breathe | r lewandowski

13

"Who is she, Robert?"

"Jagger she's just-"

"Just what, exactly?"

I clenched my fists, getting angrier by the moment at Jagger's overpowering stubbornness and her lack of tolerance or willingness to listen to me for longer than a second.

My blood was pumping faster and I was sweating, angry and confused as to why she was lashing out like this all of a sudden.

She stood in front of me in her bedroom, my training jersey covering her whole body and her dark hair curled around her face. God, she was so beautiful when she was angry.

"Calm down, she's just a friend that-"

"And you touch all your friends like that, look into their eyes like that and hold them like that? You do that to Mario and Manuel and-"

"Shut up. You need to shut the hell up, Jagger."

"Oh I do, do I?"

"You know, I thought you were cool. I thought we got along and I was stupid enough to think that you and I were on the same page. Clearly not," I said, pulling on my jumper and grabbing my keys and wallet from her bedside table, "I don't even know why you're acting so possessive, it's not like we were even together."

Her eyes glazed over with hatred and fire. She was extremely good at hiding her emotions compared to when she poured her heart out to me on my doorstep just three weeks ago.

"Just get out. Get out of my house and don't fucking come back."

So I did. I marched out of her house thinking I'd won an argument. I slammed my car door shut and sped away from her house, probably breaking the speed limit.

I was so angry, heated, fuming. If she'd have just let me explain that the girl she was talking about was Klara, then maybe she wouldn't have acted so wildly in the moment, and she probably wouldn't be crying on her bedroom floor holding my jersey close to he face because I've gone, and I wasn't coming back.

Speeding down the highway, I drove to a bar in the city. Desperate for a drink, I parked up and practically sprinted through the centre, dodging people just so I could quicker forget everything that happened rather than have it eat away at my brain and demolish my heart, making it freeze over again because that was exactly how I felt as time ticked on.

I ordered a beer and folded my arms, leaning on the bar surface with a face like thunder. I finished my first pint in one go, ordering two more to speed up the evening before I could get a taxi home and fall into bed, forgetting about training tomorrow morning and having Pep believe me because the idiot believed every lie I fed him.

Spiteful, I know.

"Hey stranger."

Letting out a bitter chuckle, I turned my glance away from Dylan who, for some absurd reason, had decided that it was a great idea to sit next to me.

She, if anybody, knew that if I was alone at a bar, I hadn't had a good day.

"What do you want?"

"Nice to see you too, Robert."

I took a swig of my beer, not looking at her.

"If your here to gloat and tell me all about your new life and fantastic relationship then you can fuck off, Dylan."

Dylan laughed. She had a high pitched girly laugh that reminded me of a little school girl with pink bows in her hair. The only bows a girl like Dylan ever wore were on her underwear.

"So bitter, so cold. You haven't changed a bit."

Ignoring her, I sipped my beer in a gentlemanly fashion and avoided buying her a drink in a rather un-gentlemanly fashion. Not that I cared what she thought, I never did.

"You're not going to talk to me? Not even one nice word, small talk?"

"Cut to the chase, and I'll talk to you."

From being around Dylan for two years is managed to learn that this girl had a tendency to only take an interest in you when she wanted something. It was a quality that I hated about her, but there were plenty of other things that made her worth the effort.

At the time, anyway.

Dylan sighed, running a hand through her distressed hair. She was wearing a pair of ripped jeans and a bomber jacket with a stripped t-shirt underneath. She was different and that's what drew me to her in the first place. People expected me to date a model or an actress, not some indie girl who listened to The Smiths and smoked cigarettes and got high on the regular.

"Alright, I will. I want you back."

"You want me back? You want me back and you didn't even give me a reason for breaking up in the first place? You want me back? Go fuck yourself, Dylan."

She scoffed, jumping off the barstool and slamming ten euros down on the bar.

"No wonder your relationships don't last. Good luck starting for Bayern again this season."

I just ignored her insults that she hurled at me as she walked out of the bar, staggering all over the place under the influence of six-too-many pints of beer.

Dylan was rude, aggressive, self-centred and childish, but she was beautiful. I told myself that if I had managed to love her at some point in my messed up time here in Germany, then I can love anybody. I just needed somebody who loved me back.

And that was easier said that done. Jagger was everything I didn't expect her to be. She was kind and generous, selfless and bubbly, and she was beautiful. I enjoyed being with her and I wanted to be with her right then. But what I didn't like about her was the fact that she, out of all people, assumed the worst of me when all this time, she had found the best in me.