“Isabella. Are you ok?” Said a voice coming from the other side of the door

“Yeah, I’m fine.” I lied, I recognized the voice, it was Camila. This was the moment I’d been waiting for since I was 4. The day I could marry the person I fell in love with when Rafael proposed I was the happiest girl on this planet, but today became one of the worst days of my life. You may be wondering why, well let me tell you.

I was about to get married to one of the most handsome, kindest, man that I had ever met, but that all came tumbling down.

“Mija, it’s time to go.” Mom said as soon as she walked into the bathroom 

“I’ll be right out,” I replied. Above the toilette was a window, I opened it, and slowly crawled out of the window and took off the skirt from my dress revealing a shorter skirt underneath, and I started walking back to my apartment.

As soon as I walked into the room, my phone rang, it was my dad.

“Hey, dad, what’s up?” I said

“Uh what’s up, what about where are you?” He said,

“I’m where I should be, home,” I said knowing what his reply would be, “I need space. You don’t know what I’m feeling right now. All my life people have to me who I am, people would tell me ‘You’re a shoe, you’re a shoe, you’re a shoe’ but what if I don’t want to be a shoe, what if I want to be a scarf or a necklace.”

“Do you want a new necklace?” He asked in a really confused tone

“No! It’s a metaphor,” I said starting to get annoyed “I meant that all my life I have been told that I had to marry Rafael, and at one point I did, but that dream ended this morning in the bathroom, and you know what the worst part was, it wasn’t that he cheated on me with Camila, it was that you knew and you didn’t tell me. Because you still wanted to make sure that your company would expand thanks to Mateo’s company. Honestly, I don’t care, I have to go, we’ll talk sometime.” As soon as I hang up the phone someone knocks on my door. I open it and I see Rafael. Before he could say anything I looked at him and said, “I don’t want to talk to you.”

“Isa, wait, before you close the door there is something you should know,” he said, sounding like he was coming out of a Telenovela “I know that you think that I cheated on you with Camila, but that wasn’t me, there is something that I have wanted to tell you but I never had the courage to…”

“You are now engaged to Camila,” I said

“No, Camila is engaged to someone, but that someone isn’t me, it’s Marco, Camila and Marco are engaged.” He said, looking into my eyes the exact same way that he did when he told me he loved me for the first time.

“Who is Marco?” I asked

“Marco is my twin,” he said,

“You have a twin.”

“Yes, and he doesn’t live here in Miami, he moved to New York after he graduated from college there,” Rafael explained “He never comes to Miami because of dad, Camila moved to New York two years ago and they met, and he proposed to her a few months ago, they came back to Miami and people thought that it was me with Camila.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“But that is only a small part of what I’ve been wanting to tell you,” Rafael was about to burst into tears “I love you and I want us to be together for the rest of our lives, so I think that you should know that I’m dying”

“What? How? Wh… I don’t…” I couldn’t even form a sentence

“Doctors found cancerous cells in my liver,” he said, “There is a chance that I won't survive, so just in case, I want you to know that I love you. Please come back, marry me.”

“I wish I could come back, but I can’t, you’ve been lying to me for so long, if this is how my life is supposed to be, then I don’t want it. You’ve been lying and keeping secrets for so long, how do I know I can trust you.”

“You know me, you can. Please come back.”

“I’m sorry, I can’t,” I say trying not to cry, I slowly walk back and close the door. As soon as the door is closed I start crying, I couldn’t stop.

I look out the window and see Raf slowly walking away, he’s crying too. I want to open the door and run into his arms, but the pain that he had inflicted was just too much.

I go and sit on my couch, open my laptop and buy a plane ticket to the Seychelles, two weeks of just me, I would have to come back and face everyone, but first I needed some space. I needed a plan after the two-week break, what would I do? Would I forgive Rafael? Would I go back to him?

I packed my bags, called an Uber to take me to the Airport, and decided to leave my problems and negative thoughts behind.