chapter 9 - fail again

Carla parked with a skillful skid that left the tire mark on the road.

“There you go, girl. Now it’s all on you. Don’t fuck it up this time!”

“I promise not to… Thank you, Carla. For everything”.

“Aggww, tonta, you will thank me later!! There is no time!! Run! Ruuun!”

And so Chloe did. With her dotted suitcase in one hand and her heels in the another, she ran inside the airport with her fat body giving everyone a show of jiggling and abundance. She got to a ticket booth, her huge tits about to fall out of her bra and bought a flight to the first place she saw on the panel. Right after that, panting and exhausted from so much running, with her ticket to Kiev, Ukraine, she passed the security checkpoint and entered the airport waiting room.

It was not like in the movies, Roberto was not in the queue just about to board. He was sitting quietly with his headphones on, listening to music on his mobile phone. He immediately saw Chloe. Not fully believing his eyes, he began to walk very slowly towards her, as if afraid that if he got too close the mirage would fade away. But Chloe had come so far that she was not ready to stop now. She ran again, throwing her heels and her suitcase on the floor. She ran a little more, until she threw herself into his arms. The mirage didn’t vanish.

The hug in which they melted did seem like a movie after all.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…”, cried Chloe.

“W-What are you doing here? You ruined my surprise! I was about to…” said Roberto, he was emotional too.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you… I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you… I don’t deserve you anymore but… but… I’m a slowpoke. I learn slow but I do learn at some point… and if you forgive me, I promise you I won’t fail you again”.

“Hey, hey, Chloe. I’m sorry about the things I said the other day. They are true… I’d had a terrible time but so did you… and I didn’t want that rant to eclipse how happy I was about you recovering and feeling well… I was so mad and… and I know how it looked but, I’m not with Carla. I swear. You have to believe me…”

“I know. I know… She brought me here at speed light… and explained everything. We almost died in a crash accident, but she saved the day”.

“Typical Carla, haha”.

“Yeah. She is the best. I owe her big time… Now. Look… I get everything wrong. Repeatedly…” Chloe stayed in silenced, trying to remember her rehearsal speech. “Fuck… During my flight to Madrid I thought about what to tell you once I was in front of you and now, I can’t remember it well… Listen. It was something about life being a puzzle. I’m starting to understand it know. I failed in the past because I was trying to build it with only one piece: our fetish... Yeah, no mistake. I mean ‘our’… But you can’t build such a complex puzzle with one or two pieces when the rest of the puzzle is missing… Then, when I went back to London, I put together tons of pieces… but I realized that even I if could start making sense of the puzzle, see what it is about, it will never work without the center pieces. You can miss some border pieces and still making sense of the puzzle, but it will never work without the center ones. The void will absorb the view…And you are my center pieces, Roberto. I can’t fill your void... I need you to complete the puzzle…” Chloe shook her head. “Shit. That sounded so much better in my head… What I’m trying to say is: I’m sorry. I love you. I love you so much”.

“That… That was quite deep, cariño… You sure you want to be a designer and not a coach? I’m kidding… I love you too, Chloe Rashford. I knew it since the day I met you. Even if I was so buzzed that day that I don’t even remember meeting you. I still have no doubts about it”.

The two kissed passionately. However, the intimate moment was interrupted when people started applauding and cheering for them.

“Fucking people… haha. Let’s talk somewhere else… I think everyone here is looking at us” said Roberto.

The crowded airport was staring at them indeed. They all were missing was the popcorn.

“But… But I’ve a ticket to Kiev” joked Chloe, still covered in tears.

“Maybe some other day, ok?” laugh Roberto.

Chloe finally put on her heels. She needed her hand free so she could give it to Roberto. They left the airport and sought the tranquility of an adjoining park. There were many things to talk about. Tricky things. But both had a predisposition to understand each other and to forgive, because if they both had something clear up, it was the same thing.

Apparently, Carla was the one that, after seeing how messed up Roberto was after Chloe's call, encouraged him to go to London to fight for her. Roberto felt very bad about how the call had ended. He felt that by taking all the anger out of his chest, he hadn't been able to tell Chloe the things that really mattered to him: that he was dying to see her again. Roberto also apologized for how he had abandoned her during the months he was absorbed by the hotel project, just when she was being dragged away by his fetish.

Chloe meanwhile, apologized for the months of silence. She also told him about the one-night-stand with Jeanette that tragic night. She expected an angrier reaction from him but after she end up explaining the whole thing, it hardly seemed to matter to Roberto. He understood it was driven by the thought that he and Carla had returned together and the strong things he said during their call.

“So, this is the moment when we argue about if we were on a break or not?” joked Roberto.

“Oh, we definitely were on a break” said Chloe, making her best impersonation of the endearing paleontologist.

A few hours later, nothing had changed, and, at the same time, everything had. They were still the same flawed people, full of regrets and illusions. They still did not know if they would be able to handle their desires, their kink, their expectations. They even understood that the problems they had overcome were far from being the biggest they would have to face in their lives. Their path was still as uncertain and rugged as ever, but one thing was clear now, for both of them: they would walk it together.

***


That night, in Roberto's apartment, the words gave way to kisses and caresses. The present memory of their bodies, of their sexuality, lit the cold winter night.

“Hey… Do you still have that funnel?” said Chloe, tremendously excited as Roberto kissed her on the neck.

“Y-Yes…” Roberto said, as scared as he was turned on.

“Wanna feed me?”

“Of course, but… Do you think it is a good idea? Aren’t you afraid that we will fail again?”

“Yeah. I’m scared… but, no matter how hard we try. We will fail again. At anything, really”.

“So?”

“I think it’s not about not failing. It’s about that we keep failing… failing a little better each time”.

“Well, then… Let’s fail better”.