@rhvnzy
it had always seemed strange to romina, how easily time continued to pass by even after something big had flipped her life upside down, like a tornado ripping through the walls of houses. there was still that naive, childish part of her that always expected things to stop. after the first birthday her parents forgot, the sky was still the sky. the first time she’d gone to bed with a guy only for him to pretend she didn’t exist after, the grass was still grass. when her parents had divorced and told her about it through email the same week of her college graduation, the clouds were still clouds. and even after rhenzy had left her alone in that apartment they once had shared, even after the life they had built together toppled over like dominoes, even after everything romina had ever wanted had burst into flames — the sun was still the sun. the world kept moving, even if she wanted so badly for it to stop. it was the same now. time still passed, life carried on even when romina couldn’t find it within herself to do the same. more than a week had passed since that night in dubai, the night that would forever live on in both the best and worst parts of her memory. more than a week had passed but romina was almost unaware of it, as if that night had thrown her into a suspended sort of limbo where things stopped feeling real. she’d been shut away for most of it, guilt and fear keeping her separated from the rest of the villa. she couldn’t face anybody, not even the people she hadn’t hurt by sleeping with graham and kaia then hiding it for a month. even the thought of it would feel like a sort of betrayal, because why should she be allowed a sense of normalcy when she was that tornado ripping through the walls of houses ? she’d done something she wasn’t sure she could ever fix. there was no band-aid for betrayal, no set healing period where everything was sure to be okay after. it was the fear of running into the people she had hurt that really motivated her to stay away. all romina had been picturing whenever she closed her eyes was the look of pure heartbreak on teagan’s face that night in dubai. she wasn’t ready to face that again, not by a long shot. but leaving the villa everyday was exhausting. there was only so much she could spend the day doing in hawaii before she started to feel like she was running away, before the itch to book a plane ticket home started to creep in. and so romina had gotten up early, almost with the sun, ready to at least spend the morning swimming at the villa before she resumed her now regular schedule of disappearing from sight and isolating. and maybe she could have convinced herself she’d have an alright day, even though she was still choking on guilt and regret, had she’d not seen her ex fiance sprawled out by the pool. “ fuck. fuck, fuck, fuck. ” it was a string of curses, the words whispered under breath in tune to her erratic heartbeat. she was the rabbit stepping into the snare, realizing too late the danger of the situation. every atom in her body was telling romina to run, to escape before he saw her. every fiber in her being was telling her to turn around, or maybe drown herself in the swimming pool, but she was frozen in place. she hadn’t seem him that night graham had confessed. she hadn’t faced him. and now there he was, shirtless like the two of them had been inside that tiny bathroom stall. the same stall she had confessed her love for him, the love she meant as much as she had the first time she’d ever told him years ago. romina still remembered his words. do you mean it ? please mean it. she still remembered how he had said he loved her back. now she was the one borrowing those same words, desperately turning them over and over inside her head for the past week, thinking about all the reasons why he wouldn’t mean them anymore. she had broken his heart. she had broken his heart twice. and maybe that’s why romina was walking closer, until she was hovering next to him, no doubt the streak or darkness in his once sunny day. because no matter how much the thought of facing him terrified her, she needed to know what he was feeling. not so she could fix it, or pretend like she hadn’t done something terrible — romina wasn’t delusional. she just needed to know. “ hi. ” her voice was small, so much smaller than usual. she felt naked, and not because of her swimsuit. she felt stupidly exposed, like a snail without it’s shell. she felt like maybe the past year of her life was all a bad dream and that she’d wake up safe in his arms, a glittering ring still dotting her finger. she felt like the biggest fraud on the planet. “ can we talk ? we should probably talk. ”