CATEGORY: Relationships

Part 2

“Why do I still want her when she keeps hurting me?”

Saturday afternoon. Alkis paced restlessly around the house. From the living room to the kitchen and back again, without any real reason to move from one room to the other.

Every so often, he walked over to the sofa, where he had deliberately left his phone, and checked the screen.

Nothing.

No message. No reply from Irini.

He would put it back down and walk away, each time determined not to check it again.

A few minutes later, he would find himself standing in front of it once more.

It had been almost two days since they had last spoken, and Alkis had already exhausted every possible explanation his mind could come up with.

He kept replaying their last conversation. He tried to remember every word she had said, the tone of her voice, the look in her eyes, even the small pauses between their sentences. His mind returned to the same moments again and again, like a film stuck on the same scene, playing endlessly on a loop. He would linger over something she had said, examine it from every possible angle, settle on one interpretation, then discard it minutes later and start all over again. Then he would move on to something he had said. Had his tone been wrong? Had something upset her without her showing it? Had there been something in her eyes that he had failed to notice?

And every time, he arrived at the same place.

He couldn’t understand.

And because he couldn’t understand, his mind pressed play again.

Again.

And again.

Until the sound of his phone abruptly interrupted the scene that had been playing in his head for what felt like the hundredth time.

Alkis jumped.

For a fraction of a second, there was only one thought in his mind.

Irini.

He rushed towards the sofa. He tripped over the footstool, stumbled and, trying to catch his balance, slammed his knee against the corner of the low coffee table.

“Ah, fuck!”

He barely had time to feel the pain.

As his body fell awkwardly into the space between the coffee table and the sofa, he stretched out his arm, grabbed the phone and answered without even looking at the screen.

“Yeah?”

For a moment, he almost held his breath.

“What do you mean, ‘yeah,’ man? Where are you?”

Alkis closed his eyes.

Alexandros.

For a few seconds, he remained sprawled on the floor, his back against the sofa, one hand clutching his knee and the phone pressed to his ear.

The disappointment hit him so suddenly that it almost hurt more than his knee.

It wasn’t her.

“Hey, Alexandros…”

Something in the way he said his name made his friend fall silent.

“Okay… what’s wrong with you?”

Alkis looked down at his knee, already beginning to turn red.

“Nothing.”

There was a brief silence at the other end of the line.

“I see. Irini stood you up again?”

Alkis straightened abruptly.

“She didn’t stand me up. It’s just…”

He stopped.

He was already searching for the words that would make her behaviour sound more reasonable. An explanation she hadn’t given him, but one he was once again ready to provide on her behalf.

“Just what?”

“I don’t know, Alexandros. Maybe something happened to her. Maybe she just needs some time. She’s been under a lot of pressure at work lately too…”

“Right.”

Alkis knew that “right” all too well.

“Don’t start.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“That’s the problem. I can hear you not saying anything.”

Alexandros laughed at the other end of the line.

It was hard to hide anything from someone who had known you since kindergarten. Alexandros had seen Alkis in love, angry, hurt, excited, disappointed. He knew his silences almost as well as he knew his words.

And over the past few months, he had understood far more about Alkis’s relationship with Irini than Alkis realised he had told him.

“I’m coming over.”

“No, Alexandros, you don’t have to. I’m…”

The line went dead.

Alkis slowly lowered the phone and looked at the screen.

“…fine,” he finished to himself.

Then he looked down at his aching knee.

Even that didn’t believe him.

Three hours later, the coffee table was covered with empty sushi boxes, crumpled napkins, and bottles of Japanese beer.

Alkis sat slumped into the sofa, one leg stretched out in front of him, his injured knee already beginning to bruise. Alexandros sat across from him, listening.

He had been listening for three hours.

“She wasn’t like this in the beginning,” Alkis said for what must have been the hundredth time.

Alexandros said nothing.

“She was… I don’t know how to explain it. She was different.”

A faint smile appeared on Alkis’s face, as though an image had suddenly come to life before him, one that only he could see.

He began telling him about the night they first met. That evening in early autumn. Her smile. The way she had looked at him from across the group. Their first date by the sea and the hours they had spent talking as though they had known each other forever.

Then he remembered their first kiss.

The morning messages.

The evenings when she would curl up in his arms.

The trips they had planned while lying together on the sofa.

Their laughter.

Those times Irini had called him for no other reason than to hear his voice.

And as he spoke, something in his expression began to change.

The anxiety of the past two days slowly faded, giving way to a tender kind of nostalgia. It was as though he were no longer describing the woman who had ignored him for two days, but another Irini altogether. The Irini of those first few months. The one he had kept alive inside him, almost untouched by everything that had happened since.

“It can’t all have been a lie, Alexandros.”

Alexandros looked at him.

“I never said it was.”

“Then something happened.”

There it was again.

Alexandros remained silent.

“Something must have happened,” Alkis continued. “A person can’t be like that with you and then suddenly change for no reason.”

And once again, he began searching.

Had he moved too fast?

Had he put too much pressure on her?

Was she afraid of getting attached?

Had someone hurt her in the past?

Had the intensity of his feelings frightened her?

Should he have given her more space?

Alexandros watched him in silence.

It wasn’t the first time he had heard his friend talk this way about a woman.

That was what worried him most.

The faces changed. The stories came with different details. A different name, a different beginning, different promises, different arguments.

And yet, sooner or later, Alkis always ended up in the same place.

Sitting across from him, trying to understand someone who had hurt him.

Remembering every beautiful moment with astonishing clarity while finding an explanation for everything that had made him suffer.

Wondering what he himself could have done differently.

Alexandros picked up his beer and took a sip.

For a moment, he considered saying it.

Reminding him.

Of Thalia.

Of Teresa.

Of that summer years ago when Alkis had spent almost every waking hour with his phone in his hand, waiting for another woman to decide whether she wanted him or not.

He didn’t.

Not yet.

Because he knew his friend.

And he knew that right now, Alkis wasn’t ready to hear that he had been here before.

Alkis didn’t see a pattern.

He saw Irini.

And he was desperately trying to find, somewhere inside the woman who was hurting him now, the woman who had once made him believe that this time the story would end differently.

When Alexandros left, the house sank back into silence.

Alkis closed the door behind him and stood motionless in the hallway for a while. While his friend had been there, there had been conversation, laughter, beer—even a few precious minutes when he had managed to forget.

Now there was nothing left to protect him from his own thoughts.

He went back into the living room.

The empty sushi boxes were still scattered across the coffee table. The bottles, the glasses, the crumpled napkins. On the sofa, exactly where he had left it, was his phone.

He stared at it from across the room.

For a moment, he didn’t want to touch it.

He already knew.

Still, he walked over.

He lit up the screen.

Nothing.

Irini hadn’t replied.

He sat down on the sofa and placed the phone beside him.

Why?

The same question again.

Why had she changed?

Why wasn’t she talking to him?

Why had she let him believe she wanted this relationship if she didn’t?

Why had she made plans with him?

Why had she told him she missed him?

Why did she always come back even more affectionate after pulling away?

And then came the most painful “why” of all.

Why, after everything she was putting him through, did he still want her?

He rose from the sofa and dragged himself over to the window. Outside, life moved at its usual pace. Cars passed along the street, lights flickered on and off in the apartments across the way, people made their way home.

And there he stood, trying to understand how someone who, only a few months ago, hadn’t even existed in his life had somehow gained so much power over the way he felt.

He rested his forehead against the glass.

He missed Irini.

Not the way you simply miss someone who isn’t there. Her absence had taken on a weight of its own. He could feel it in his body, in his chest, across his shoulders, like something heavy had settled over him, making it difficult to breathe freely.

What he wouldn’t have given at that moment for the phone to ring.

To see her name on the screen.

To hear that familiar “hello” at the other end of the line and, within seconds, have everything come to an end. The anger. The anxiety. The endless whys. To hear her say she had missed him. To have her ask to see him. To have her become the Irini he knew again.

He closed his eyes.

The evening felt unbearably sad without her.

He turned and looked around the living room.

The house hadn’t changed. The same furniture, the same things, the same dim light he usually left on in the evenings. And yet everything looked different.

Empty.

The sofa where Irini would sit with her legs tucked beneath her. The corner where she would leave her bag. The glass she usually placed beside his. The kitchen where she had once stood barefoot, wearing one of his T-shirts, laughing because she had somehow managed to burn even the toast.

There were little traces of her everywhere.

And she was nowhere.

Alkis felt his eyes begin to burn.

He missed her laughter. Her scent. The way she would walk into the house and, without even realising it, fill the entire space. He missed the feeling of her body beside him on the sofa. Being able to reach out and find her there.

He even missed that brief moment before the doorbell rang, when he knew she was on her way and waited for her to arrive.

Now he was waiting again.

Only this time, he didn’t know if she would come.

And that difference was tearing him apart.

He took a deep breath and looked outside again.

For the first time, he realised just how deeply he had connected her presence to his own happiness. When she was there, the house felt alive. The day held anticipation. Tomorrow held plans.

Now the house was empty.

And the worst part was that he felt empty too.

One message.

Two words.

“I miss you.”

And he knew that if he saw those words appear on his screen, he would run back to her.

All the whys could wait.

As long as she came back.

And the longer he stood there thinking about it, the harder it became to resist the urge to do something.

Anything.

Anything to break the silence that was suffocating him.

He picked up his phone.

He opened their conversation and stared at the empty message box for a while.

There was so much he wanted to say.

He wanted to ask her why she was doing this to him. Why she kept disappearing. Why she kept leaving him wondering what was happening. He wanted to tell her that he was angry, that he was tired, that he couldn’t keep finding himself in the same place over and over again.

His fingers hovered motionless over the screen.

In the end, he wrote none of it.

He typed only:

“I miss you.”

He stared at the words for a few seconds.

He knew he probably shouldn’t send them. He knew exactly what Alexandros would say if he were still there.

For a moment, he considered deleting them.

He didn’t.

He pressed send.

And the moment the message went through, he felt something between relief and shame.

Relief because, even if it was only through two words, he had managed to reach out to her.

Shame because once again, she had been the one to pull away, and he had been the one to reach out first.

He placed the phone beside him.

A minute passed.

Then another.

He checked to make sure the message had been delivered.

She had read it.

So she was okay.

The first wave of relief lasted only a few seconds. His body relaxed, just briefly. At least nothing had happened to her.

Then came the next thought.

If she’s seen it, why isn’t she answering me?

The anxiety began to give way to anger.

She knew he was waiting. She knew he would be worried. How difficult could it be to write two words? An “I’m okay.” Anything.

He felt the anger rising inside him. For the first time, he didn’t immediately search for an excuse for her. It wasn’t work, exhaustion, or a difficult day. She had seen his message and had chosen not to reply.

Why are you doing this to me?

But almost immediately, the anger began to fade.

Because underneath it was something much harder to bear.

Fear.

What if she doesn’t want to answer me?

What if she wasn’t angry? What if she didn’t simply need a little time? What if, this time, her silence wasn’t just another one of those withdrawals that would eventually end with her coming back?

What if she had decided to leave?

His stomach tightened.

And then the anger almost completely disappeared.

He no longer wanted explanations. He no longer wanted to tell her how unfairly she was treating him. He didn’t even care who was right anymore.

He just wanted her to answer.

To give him some sign that she was still there.

And within the space of a few minutes, Alkis had moved from relief to anger, from anger to fear, and from fear to that now-familiar need:

for Irini to come back and make everything else fall silent.

The next few days passed slowly.

Alkis continued going to work, answering phone calls, talking to people, doing all the things he had always done. Except now he did them almost mechanically. A part of him was constantly somewhere else.

With his phone.

With Irini.

With the answer that never came.

Mornings were perhaps the hardest. For a few seconds, just after waking up, he would forget.

Then he would remember.

The first thing he did was reach for his phone.

No notifications.

And with the empty screen came that familiar weight in his chest.

As the days passed, anxiety began to mingle with sadness. He missed her. More than he wanted to admit. He caught himself remembering random moments they had shared. An evening when they had laughed until they cried. A morning when he had woken to find her asleep beside him. Something she had said. A touch. A look.

And his memories had a strange way of choosing what to show him.

Mostly, they brought back the Irini he loved.

Not the one who disappeared.

At times, he became angry.

And in those moments, things inside him seemed clearer.

He didn’t deserve this.

He had done nothing to justify being treated this way. Someone couldn’t enter another person’s life so deeply and then simply disappear without a word.

In those moments, he decided it was over.

If she messaged him, he wouldn’t reply.

If she called, he would make her wait.

This time, she would understand.

And then a few hours would pass.

The anger would fade.

And underneath it, the sadness would still be there.

And the fear.

What if it really was over?

He began avoiding his friends. He turned down two invitations to go out, offering flimsy excuses. He had no desire to sit around a table pretending to have a good time. He didn’t want to keep answering the same question.

“What’s wrong?”

More than anything, though, he didn’t want to hear what he already knew some of them would say.

Forget her.

Move on.

Stop waiting.

As if it were that simple.

The only person he couldn’t manage to avoid was Alexandros.

Alexandros didn’t ask him every day what had happened with Irini. He didn’t say, “I told you so.” He didn’t try to convince him to cut her out of his life.

He was simply there.

He would drop by the house for no particular reason. Call him to grab a coffee. Send him some stupid video in the middle of the day. Sometimes they talked about Irini. Other times, they didn’t even mention her name.

And he watched.

He watched his friend glance at his phone every time it made a sound.

He watched his eyes drift away for a few seconds in the middle of a conversation.

He heard him say he wasn’t hungry.

He watched him turn down nights out that, once, he would have been the first to suggest.

One day Alkis would try to convince Alexandros that he was done with Irini, and the next he would talk about her as though he were still waiting for her to come back.

Alexandros saw everything.

And the more he saw, the more something began to trouble him—something Alkis himself couldn’t yet see.

It wasn’t only that he was suffering over a woman.

It was the way he was suffering.

Alexandros knew this anxiety.

He knew this waiting.

Even the way Alkis withdrew from everyone else while waiting for one person to return felt familiar.

Alexandros had seen his friend like this before.

With another woman.

At another time.

In a different story.

And yet something about the story felt strangely the same.

He said nothing.

Not yet.

He simply stayed close.

Because he knew Alkis well enough to understand that, as long as he was still waiting for Irini, there was no room inside him for any other explanation.

But eventually, Alexandros reached his limit.

It was Friday night when he stopped by Alkis’s place. They had made plans to go out. Nothing special. A drink, some music, meeting up with two friends they hadn’t seen in a while.

Alkis had promised he would come.

But when Alexandros walked into the house, he found him sitting on the edge of the sofa in his boxers, unshaven. The clothes he was supposed to wear that night were still lying in a heap on the armchair.

“You’re not ready?”

“I’m not really in the mood.”

Alexandros looked at him.

“You were an hour ago.”

“Yeah… I’m just not anymore.”

He didn’t need to ask why.

As it had been for days, the phone was practically glued to Alkis’s hands.

“You messaged her again?”

Alkis didn’t answer.

“Alkis.”

“I sent one message.”

Alexandros took a deep breath.

“And?”

“Nothing.”

“What do you mean, nothing?”

“She saw it.”

“And didn’t reply.”

Alkis lowered his eyes.

“No.”

For a moment, Alexandros remained standing in front of him.

Then he really looked at his friend.

The tired eyes. The stubble he had allowed to grow. The way his body seemed to fold in on itself. Something of the Alkis he knew seemed to have receded, leaving behind a man exhausted by a wait he no longer knew would ever end.

And something inside Alexandros snapped.

“Get up.”

Alkis looked at him.

“What?”

“Get off the sofa.”

“Come on, Alexandros. I told you, I’m not in the mood.”

“I know. You haven’t been in the mood for anything for days except sitting here waiting for a woman who won’t answer you.”

Alkis frowned.

“Don’t you start too.”

“No. I am going to start.”

Alkis stared at him, surprised.

Alexandros rarely spoke to him like that.

“I’ve been watching you for days and I haven’t said a word. I listen to you explain what she might be thinking, what she might be afraid of, why she might be pulling away. I know more about what you imagine is going on inside Irini’s head than you know about what’s going on inside your own.”

Alkis got to his feet.

“What do you want me to do? Press a button and suddenly stop caring?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Alexandros looked at him for a few seconds.

“Stop searching for answers in her all the time and start looking at yourself for once.”

Alkis gave a bitter laugh.

“Great. Problem solved.”

“I didn’t say the problem was solved.”

Alexandros sat down across from him.

“I’m telling you I’ve known you for forty years. And I’ve seen you here before.”

Alkis froze.

“Here where?”

“Right here. With a different name on your phone screen.”

A heavy silence settled over the room.

Alkis didn’t answer. For a moment, it felt as though he had been struck by a blow he hadn’t seen coming. He knew exactly which stories Alexandros was talking about.

He knew the names he hadn’t needed to say.

“It’s not the same,” he finally said.

Alexandros looked at him without speaking.

“Irini is different.”

The words came quickly, almost defensively. As though Alkis needed to hear them more than his friend did.

“Maybe,” Alexandros replied calmly. “But I’m not talking about Irini.”

Alkis looked up.

“I’m talking about you.”

Something stirred inside him.

For a moment, faces, memories, old periods of waiting flashed through his mind. Nights he had spent trying to understand. Conversations he had analysed until there was nothing left to analyse. That familiar feeling that if he were just a little more patient, gave a little more, finally found the right way to do things, then this time the story would end differently.

He pushed the thoughts away almost immediately.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Alexandros didn’t react.

He stood up, picked up his jacket, and headed for the door.

Before leaving, he turned and looked at him.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe Irini really is different.”

He paused.

“But you, Alkis? Are you different this time?”

The door closed.

Alkis was alone.

For the first time in days, his eyes didn’t go to his phone.

He stood motionless, staring into the empty space in front of him.

Irini still hadn’t replied.

But now, among the countless questions he had about her, Alexandros had left one behind.

A question that was only about him.

And perhaps it was the one question Alkis still wasn’t ready to answer.

To be continued…