Dimitris Part 2

“No...,” I said, as if I could now respond to something that happened so long ago. “You can’t.”
Then, another voice was heard, as if it were right beside me.
“Life. These racing beats prove that I’m alive.”
Aris...
The beats I felt in her chest...
“Can I sit in the front seat today? Just today, Dimi, please!”
I shook my head. Using a hallucinogen had been the worst idea I could have had.
Suddenly, I could barely see the road ahead. Multiple visions were blending together. My brother and I singing in the car with our father. Aris taking my hand to her chest so I could feel the racing beats of her heart...
When I tried to cut another car, one of the false visions merged with reality in a more vivid way. I saw a truck coming from the opposite lane, heading straight for me, and reacted instinctively, spinning the wheel and heading for the curb. I lost control and my car crashed into the guardrail on the side of the road.
The impact’s sound, my body being thrown forward by the crash, the airbag deploying...
The end of the singing. The silence of my father’s voice. My little brother’s anxious crying.
As I felt and heard all of that, with my car wrecked on the side of the road, I lost consciousness completely, being pulled into total darkness.
And as that happened, I experienced a momentary sense of peace.
Maybe dying was exactly like this...


***


Aris


September 26th.
It's been 3 days now. Not that I'm counting.
Okay, I am counting. In a very pathetic way.
I said I wouldn’t demand anything from him. But I don’t want to demand; I just want to... understand. Why did he do that? Why, after a night like that, did he just leave?
I didn’t try to call, since I don’t even have his number. But deep down, I’ve spent the last few days waiting for a call, even knowing that he probably doesn’t have my number either. How insane is that?
I didn’t look for him, but I still, like an idiot, hope that he’ll come looking for me.
Today is Iris’s class day. And I know I’ll be there, hoping he’ll pick her up at dismissal time.
Spoiler alert: he didn’t show up.
Iris was taken to class by her driver. It was the day I’d planned to stay later with her, but at the usual dismissal time, someone else came to pick her up.
Again, it was the security guard.
I sat alone on the classroom floor, my bag already in hand, thinking about everything. I didn’t want to go back to the dorm. Lizzie was worried about me, but I couldn’t tell her what happened. Maybe because I felt embarrassed that what she warned me about actually happened. Or, more likely, because I didn’t know if I could talk about it without crying like a little girl.
“Are you still here?” I heard a female voice and looked up to see Odília Magalos standing at the door.
How long had I been there?
“Oh... I... I’m leaving now...” I said, standing up.
“The city preliminaries will be in two weeks. Aren’t you going to stay to rehearse?”
Right... the competition...
I didn’t intend to compete seriously. But my boss couldn’t know that. So, yes, I would have to stay late again, under the pretext of rehearsing a new choreography. And I would do that, just to avoid presenting something so embarrassing in the first stage of the contest. But my plan was to spend most of that time studying, since my studies were calling for some attention now.
But... not tonight.
“Can I start tomorrow?” I asked. “I need to finish some college work today.”
“Sure. No pressure. Although... it would be great to have a national champion on our teaching staff.”

I forced a smile, although inside I was begging her not to rely on that. I had no plans to make it past the first stage; I had entered just to keep my job.
I said goodbye and left. That day, I had driven my car and, as soon as I got in, I thought for a few minutes about where I would go. Lizzie would ask questions that I still wasn't ready to answer.
I started the car and, when I pressed the accelerator, I drove almost automatically, taking a route I knew I would regret.
I stopped in front of the main entrance to the arena.
“There’s still time to back out...” I said to myself. “Just drive away and leave.”
But I didn’t do that. Defying all my sense of caution, I simply got out of the car and entered the arena.
Just like the last time I was there, the audience was screaming wildly, and I had to stop for a moment, looking at a motorcyclist who seemed to be flying right in front of us. It was both enchanting and frightening in almost equal measures, to the point where I couldn’t define which feeling predominated.
This time, I went to the top of the stands, where I thought I might have a better view, hoping to spot where Dimitris might be. I walked around, asking people who were cheering and shouting with the current performance to let me through. The smell of cigarette smoke was so strong that it made me cough insistently, as I wasn’t used to it.
Then I felt a hand grabbing my arm. And before I could turn around, I knew it was him. I would recognize his touch in any situation.
Before I could look at him, he simply started pulling me, leading me in the same direction I had come from.
Out of the arena.
Only when we were outside did he let me go, and we stood facing each other on the sidewalk, from where we could still hear the wild screams from inside.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” he asked me, and I could feel the anger seething in his voice.
It was only then that I fully took in his appearance. He had one arm immobilized against his body with a sling, and there was a bandage on his temple.
Instinctively, I lightly placed my hand on the bandage.
“What happened to you?” I asked, scared.
He allowed me to touch him, but only for a few seconds before using his free hand to push mine away.

"You can't come here, understand?" he said. "If Heber or Zoe had seen you..."
"I'm not afraid of your friends, Dimitris. What scares me is not knowing what’s happening with you."
"You know well the things I do, Aris. These injuries are nothing."
He was implying he had been in some motorcycle accident. For some reason, I thought that was a lie, but I wasn’t going to insist. Not at that moment.
"Then tell me what happened between us, Dimitris."
"Us? When did there ever exist an us, Aris?"
That hurt. More than it should have, since I knew I had to be prepared for anything when I went looking for him.
"It may not exist. But everything was fine, and suddenly you acted like you were furious with me."
"Isn't it a bit presumptuous of you to think that I could feel anger towards you? I don't feel anything for you."
Okay... that hurt again. He seemed intent on that.
"It’s not presumptuous. It was impossible to ignore the anger with which you left."
"I was having a bad day, and I told you the reasons for that."
"Then why do you seem to have been avoiding me since then? You didn't even pick up your sister from dance class."
"I just want to avoid giving you false hope that it meant something to me. And besides, Aris, I already got what I wanted from you. Why should I come looking for you again?"
And that was, without a doubt, the most painful of all the things he said.
"You can't be serious, Dimitris..."
He placed his free hand on the back of his neck and turned his face away, stopping his gaze on nothing, as if that conversation held no importance to him.
"You told me yourself that you wouldn’t be clingy and wouldn’t demand anything from me. You said that day you wanted to have sex, we had sex, and that’s it."