Returning Red

#1[ii]: Isabella Cosmo.

Her eyes scanned me and I tried my best to cover up my smile. She completely checked me out, observing every detail from the top of my head till where her eyes could reach beneath. To make her sight more convenient, I stood up and buttoned my blazer. 

And then I waited. I waited for her to say something but she was just silent. I waited for her to scream or shout or cheer or maybe even cry a little. I definitely expected her to rush over and hug me. But all I saw her do was bite her lower lip and stare at me blankly, emotionless, numb. 

Every day of 8 years flashed by my eyes as I watched her stare at me. All that suffering, all that pain, all those tears just for this day, to finally see her and this is her reaction. Nothing. No guilt, no embarrassment, no shame, no regret, no happiness, no excitement, no tears, absolutely nothing. This shattered me more than every day of the last 8 years combined. I would've been relieved if she at least felt something for me. Something. Anything. But this, this silent empty, and numb stare makes me wonder the most dreaded thought of my life: Is she over it? 

Has Isabella Cosmo really moved on in her life, so ahead that she doesn't feel anything for me? 

And this thought makes me really angry. I mattered to her more than this. I was worth more than this. I was worthy of an explanation, an apology, a reply, or at least a checking-up message. Fuck, I deserved a hug or at least a fucking smile?

When nothing of that sort comes my way, I smile more as I hear my heartbreak for the zillionth time. Well, this is how it's going to be then. I stretch my hand forward and she stares at it. "Hi," I say and her eyes look back to meet mine. "I'm Austin Cooper, it's a pleasure to meet you," I nod. 

She creased her eyebrows and stared looking confused from my hand to my eyes. I ignored everyone in the room and just watched her. She stretched her hand out and placed it on mine. I looked at her fingers in my palm. My fingers automatically wrapped them around her hand. She might have changed everything about herself but the way her hand feels in mine is still the same. Soft, tiny, and sleek, but now I also realize she's sweating a lot and her hands are cold. 

"Isabella Cosmo," she tells me like she's meeting me for the first time and I shake our hands. Actually, it does seem like I am meeting her for the first time because I don't recognize her. Not one bit, it scares me that I don't know the person I flew here for. 

"Big fan, ma'am," I say and her eyes flinch. Finally, I internally sighed. Her favorite sarcasm got me a reaction.

When I pulled my hand back, her palms instantly fisted. She was looking down at her laptop, gulping and blinking too many times. I watched her search for something on the table and grab the glass of water. As I observed the smoke on the mouth of the glass, I realized the water is hot. Why is she drinking hot water in the middle of the afternoon? 

She hides her face from me as she turns towards the projection again, watching it even though she's stared at it enough to have memorized it by now. When she turned back to keep her glass down, she'd changed again. Like she pressed on a switch and her mind wiped off everything that happened in the last ten minutes.

Well, she chose to show it like my presence has made no difference, which pricked me. But the way her body reacted to my presence, gave me some answers, the most important one being: that I still affect her. 

"Right, shall we begin?" She announced opening her file and I internally smiled. That's it. Just like that, she pretended as if I am a stranger and that she was meeting me for the first time. 

Everything that happened after that felt like a blur. I never focused on anything but her. She'd taken up new habits, weird ones which made her seem so unlike herself. She refused to meet eye contact with anyone, not once had I seen her smile stretch beyond the minimal practiced length, which was completely fake. Her fingers were constantly moving, either on the laptop or just on the table, or hiding inside her fists. She'd finished two glasses of hot water and she was biting her lip too many times which grabbed my attention. 

No matter how high a rank she was in this room and no matter how many people feared her presence, she looked like the most fragile version of herself to me. So weak that she didn't even turn towards me again. Forget looking my way throughout the entire board meeting, she didn't even spare a glance. 

I never thought Isabella Cosmo could finish up a three-hour meeting having me so close to her and still, not noticing me at all. 

I decided to talk so I could make her look at me. She was speaking about the cover and I thought about what her old version would have suggested to this? A crazy, out-of-the-box idea that would look insanely cool. I stared at the cover as I spoke, "No, that would look messy." I felt her eyes on me and I decided I won't look back at her. "Why not do a mood board of the two? Like a collage? Use PINK fonts for the VOGUE and vice versa." 

She immediately agreed because she would've suggested that if she thought like her old self. She isn't freely thinking now. Her words, her actions everything she's doing look planned and well-thought. I still try analyzing who this person is when a guy walks up near her and his hands curl on her waist. 

Oh, he's going to rest six feet under the ground if he doesn't take his hands off her in the next three seconds. 

My eyes burn at the spot he's holding her, so much that the hold loosens up a little. She gives him a look that makes him drop his hands. That's my girl!

The audacity he has to do that in front of me takes me by surprise. My insides boil but I try to keep a cool face. But they'd pepped me up for events like this. It's been 8 years and I don't know what I'm up against. I relax and decide to watch it all without reacting to any of it. 

I want to look at this. I want to look at her with another man, making this etch in my memory to remind me every now and then that she's moved on. 

She finished seeing something on his phone but that doesn't affect me. When his hands tuck a baby black hair behind her ears and he pulls her closer to himself, yeah, I was ready to knock him down. So much for relaxing and not reacting. He kisses her forehead and my jaw hardens. He's kissing my fucking girl in front of me and I'm expected not to react. This was torture now. Mentally, physically, emotionally, pure deep hardcore torture. 

The back of my hand covers my mouth. My knuckles threaten to push through my teeth with all the pent-up anger piling up inside my chest. 

This was a bad idea. I shouldn't have come here. This was a mistake. 

"Austin Cooper?" he asks me and I want to give him a bloody nose. Get your hands off her, dick. 

I pull my fisted hand away from my mouth and cross my hands, hiding my fist away from this man before it meets his face. "Yes."

"I'm Ryder Harvey, I'm the head of the social media division." He stretched his hand out to me. 

My alter ego screened a scene of me pulling his stretched-out hand, dragging him outside the room only to push him off the eighteenth floor and watch him free fall in my head. 

I snap back to reality and I look at her and catch her hiding her eyes from me, again. "The boyfriend, I'm guessing?" I ask looking at her and he smiles, nodding proudly. 

So she has moved on. 

I stare at her and there's a whirlwind of emotions and words exchanged in this silence. She does her pattern of weird actions again. She licks her lips, bites the lower one, and furiously gulps. Her eyes cave behind her glasses and it keeps glancing at her shoes. Her fingers are restless and she needs to calm her breathing for fucks sake, I want to yell at her to behave normally. 

An out-of-the-blue thought hits me; why is she behaving like this? 

She has the life she wanted, she's moved on and she's forcing herself to pretend as if she doesn't know me which is clearly working out so well because I'm supporting it, then what the fuck is wrong with her? 

. . .

[edited]