you. You would question your core. That is the thing that would happen to you tonight on that bed instead of sleeping. Trust me, I know."

I turned around to look at him. His eyes were filled with what he had just said and more.

I was not the only one who had been shattered. That thought sank into me like never before. I was not the only one who's core had been shaken by the person that swore to be my threshold.

"Why does love hurt this much? Why is it love if it hurts this much?" I whispered.

"Life is fucked is why." Dennis said with a small bitter laugh.

So that I would not cry again, I stepped backward into the apartment.

"Mind if I come in to spend the night? I will sleep on fhd cushion. I just want to make sure you are okay, at least for tonight as you are packing."

I wanted to stay no. I wanted to be the strong independent woman that I had always been and soak up in my sorrow alone as I have always done. But I was tired of being strong and still made a fool of myself in the things that actually matter.

"Yeah, you can." I said and walked into my apartment.

The apartment was fully furnished to the kind of person I am, intermixed with signs of Ken personality. Cream coloured sofas were in the sitting room with a big wooden book shelf on the left side of the room with a big classic keyboard next to it . The television and heavy game kits in the sitting room were a testament to Ken's hobbies.

Personally, I would not watch television for days unless there is something serious I have to watch. I rather spend all my free time relaxing with keyboard or reading new horror comic fictions. Those were my delights. But Ken would sit on the floor all day watching television if he could. Ken would—

Shut up, Gina, stop thinking about ken, that bastard.

I sighed. As if it was going to be that easy.

If only I could listen to my head in matters like this, I would not have been in such a mess in the first place. I would not have agreed to be friends with Ken that fateful day in the studio eight months ago.