Love, Novela [Completed]

12/02/17

Saturday, 12/02/17

It has been so amazing touring this city with Alejandro. It's been so magical. He knows this city's stories just like he does for Guadalajara, Morelia, and Mexico City. I shouldn't be surprised anymore. I want to just take off and see the rest of the world with him as my guide. I get a two-for-one, getting to know him and a new city at the same time. I've never been so happy.

I've never been so happy. And I've never been so miserable. I don't know how it's possible for the two emotions to exist so strongly at the same time. Sometimes all I feel is happy, and sometimes all I feel is miserable.

I thought confessing to Grace might make me feel better, like it has before. But that was different. Each time I've confessed to Grace before, I was repentant. Resolved. Finished. This time, I am resolved... to continue in my folly.

Grace's response was no worse than I expected. Not as bad as it could have been, honestly. I wonder if a small rebellious (unrebellious?) part of me hoped she would pull the plug - call my parents or something so someone would come and get me or whatever. Forcibly remove me from this situation, since I seem to have become physically incapable of doing it myself.

I am happy because I love Alejandro. I love him in a way that makes me think I need him more than food, or water, or air. I miss him when he's in the bathroom, to say nothing of his meetings. I've never had a thrill like I have when fixes his dark eyes and me and just stares, with his sort-of smile. Or when he says my name, slowly and with a Spanish accent - No-VEH-la.  I never want to hear anyone else it pronounce it ever again, not "Novella" (short "e") - just him, just like that. Everyone else should pay him to say it for them.

And I am so incredibly happy because he loves me. Every spare moment I replay his Starbucks speech over and over in my mind. It was painful at the time, horribly painful because I didn't know what I was going to do. I thought I was going to have to give him up. I wish I could go back and experience it again, knowing that I would come here with him, so I could just soak it up.

But even if he didn't say he loved me with words, he says it with his actions. Not just the little glances and smiles and treats and opening doors, but his restraint. He has been about to touch me a few times - my hand, my shoulder - and then stops. He told me he wouldn't touch me, and he hasn't.

It was weird last night to share a room with him. I've never shared a room with a man before (unless you count youth overnights where there was a chaperone to every 5 kids, strategically placed).  I was awake more than I slept. I suppose falling asleep on the plane didn't help, but it may not have made a difference. I could hear him breathing. I knew if I turned, I would see him. And he could see me. We've been a lot closer - a lot - but somehow this felt different. Just knowing that we were in a bedroom, just the two of us, and all he had to do was walk over and... we could have sex. Sex, that thing I've been trying to avoid all semest- well, my whole life. It's so close, and yet it hasn't happened.

I was all ready to fend him off. Verbally, physically, mentally. I knew what I was going to say, how I would shove him, slap him maybe, and then how I would get a cab back to the hotel. It was pretty grand. Then I could blame the whole thing on him, that lying pervert, and save some dignity.

But he never came over. He never tried anything. He didn't even look at me once I was in bed. It almost seemed like he wasn't interested, after all that. And to my chagrin, it occurred to me that I had imagined that scenario not because I was afraid of it, but because I wanted it. Because I was definitely disappointed that it didn't happen, and not just because I'd lost my escape route for the second time.

Oh yeah and there was the other daydream, the one where I didn't push him away. The one where I wondered how it would feel to let him kiss me... in bed. To really make out in a way that we haven't, that I never have. If he whispered my name, and brushed the hair from my face like he did that one night, and wrapped his arms around me...

This is bad. This is very bad.

And this brings me to why I am miserable. Alejandro is here, in a room with me, where I am spending approximately 50% of the time thinking about how in love we are, 30% about having sex with him (I can't write that word without italics), and the rest thinking about how fundamentally messed up this is, that I am staying with my professor, who is in love with me even though he is married to someone else, and my parents don't know about it because if I told them they would end it, because it is messed up.

I am a homewrecker. Not really, because Alejandro's home was pretty wrecked already, but not officially. Not legally. I can tell myself all day that he was heading for divorce eventually, but I can't actually convince myself that he isn't doing it for me. Especially since he basically said he was doing it for me, so we could get married. So we wouldn't keep sinning. Except, what part of it won't be sin? What part will be? What does it matter anymore?

I think it's the divorce that is really killing me. I keep trying to convince myself that it would have happened anyway, that there would be no way to stop him anyway. There marriage vows were broken when he slept with Ruby. The divorce is justified.

Except, that justifies it for Emily. Not for him. She may still want to reconcile. I don't know. And he doesn't care. He doesn't want to. How can I support that? How can I advocate for it? It is to my benefit, to be sure. But can I stand to benefit from something I don't even believe in?

This is the main cause of my misery. I am defying everything I have ever believed and said. I judged other people so harshly for such lesser transgressions. "Oh, Brandon takes the Lord's name in vain. How can he be a real Christian?" "The Olsons don't come to church all summer; it's like God's important to them except during fishing season." "Mark and Kelly are divorcing but they keep going to church like it's totally fine." 

So what then? I keep parading around with Alejandro in a sort of oddly chaste, secretly romantic relationship until he is divorced, then tell my family that I'm engaged and getting married even though I haven't finished college yet and my fiance is more than a decade older than me, and just try to bury down deep those feelings like this is all wrong and can't just magically work out? Yes, I guess that is exactly what I am going to do. And stay a virgin until my wedding night? Even though Alejandro has had sex with at least two women already and doesn't care whether I waited, and that this is so far from the type of marriage I'd envisioned it really doesn't seem to make a difference. I want to cling to something... but my whole world is crumbling. It's already crumbled. There is nothing to even hold on to.

But Alejandro. He is all I have now. My whole world is him. I think that's why all these thoughts involve him, all thoughts about him make me crazy. I am crazy.

Love makes me crazy. Love is crazy.

I love Alejandro.