A Wife for a While

Chapter 31

PAVLO

“Kaya ang gawin mo dyan sa offer mo sa akin kasama na ang titulo at pera, isasaksak mo lahat sa baga mo.  Hindi ko kailangan ang mga yan.  Hindi ko kailangan ng pera.  Kaya nga binigay ko lang lahat ng ipon ko kay JB at nabaon ako sa utang sa bangko.  Walang halaga ang pera sa akin.  Kung wala ka nang sasabihin, aalis na ako.”

 

Those words hunted me until now.  It has been a two weeks since she left.  I thought she would be back, realized that she loves me, can’t bear to live without me, but I was wrong.  She left, without turning back.  I was wrong to think she loves me.  If she loved me, why did she give up on me so easily?

I am back being alone again.  I started to live alone when I turned 18.  My parents were no where to be found, so I grew up with my grandparents.  But just like any other only child, I like to be alone.  Good thing, my parents let me have my condo unit.  Though yiayia did not like the idea that I live independently, they did not have any choice but to let me live alone.

I can do anything I want without asking any consent from others.  I can drink, eat crackers or anything in room or in my house.  No one nagged me to clean up the mess.  Living alone is a good thing.

Or it had been.  My fingers tightened at the wheels as I entered the parking space of our building.  I have lived in this place for almost a decade.  It became a home for eight months when George lived here.  But now, it has turned to a my house again.  I  will be damned if she hadn’t imprinted herself at my unit.  From quiet and peaceful, it became cozy, lovely and homey when she was here.  Now that she is gone—it became empty and full of echoes.

I missed the mornings where I wake up early to cook and fix our breakfast and seeing her wearing my shirt as she joined my morning coffee.  Every walls in my house reminds me of her.  They made me feel guilty of the words I told her that blasted afternoon.  Those hurtful words that tears on her eyes and wet her cheeks.

I thought escaping the house and staying in the office is better.  But it wasn’t.   I remembered the way I proposed to her for our temporary marriage and her surprise birthday gift to me.  In a span of eight months, she managed to ruin my house and my office.  They weren’t relaxing and peaceful place to stay in. I’d tried very hard to forget and move on after the messy break up, but I can’t.

I miss her.  It has been three weeks and I miss her like hell.  I went to the mini bar and reached for my favorite drink.  I poured some on the glass and drank it straight.  I am suffering from acute-and-deserved-guilty conscience.  I was nothing but a jackass when I told her those hurtful words.  I even remembered my words towards our baby.  I don’t want her to get rid of him.  I wouldn’t know how would I react if she would agree to abort it.  Accident or not, I shouldn’t have reacted like that towards her.  I owed her an apology—a really big one.  She would probably wouldn’t talk to me or throw it in my face, but I will try.  I need to talk to her and talk about us.

If there is any proof I need how wrong I had been, I found her checkbook in her empty underwear drawer, except for a colored panties found in the farthest corner of the drawer next to the black leather checkbook.  I flipped through the ledger and found a dozen of entries.  Looking and anlyzing the ledger, I realized that she barely touched the money that had been deposited to her account each month.  I smiled when I looked at the entries because  am having a hard time understanding them.  She has the worst handwriting I have ever seen.