Isabela Part 3

“Not at all! You looked like Chaves having a fit, so I shook you trying to help, and then you started blinking at me like a statue. And when you came to, you punched me in the nose, yelling that you had trauma and not to touch you,” he narrates, making ten thousand hand gestures to illustrate where I hit him. “It hurt like hell, man. Why didn’t Bill ever get punched? That's so unfair!”
“Because he didn’t shake me, you idiot!” I shout, taking a sip of my beer. “And as for your curiosity, I was in control with him and...”
“Stop lying!” Harry interrupts, gulping down his drink and glaring at me with narrowed eyes. “Bill let you take charge?”
“Yes.” I wink at him, enjoying how genuinely shocked he looks.
“He wouldn’t do that. I know my friend; he has issues with that...”
“What issues?” Ana and I ask in unison.
“Oh, come on! I’m not a snitch,” he says, laughing while Ana takes off a white sneaker and angrily throws it at him, which he dodges, making the shoe lightly hit the glass of the window. “I almost spilled the guy's preferences.”
“Why start talking if you don’t plan to finish?” I ask, huffing, my curiosity burning a hole in my stomach. “And who’s the girl he kicked me for?”
“So, we hired an influencer to promote Ravina,” Ana answers before Harry can, stretching her legs on the red carpet. “And I don’t know how it happened, but he’s really been going crazy for this woman.”
“She’s got such an attitude.”
“Really, Harry? You didn’t like her?” I ask, intrigued.
I know I’m some kind of jerk, but I can’t help but feel nothing but happiness. I like that my friends aren’t swallowing Bill’s “current” girlfriend. I don’t want to feel replaced. I know it sounds childish, that my feminist side drowned in the shower, but I can’t count how many times I’ve been the exact opposite of what’s expected from an adult.
“Of course! Such a snob...”
“She’s kind of full of herself, yeah, friend. She won’t even look us in the eye,” Ana confirms, glancing at her watch.
“Josiah is messaging you, Ana. He said he’s coming to pick us up.”
Ana nods at our friend while I bite the inside of my cheek and gently rock my niece in my arms. Ana takes her phone from my hand since the child has fallen asleep. She types something, and why the hell am I looking at the phone? I wish I could “unsee” it; I’m shocked to see her blushing because her fiancé just sent her a nude.
Damn! Now I’ve seen Josiah’s junk!
“Gross, dude!” I hiss quietly so I don’t wake the child. “I didn’t want to see that snake down there!”
She blushes even more, hiding the phone between her breasts, then looks away from me, taking sips of her juice with a naughty expression. She bats her long lashes in my direction.
“Spill! Who was the jerk that spray-painted that on your door, and why?” she interrogates, raising an eyebrow at me.
I take a deep breath and glance between Ana and Harry, seeing how my buff friend clenches his jaw. It’s incredible how all the fun drains from his body when we touch on this subject. And even though sunlight streams in through the window behind him, illuminating his slim, muscular body, he still takes on a darker, more protective air.
“I met him at our old school, a year before I met you,” I start to recount, feeling my eyes heat up, but I promised myself, ever since Nate left my room a week ago, that I wouldn’t shed another tear over him. I’ve hardened again. Now, Nate will need a lot to break my shell. And he better watch out because I’m ready to bulldoze over him. “I was fifteen. Remember Caíque?”
“Oh, that jerk who loved bullying people at school?” Ana’s lips curl with disdain. “I remember he was calling me fat when we first met, and you threatened him with a razor.”
“Yeah. He used to corner me at school. He had discovered my trauma with touch. Back then, I didn’t know how to defend myself; I would freeze like a statue, and Caíque would do whatever he wanted. Then I met Nate. He defended me against that jerk; he understood my traumas...”
Finally, I share every detail of my relationship with Nate with them. Every little note from my past that I’ve never told anyone, not even Ana. I recount how my trauma started, how I began to repel people, describing each monster that nested in my mind until I got to the point where I began to imagine cuts on my wrists. And I know Harry would like to know why I did that because he looked at them with pity, but he always had the sensitivity not to ask.
I started self-harming to cope with all the pain right after losing Nate. But I realized that I couldn’t talk about the cuts without mentioning that night, about when my mind crumbled, when I killed the old Isabela, when I drank from the red waters of rage and became who I am today.

I explain to both of them in detail about the day everything changed, when my mind broke in such a way that I decided never to be weak again. I vowed to never let people touch me to hurt me again. The day I lost the only thing that held my sanity, I lost myself too, and something else took over my body. Something capable of retaliating, of inflicting pain on me and others.
And when I finish, Harry is crying, his fists clenched at his sides. He doesn’t make a sound or grimace; his face just overflows with sadness. Ana has her arms wrapped around me in a side hug, softly sobbing. But I don’t shed a single tear.
“And that’s it. Today I’m the result of all of this. And a little of what he made me. Now Nate wants to finish me off; he wants to get me out of his way at all costs because he can’t stand my presence. And you know how I am; I won’t back down.”
“I’m so sorry, Isa, that all this happened to you! You’re one of the few people I feel is really special,” Harry says, wiping his eyes. I know he hates crying in public. Every time something bad happens, he puts on sunglasses so no one can see him cry. That’s how it was when he lost his brother, and then when Ber died too... But today he’s here, crying openly. I know the weight of the pain I carry isn’t easy, and people are shocked by it. I’ve been carrying this burden for a long time, like a solitary wanderer holding a heavy load on my shoulders. “I want to kill that bastard of your stepfather, and the only thing stopping me from going after your ex and ruining his face is that your stepfather is the one I’d be willing to skin alive, to rip his bones apart right now!”
“Stop it, Harry! Anyway, I think you should change colleges, Isabela,” Ana says, kissing my cheek in a long, tender way, her coconut scent filling the room. “There are other places where you can study without having all these ghosts in your life. After all, from what you said, his sister, who always tormented you, also studies here. I’m worried. You know, you’re tough, really badass, yes. But you’re also fragile, broken. Do you think it’s worth getting hurt like this, feeling your skin burn in a fight with someone who used to mean so much to you? Because if there’s anyone who can tell you that you’re going to feel like your skin is on fire—not in a good or erotic way, but burning, bubbling until the pain is unbearable—it’s me. It’s horrible to fight against someone we love.”
“First of all, I don’t love that son of a bitch!” I retort, annoyed, but I try to calm down, remembering that Ana wants what’s best for me. So I exhale, then swallow hard. “Friend, it’s not that simple. It was a struggle to get here. I want to and will see this through to the end because I don’t think it’s fair to run away like a coward just because he’s a spoiled brat. A normal person would just move on, damn it. But Nate wants to keep bothering me,” I say too quickly, starting to feel the urge to punch him.