The Sound Of Love

Chapter 2

Michael sipped his whiskey. He was drinking it neat and was enjoying the way it burned his throat as it went down. He enjoyed how numb each sip made him feel. It was the kind of drink he needed right now. The feeling of numbness was just what he needed.

Michael’s friend Carlos was sitting next to him, desperately trying to console him but Michael was not willing to listen. He desperately wanted to get away from everything in his life. He wanted to run away from this feeling of betrayal that was haunting his every waking moment. He was starting to feel like everything he was doing was a result of how he had been betrayed by the one person he had thought he could trust forever. He couldn’t believe he had been so utterly stupid, so childish in thinking that he could ever love anyone or be loved in return.

“She was always bad, man,” said Carlos. “From the very moment she came in I had a feeling that she was looking for something, that she wanted something from you. Trust me, that girl was bad to the bone. She’s the one that betrayed you, all of this is her fault. She’s the one that made you feel like you were in love and then betrayed you when you started to feel like that love was real. Keep that in mind, man, please. For your own sake, please try to understand that she’s the one at fault here. She’s the one to blame.”

“You’re wrong, Carlos,” said Michael. “I’m the one to blame. I’m the one that was stupid enough to think that the bi*ch loved me. I’m the one that let her in. I’m the one that thought that she would be decent enough to be faithful to me.”

Michael had just found out that his girlfriend of three years, Michelle, had been cheating on him. When he had found out, he had felt like his entire world had just crumbled around him. He felt like everything he had ever felt had been a lie. He had never felt this way before, never felt so utterly betrayed.

The truth was, he had found out a lot more than just the fact that Michelle had been cheating on him. He had discovered the girl he had once thought of as the love of his life had only been with him because she had wanted his money. She had only been with him because he had bought her gifts.

He felt so stupid when he saw the pattern. He had bought her jewelry, clothes, even a car. He had even paid for the down payment on her apartment. He had figured that this was what people who loved each other did. He figured that this was how she would want him to love her, that this was how people were supposed to love each other. After all, he had a lot of money. He figured that if anyone had anything in abundance, they should make it available to the people that they love more than anything in the world.

She had gotten so much from him that she would be able to live a comfortable life. She could sell the luxury car that he had gotten her and get herself a more affordable car, using the money left over to pay off a few installments of her apartment.

The luxurious jewelry that Michael had gotten her had also been quite a windfall for her. Diamonds were incredibly expensive, and even though she was the kind of girl that really liked jewelry she could easily sell off most of her jewelry and still have enough to make her friends jealous. The money that she would get from selling off her jewelry would be enough to make anyone jealous. It would be enough to allow her to live an incredibly comfortable life, enough money to live off of for ten years. She would probably end up finding another man in this time, another man that would think that she loved him and who would end up loving her completely as well. She would use this man just as she had used Michael.

What truly hurt was the fact that she had been the one to tell him all of these things. She had done it out of spite. When Michael had followed her to the hotel and had forced the manager to let him into the room, he had seen her, the woman he loved, in bed with another man. He had been completely floored by this. He had never thought that he could ever feel so utterly emasculated, so completely numb to everything that was going on around him. All of his emotions had seemed to leak out of him, leaving behind an emptiness that would have been a vacuum had it not been for the cold, barely controlled ball of concentrated rage at its very center.

And then, when he had tried to confront Michelle and tell her that she had betrayed him, she had simply smirked and told him that she had already gotten enough from him to live comfortably for the next ten years. She could enjoy her life with all of the gifts he had given her, so the fact that he had found out she was fu*king another man didn’t really matter much.

And so, five minutes after thinking that he could not possibly feel worse than he did in that moment, Michael Rather hit a new low. He felt hollow. He felt like a man that had walked the desert in search of water but had found only mirages. He had not thought that anyone could feel this way. He started to realize that there might be no coming back from this, from this feeling of indescribable, unimaginable loss.

Michelle had not just stolen money from him. She had stolen the very idea of love. She had made him feel like love did not truly exist, and this was the worst thing about Michael’s current situation. He had lost something that was almost impossible to get back. He didn’t think he would ever be able to love again.

Michael had stumbled back home. He couldn’t even remember how he had managed to get here. All he could remember was that he had gotten into his car and driven as fast as he could. It had been dangerous given his emotional state. He had started to feel like nothing in the world mattered. He could have seriously hurt somebody by doing what he did. He could have hurt himself, but this would not have mattered as much as the other damage that could potentially be caused by his irresponsible behavior. He did not think that he could ever feel so utterly destroyed.

He had gotten home and started to drink. Before he had started to drink he had had the foresight to call his friend Carlos who quickly came to his place in order to prevent his best friend in the whole world from doing something stupid under the influence of alcohol or worse, something that would endanger either himself of the people around him.

Once Carlos arrived at Michael’s place, he was worried to discover that Michael had already downed three shots of whiskey and was now sipping a fourth. He was nursing it, swirling it around in the glass and looking at it morosely. In this moment, Michael was the very definition of broken. He had been utterly defeated.