CHAPTER 14 - Sex with the boyfriend part 2

**CLARA

It’s one of my dreams to go back there, but that dream can’t come true when I work every day at a diner downtown, my salary isn’t high, and the little I earn is only to keep and pay the rent of the small house I rented in a distant neighborhood.

I left my parents' house too young, and since then I have had to turn around to survive and a trip to another continent is out of the question now.

That’s what happens when you become an adult and independent, you need to learn to get by one way or another, I don’t have a good connection with my family recently and you’re probably wondering why.

My mother died of cancer when I was seventeen, it was from there that my life began to go down the drain, imagine losing the person you loved most in the world at that age.

That’s what happened to me, we didn’t have a good living, but we survived very well with my parents' jobs, but months after my mother’s death, my father met a woman at his job.

I never liked the woman, but he seemed enchanted and bewitched that he could not notice the falsehood that the woman passed, despite my will, they married and together to our house moved her two children.

A couple of children made my life a living hell together with their mother, but my father was too blind to notice the evil they caused in me.

So when I turned eighteen I left home without looking back, do not misunderstand me, I love my father, but I do not put my feet in that house anymore due to how much I suffered at the hands of the three.

Of course, everything is my stepmother’s fault, and her children never really liked me, some people are lucky to have a second wonderful mother, but that was not my case.

Alissa used to say that my life is like that of a modern Cinderella who suffered at the hands of bad stepmothers and children and that the prince charming named Pietro would one day come to Brazil to rescue me.

But I never created expectations, my life is dull and even sad if observed from some angles, so I try not to call when others talk about my dating with Pietro because it is this relationship at a distance that brightens my nights and dawn.

When I cry missing my mother or even the affection of someone who loves me I call Pietro who answers at any time even by the difference of four hours in time zone.

I still keep in touch with my father and we even meet sometimes, but after I depart from home he understood that I would never get along with his current wife.

Had a time I even blamed him for tarnishing the memory of my mother when marrying a few months after the death of the woman who loved for so many years, he was devastated when he lost my mother to the disease, I did not want the union of Soraya with my father, but he was happy and I could never interfere in his happiness after such a sudden loss.

That is, I have only Pietro and Alissa at the moment, and since my boyfriend lives in another country, I have only Alissa most of the time.

I end up finding some photos I took of Pietro on the trip, he is not very different, just matured and became more beautiful than ever.

There are photos of the two of us together in some sights of Rome, but there are also videos from the gallery exhibition that I participated in next to it.

A thin tear runs down my cheek thinking of the longing I feel, sometimes I wonder how two people can fall in love in such a short time.

I made that trip with the savings I saved from my old job, I worked as an administrative assistant for a large company, but I was discharged after the huge company went bankrupt, something I never imagined could happen, but it happened.

I turn off the phone settle in bed, hug the pillow letting some tears wet my face as I close my eyes and cry.

My sensitivity mixed with the longing I feel for people who do not help at all.

I lie awake for another hour waiting for the miserable pain to go away, and when it finally happened, I fall asleep with eyes swollen by crying.

NEXT DAY...

“Your face looks terrible, friend...", I roll my eyes listening to Alissa’s voice behind me as I clean the counter at the diner where we work.

“Do not sleep very well.", I murmur downcast and to notice my expression she approaches with a command in her hands.

“Were you thinking about your family again, Clara?

I sign with my head after waking up with a post on my father’s Instagram, it was a picture of the four smiling at the camera, but what hurt me was reading the caption "Complete Family", it was like getting stabbed right in the chest.

And as if that wasn’t enough, when I was coming from work I found the four of them coming from somewhere, I quickly deviated so that they wouldn’t see, but confirmed my father’s happiness by seeing him laughing at something that one of the twins told.

At first, I felt jealous of someone, I felt jealous of the twins for being able to enjoy all the affection that my father gave him, I wanted to be the one he hugged while walking.

“I told you those people don’t deserve any tears from you...", Alissa says in a firm tone but softens seeing that witnessing all that did me harm.

“It was not a lie, he is happy and seems not to remember me, can not remember his own, his life is complete without me...", grumble ending my task.

“He is your father and still loves you, he just has to stop being blind and see it. You’re too good to be suffering for people who like to hurt you, Clara."

I’m almost responding when the door of the diner opens revealing a group of customers, I mention serving them, but my friend prevents me: