One day, he returned to the villa and found her resting on the coach. He paused to appreciate the way the sun and the soft wind played with her hair, and how the windows cast shadows-spots on her relaxed face.

She slightly shifted her body, and her eyelashes fluttered. Then she stayed very still.

Almost too still.

With a smile, he lifted her up, and held her in his embrace.

"You really don't know how to pretend, do you?" As if he believed she was sleeping.

Suddenly, her body quivered.

"I'm home, love." He said, wondering why she became nervous.

"Mmm. The wicked lover is home at last." She murmured, and then wriggled her way out.

He followed her to the kitchen.

"Do you want me to cook something for you, love?"

"Nah, I was home all day. I'm not hungry." She answered, rubbing her chin.

He paused. She had a habit of rubbing her chin when she was hiding something.

"I thought you'd go out to that art store with your friends. You were telling me about it for a while, love..." He let the coat slip out of his arms. "Weren't you planning to go there today?"

She gave him a glance, before turning away and going to the cupboards.

"Nah, change of plans. We decided to go there later this week."

She took out chamomile tea and started preparing the teapot.

"I stayed home." She repeated. "Really."

He nodded and went to change clothes. He didn't say anything, even though he knew that she makes chamomile tea to calm herself down. He used to prepare it for her whenever she was feeling flustered.

-------------------

It'd be a lie to say he wasn't hurt when the next time they hugged, she again trembled in his arms.

At last, he asked, "Is everything alright?"

She seemed taken aback.

"What do you mean?"

"You... You are very quiet these days."

She glanced away from his face and into the window. "It's because I'm afraid to make any movements."

He was confused.

"I don't want to scare away the treasure-moment of hugging you." She said, and touched her smiling face.

'What a forced smile.' He thought.

To tell the truth, he was also afraid. Scared of what was to come. Because he had a premonition that what was coming could be too much for him.

In the evening, while lying beside her, he studied her sleeping face. He made sure to stay very quiet, as to not wake her up. He looked.

And, at that instance, he realized what she had meant previously - he didn't want to scare away this "treasure moment", when he could look upon her like this.

And it was also that night that he noticed the perfume was suddenly absent.

He realized it when he was kissing her neck. When the discovery hit him, he frantically started searching through her body, for the scent that he became so addicted to. The scent of happiness.

And yet, he couldn't find it.

'Maybe, she just forgot about it.'

But, it wasn't so.

He suddenly noticed that the body beside him became very rigid. He thought she was cold, and snuggled closer, yet, when he tried to kiss her neck once again, she resisted. She struggled out of his embrace.

Silence.

He reached out to her, and again, she avoided his hand.

"My love, what's wrong?"

"I'm sick." She said. Then nothing.

After that, she refused to respond to his questions if she's unwell, and just went out of bed. She slept on the couch.

The next morning he saw her standing blackly in front of the window. She heard his footsteps and turned around.

As she walked past, she pretended not to notice his outstretched hand, and just slipped away into the kitchen.

He looked at his palm, but in the end, he said nothing.

She was now avoiding him.

He thought he must've, somehow, made her feel uncomfortable seeing now kept she was refusing his touch.

When he moved out of the bedroom and said he will sleep on the couch instead, she nodded.

Later that day, he noticed she was changing the sheets after him.

He likely made her despise him. She was probably disgusted with him.

Several months ago, they had bought two special cups for couples, but she accidentally broke her own, and since then, always used his, teasing that he should feel honored her lips graced his cups with their touch.

But, now, she didn't drink out of his cup anymore. Instead, she kept one of the plain cups separately from the other, and always drank from that one.

He noticed that she started sneaking out during the day, and yet was always at home whenever he returned.

The chamomile tea started running out.

Their relationship grew cold, albeit one-sidedly because he still continued showing his affection for her and only ceased doing things that were making her obviously uncomfortable with him.

The thought of separating seemed ridiculous to him, and he was sure one day they would be okay again.

'It will be fine. We will work it out somehow.' He thought, brewing the tea for her.

And, one day, she suddenly returned to her previous self. She hugged him, she took him by his hand, she rubbed her head on his chest affectionately.

He tried to discuss with her if something was wrong, yet she ignored any topic that referred to the past few weeks.

"Love, you can't ignore that something's changed! Please!" He pleaded desperately.

But she kept slipping away.

When they were laying in bed that day, he was unrestful. Here she was, so close, yet it felt so far away. A week ago, she started using a new perfume. It was strong and crude, and somewhat nauseating. He felt she used it to mask out another scent, to cover something up, and he didn't like that.

He didn't feel they were back to "normal". They couldn't be.

He moved his arm and touched her. And, as he expected, yet also, as he feared, she shivered, and her body stiffened.

"Why are you keeping this up?" He whispered weakly.

She moved her body to face him and opened her eyes.

He noticed they were no longer gleaming happily as they did before. Instead, they were boringly glancing at him, tired of what they were seeing.

Her pale lips moved slowly:

"I met someone," she said.

His body went limp, and he felt a long needle striking through his heart.

She met someone.

For a moment, he forgot how to talk. Or maybe, he just didn't want to.

"Someone very special." She said.

It was so painful he could barely hear her next words.

"Now that I met that…special someone, I don't think we can stay how we were before."

He didn't move. He didn't retract his arm. He only laid there, with his eyes now closed to fight the tears away, and kept listening.

"Ever since I found out…Now that I think about it, we were destined for each other. I can't imagine us not being together…"

"Who?" He asked, feeling oh so very miserable.

"What good will it be even if I say?" She answered in a strange manner.

Her stillness was very bitter to him.

"Is he handsome, my love?"

He felt sour saying this. He recalled how, way before they'd started dating, she insisted on painting his portrait. Then as they started a relationship, she persisted saying that it was probably because of his looks that she had fallen for him, and that he definitely has to take care of his face, else she will run off with another man.

She was a painter. She loved beautiful things. And most of all, beautiful people. It was not unusual for him to find her admiring a certain male or a female, because of a "special look" they possessed. He sometimes asked if he also had that "special look", as she called it. And her answer was that he is the most special of them all.

Later on, he understood that by saying "special look" she didn't necessarily mean an attractive person, but rather an interesting twinkle in their eyes, some aesthetically pleasing nose, or a beaming smile. Sometimes, it was the aura of a person that she was after.

He understood that.

Yet now he couldn't help asking her if her "special person" was handsome. He knew she wouldn't appreciate the question. It was as if accusing her of being a cheap character, that was solely looking at faces. He knew it would hurt her, yet he still asked:

"Is he handsome, my love?"

He heard her sharply inhaling the air.

"Handsome…Hard to say, even for me. But I would never be able to run away."

It became very stuffy in the room. He was trembling.

The short silence broke under her crisp voice:

"He is my ultimate lover."

His heart had been dangling on the string, and finally, the string snapped. Inside of him, there was a never before known emptiness and an intense cold. His heart fell into a sea of despair.

"And if-, if he-, if he is your ultimate lover…Then, love, my love-, if he is your ultimate lover, what am I?" He asked.

Silence again.

At once, she hugged him. Firmly. So that he almost imagined that the large distance between them never existed. Then, she spoke.

"I was hoping…That maybe, just maybe I could get to keep you as my side lover…"

She said in a tiny voice. The embrace tightened.

A side lover.

His deep sea of affection, the tender feelings he held for her, what were they for?

He laughed madly, and pulled himself up from the bed, smoothly pushing the female away from him.

"Do you think I could ever be a side lover?"

His words fell softly, yet inside he felt roaring anger. It hurt to be discarded by her. It hurt when she said another man was her ultimate lover, and not he. But how could that pain compare to the anger that he was drowning in now?

How can she hope, that she can still keep him as a side distraction? How can he bear it?

He offered her his purest part, and she thought it dirty enough to deserve being offered a title of a "side lover"?

He looked at her, feeling it was the last glance he'd send her way. Her silhouette, blurred by his nearing tears, looked somewhat sad.

He could not comprehend it. What answer was she expecting?

Somehow, it hurt him even more seeing her expression, full of deep pity.

What was she pitying him for?

He stormed out, knowing that if he didn't get out now, he would end up lashing out on her or pressing her with some, now useless, questions.

Once outside, he gasped for cold air and stumped towards the bench.

At first, he wanted to give it a good kick, and take out the anger that he couldn't bring himself to take out in front of her.

But looking at the little bench, memories overcame him, flooding over his anger. He hesitated.

Ultimately, he threw himself on top of it, letting go of the pain that welled up inside his heart. The bench collapsed. Yet he didn't move away. His body was shaking like a leaf under the unruly wind.