36. Bill Me

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"Silvia! You okay?"

She nodded, blowing her nose with a shaky giggle from the kitchen. She'd pretty much jumped off of her chair when the video ended, trying in vain to wipe her tears away.

"But this isn't the video they have on YouTube," said Claudia, frowning.

Paola huffed. "'Cause it's not the official video."

"Damned jerk!" Silvia grumbled from the kitchen, lighting a cigarette and shaking her head.

Claudia's eyes were like grapefruits again. "He— He made this video for you?"

Silvia shrugged, still fighting back her tears.

Paola narrowed her eyes. "That place. It looked like a bus terminal."

"Yeah, that's where we met. Give me a mate and I'll explain the video to you guys."

She was still talking when Claudia handed her a mate, while Paola pointed at her empty chair. So Silvia spent ten times the length of the video explaining the zillion private jokes and winks they'd just seen.

They were hardly done when Paola's boyfriend came to pick her up, and Claudia decided to go home too. Silvia's dog happened to be around when she walked her friends to the yard fence, and decided to escort Claudia home.

"This ain't over," said Paola, kissing Silvia's cheek goodbye.

Silvia knew she meant they would talk about the video again later. Alone.

"Till it's over," she replied, smiling.

Silvia's brother came back from his Friday night in town and found her still awake, in bed with her tablet and her earphones on. He knocked and stuck his head into her room to say goodnight.

"Night, kiddo," muttered Silvia, forcing a smile, and turned to her tablet again as soon as her door was closed.

She was watching the clip for the hundredth time. Now that she was alone, she let emotion take over, and didn't fight back her tears.

Because it was just too much.

They'd only spent a couple of days together, but his jokes and his top-five song pretended to speak about feelings. He'd turned his hit into a love song with those images of the places where they'd been together. Yet he was far from being in love with her, and she wouldn't take any chances of feeling anything for him.

Well, anything more than what she already felt, which she still managed to keep within the boundaries of a friendly affection, deepened by gratitude.

Knowing herself, she'd assumed she'd fall head over heels for him, from the distance and without ever talking to him again. But the way they were staying in touch helped her to keep it real. She even tried to forget they'd had sex, and that conscious game of denial helped her to move on with her life.

She didn't want to find herself lost on that limbo she already knew all too well, living out of emails and pictures. She didn't want to lose touch with her people, her real life, again. She'd already been there. She'd just gotten out of it. Falling again would be plain emotional suicide, especially over something so abstract and unrequited, and she wasn't going to do it.

Period.

Knowing Jim a little, there was only one explanation to his clip: he was telling her he'd enjoyed meeting her, and he kept good memories from those two days together.

That was it.

However, she needed to tell him to cut the crap.

The next day she got his DM.

She typed and deleted her reply several times before sending it.

His answer made her smile.

Good. He'd gotten the memo.

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