Chapter 2

"You have to believe his words," Will said. 

He had taken me to my apartment and was making me coffee right now.

"I can't, Will! When he said those words to me, I felt like dying. I'm not someone to be loved," I protested. 

"Lisa, what makes you think that you can't be loved?," he asked, handing me the mug. 

"Are you really asking me that? You know why!," I said. "I fool around with so many men I don't know just because I don't want to do it with men who know me. I don't have feelings or anything! I don't have empathy! I can't sympathize with people! I don't care about anyone! How can I be loved?". 

"Stop lying to yourself!," he said. "Who said you don't have empathy? You say you can't sympathize with people and here you are studying to become a doctor. People who can't understand other people's pain can never put themselves in so much stress to become a doctor". 

"But, that's just a profession! A person that can be loved doesn't have the flaws I have. Nobody can ever love a person like me!", I said. 

"Lisa, you only have those flaws because you want to have them! Me and Sam never forced you to come to the Red Venus with us. You only went with us because you wanted to! You were drowning in an abyss of stress. And you went to the Red Venus with us because you wanted relief and you became dependant on that relief to help you", he said. "Lisa, if Miles says he loves you then that means he does. And when you love someone, you don't see their flaws. Maybe, that is the reason he loves you even after knowing what kind of a life you live". 

His words had me dumbfounded. I couldn't say anything to him. The thought that someone could love me never crossed my mind and Will's words were not encouraging me at all. 

"Will, you should leave", I said. "Whatever you're saying doesn't make any sense to me. You're just saying all that stuff to make me feel better but it's not working. So you should leave, Will!". 

"You can say whatever you want, Lisa! But you know very well that you don't have the guts to hear the truth", he said. "You're doing all of this stuff to yourself because you don't want to let your parents down. You'll let yourself be used and screwed but you won't ever tell your parents that you're under so much stress and that you wanna quit because you care so much about them. You're killing yourself, Lisa. I know you are!". 

"Will, please leave! I told you that everything you're saying is useless. Please leave, Will!", I said. 

I was on the verge of tears. No one knew me better than Will and Sam. 

Every single word he said hurt me like daggers. He was speaking the truth- the truth I didn't wanted to hear.

"Lisa, you've spent all the semesters of your university life like this. Now that we're about to finish university, please, please try to change! Become the old you. Become the girl that you were before. Become the ambitious and positive girl I befriended in the first week of university", he said. "Please don't let yourself be used like this every Friday, Lisa! I really worry about you a lot. Please! You've literally destroyed your life". 

"I was never an ambitious and positive girl, Will! You can let yourself be screwed every Friday and here you are telling me that I need to stop fucking around?!", I said. "And I told you that you should leave. Do you want me to throw you out of the apartment now?". 

"I'll leave but I know that whatever I've said to you has really impacted you.  You'll definitely change, Lisa. You'll try to fix things", he said, making his way towards the door. "And I've only had sex once with some girl I met in the Red Venus and that too was not my choice. I was drunk and she took advantage of me. I never had sex after that, Lisa 'cause I don't want people I don't love to fuck me. I only ever wanted to have sex with someone I wanted to spend my entire life with. You told me you wanted the same thing. But look at what you've become, Lisa! You've become the worst version of yourself!". 

"Shut up!", I shouted. 

But before he could hear me, he had left. 

My tears started to flow now that he had gone. 

Everything he had said was true. I was only here because of my parents. I was always told that I had to become a doctor and I had no other choice. I had wanted to become an author. I knew being an author didn't require any good grades but I couldn't bring myself to get bad grades in school because I wanted to get into a good university. I did get into the university I wanted to but I didn't knew that the stress level would be even more higher than it was in highschool. 

In highschool, masturbation had been my source of relief. But in university, it didn't seem to do the thing for me. I had to had sex to relieve myself. And before I knew it, I had become very dependant on it. 

I had to do do it every Friday. It didn't matter whom I was doing it with. It just had to be a stranger. I could never do it with anyone I knew. I had never even imagined that I would do it with Miles. But at that moment, I couldn't think of anything. I regretted doing it with him just because of the words he had said to me and one of those words was love. 

My entire existence hated the word 'Love'. And it was all my Dad's fault. 

My parents had a very happy marriage. Everything was very beautiful. Due to their happy marriage, I wanted to get married. But when my mother told me about his affair when I was fifteen years old, my entire world shattered. 

My mother told me that he had an affair with his cousin's daughter who was twenty two years old at that time. She told me that they had met on a wedding we had attended last September and it was November when she broke this news to me. 

She told me that he spent the entire night in the living room while she waited for him in their bedroom. He would be on video call with a very young woman. She would send him voice notes asking him to call her more earlier than he used to in the night so that she could show him more. She told me she would tell him that if he didn't call her earlier then it would be his fault that he would miss out on surprises. She told me when he went on his so-called business trips, he actually went to see her. He sent her pictures of his international travels. He sent her money. He did everything for her that he didn't do for my mother. 

I had thought that she was the only woman that was my father's side chick. But I had been wrong. She was my father's only side chick at that time. He had had multiple in the past and had more in the future meanwhile my mother always tolerated his actions and never opted for divorce. She never wanted to leave him.

When my mother confronted him about it he said that he never talked to her and that she was not his type at all. He deleted all of the chats from his phone and when my mother asked him about the money he had sent to her, he said it was for her mother and not her. 

Ever since that day, life had not been the same for me or my mother. I had always thought that love looked like my parents' beautiful marriage but now, I never wanted to get married. I never even wanted to have sex in my life but later I came to realize that you didn't need to love anyone to have sex. I knew it was a sin to have sex before marriage but I knew i could never bring myself to love or marry anyone after what I had seen in my parents' lives.

Other than this, I knew exactly what it felt like to be betrayed too as my best friend from highschool had betrayed my trust very devastatingly. She had destroyed me by her actions. She never was someone who talked a lot but the things she did had a big impact on me. 

After all of the things that had happened to me, I wanted to stay away from anything that required love and trust because I had had a fair share of those things in my life. 

I know I am very young to think all of these things but just because I'm young doesn't mean I know nothing. 

If Miles loves me, it doesn't mean I need to return his love. I would have to stay away from him. I can't even look him in the eye now. 

The mere thought that someone is in love with me makes me wanna puke because to me it is just a lie- an act we perform to not feel lonely. True love doesn't exist. And if it does, it is not for me. I am not made for stuff like this because if I would have been, I wouldn't have been this way.