Chapter 2 – I see fire in your eyes
"After the encounter at the café, Julio and Mikaella kept in touch every day. They talked on the phone, went to the theater, cinema, and went out for dinner. She felt like she was living her fairy tale, and Julio was finally her prince charming. Every time she told her friends that she was going out with him, they scolded her.
'This guy is not for you!' Betina warned. Mikaella simply ignored her friend's advice.
'Are you sure it's the right time, my friend? Maybe you should get to know each other better. I'm not sure if I trust this guy,' Leona commented.
They had been friends since college, where David introduced them. Leona and David had met first, and Mikaella always suspected that her friend had a crush on her brother, who was her professor at the time. So, a relationship between the two would be totally unethical, especially for Leona, who was the most proper girl she had ever known. Her friend would never get involved with the professor, especially when that professor had the reputation of not taking any woman seriously. A reputation that Mikaella knew was not true, but David didn't care, as she didn't want to start any relationships at that time, so Leona was out of the game.
Leona and Betina were introduced at Mikaella's graduation, and the connection between them was immediate, even if it wasn't the type of connection Betina had hoped for. Since they joined forces, the three of them became inseparable. No problem or relationship had ever separated them until that moment.
Mikaella was blind, deaf, and mute. She ignored any advice given by her friends, and each day, she became more involved in the romance with Julio. She couldn't say that she disagreed with everything her friends said. Did she trust Julio completely? Of course not! In fact, she hadn't allowed herself to trust for a long time because her previous relationships had been one disappointment after another, and many of her exes had betrayed her trust. Perhaps that's why, this time, she just wanted to close her eyes and ignore any remnants of sanity, anything that would make her dive into pain again and truly suffer from her mother's death. That's what she needed at that moment, an illusion, a simple mirage against the suffering.
Mikaella saw her mourning apparently passing by with Julio. They were living in a modern fairy tale. They went out without a destination, danced, drank, and made love by moonlight. It was a true fairy tale, and Mikaella didn't want to wake up. But unfortunately, every Monday, she had to return to her gray cubicle in the city center. After all, her apartment rent wouldn't pay itself, and she had never been one to depend on anyone, even though she was the heiress of the Vergara Fortune. Her mother had left half of everything to her, and the other half to her brother. She wondered why nothing had been left for their father, but her mother had always been a sensible woman and must have had her reasons for that. To avoid being dependent solely on her mother's inheritance, Mikaella made sure to support herself. She only suffered from being a bit distant from her friends.
With her office job, there was hardly any time to go out, and the time that remained was spent with Julio. He was always attentive and said beautiful things to her. She didn't even worry that they hadn't officially become a couple in two months of being together. She understood that getting to know her father wouldn't be an easy task. Her mother, on the other hand, was charming, and she would surely love Julio's gallant ways. But maybe she wouldn't agree with the fact that he wasn't working yet. She always said that a man needed to work, even if the woman also worked. She said, 'A man who doesn't like to work, my dear, is no good.' And Mikaella would burst into laughter. She had been thinking so much about her mother lately. So much that her heart was getting tighter. She felt that she wasn't the woman her mother would be proud of. She wasn't living her dreams, locked in that office with all those dusty files, having to type a million boring reports. She wanted more, and she could have more. 'You can be anything you want, my little one.' That's what her mother used to say. Mikaella's life had always been based on her father's dreams for her. To study law at college when she actually loved literature, to have to read legal books when all she wanted was a romance, to wear a proper suit when she loved being free, wearing low-cut tops and red lipstick. After her mother's death, her dreams had gone dormant. She couldn't see any point in trying to achieve them when her mother couldn't see it. So, she followed her father's plans to the letter and abandoned her dreams. She had lived someone else's dreams for years, and now she was continuing to do so while her chest ached with emotion. She worked in a tiny cubicle in the city center, surrounded by work she didn't want to do. Everything was tediously fine until the day she met Julio in that café. He was a painter, handsome, seductive, and unemployed. But after all, he was an artist, a dreamer like Mikaella. He supported her dreams and always told her, 'I see fire in your eyes, Mikaella.' And Mikaella believed it. She distanced herself from her family and her friends because they always found flaws in Julio that she had never seen. She had a fight with Betina precisely because of the annoyance she seemed to have with him. An annoyance that she understood when Julio, being honest, told her that Betina had a problem with him because of their past relationship, something Betina had never told her. And this shook their friendship. Leona and Betina said that Mikaella was blind, but she ignored them. Because even though Julio had a thousand flaws, he was right about one thing: She had a fire in her chest. She knew she had that fire inside her, and that fire was slowly extinguishing while she was locked in that tiny office, living someone else's life. She needed a change, a real change, a change in her thoughts, her attitude, her life!"