Meet Eva King, a high-spirited manager in an international firm. She scraped her way up from zero to hero in the cold, hard world of power, money, and politics, where nothing and no one was going to get in her way.
Until handsome Sven came along. No...
This part of my story is going to involve pain, and some drama. Sorry, but love ain't a bed of roses, otherwise you would be fucking kidding yourself.
I, Eva Juliette King, confess that I am not perfect and that I do make royal fuck-ups in my relationships with people. After all, I am human, like you, and the rest of the world.
C'mon, even Michelle Obama and Ellen DeGeneres, make mistakes. Right? Maybe?
Surely, they've made mistakes.
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***
I stood frozen for at least a good minute, before I slowly shuffled like a zombie from The Walking Dead to my bedroom, closing the door with one hand, while my other hand choked my mobile phone in a tight clutch.
If mobile phones were alive, mine would be dead from asphyxiation.
I sat on the edge of my bed, staring at the photo in the message from Ingeborg. Just then, Sven opened the door and wandered into the room with a white towel loosely wrapped around his hips.
His wet, darkened, and slicked hair accentuated his high cheekbones, which flushed with a post-sex and shower glow.
"Eva, baby, what's the matter?" Sven frowned, running his fingers through his hair.
"Sven, take a look at this." My fingers trembled as I handed him my phone.
He took the phone, stared at the screen, scrolled down, and furrowed his brow.
Towering over my perched frame, he gazed at me with shards of pain flashing from his eyes. His fingers quickly loosened as I nabbed my phone from him.
"What happened, Sven?" I asked.
"Eva...She kissed me. I swear-" He looked up, and there it was. His pain and betrayal were rolled together like a cigarette ready to meet the scorching flames of a lighter.
"Why, Sven? Were you flirting with her? Is that a job requirement for being a bartender?" My eyes searched his, which were clouded with anxiety and fear.
No words came out of Sven's mouth. He stood there like a stunned mullet, frozen.
Bile worked its way up from my stomach to my throat, and I swallowed back, drawing in a deep breath of air. "Did you fight back? Or doesn't it matter? After all, a kiss is just a kiss, isn't it?"
The lyrics of "As Time Goes By" shot into my mind as I spoke those words, reminding me of Humphrey Bogart kissing Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. I pushed that film back into drawer number forty-seven in my memory bank and moved back to drawer number nine hundred and fifty-two, where I was, sitting with Sven.
"Eva, let me explain!" Sven reached out to grab my waist, but I fought back, smacking his hands off me.
"Pack your shit and get out!" I cried as the hot tears sped down my face like narrow, fluid streams rushing with torrid pain. Sven was now in the ash heap of history, along with the Kim Jong-Un, Pol Pot, and Idi Amin.
