CITY LOCATION: ANOTHER HEART

Episode 4

Elle smiled all night long, when she came as Rayhan's partner in the inauguration of the new studio Global Channel in the West Jakarta area. He had no reason to reject a pleasant man like Rayhan, who knew how to treat and adore women. Although melancholy and easy to melt feelings are not his basic nature, but he is also still a woman. I like to be treated special. That night, throughout the show, Elle was happy.

A sense of happiness that carried over until when the black Mercedes Rayhan had entered the basement parking of his apartment. Elle was still smiling as she got out of the car. But his smile slowly faded, changing into a confused expression when he saw Rayhan who was like looking at him fretfully.

“Mas Ray, Mas why? Any problems?” ask Elle carefully.

“Elle The man looked confused. Elle waited patiently until Rayhan found what he was about to say. “Sorry before if what I say makes you uncomfortable. But. ” The man hangs his own sentence restlessly.

“Nothing, Mas, say aja.”

Rayhan looked at Elle's face fixedly. “I fall in love with you, Gracelle Ariadna.”

Elle's stunned.

“I'm sorry for saying it in this kind of place,” he said grimacing while observing the surroundings. “But, some types of feelings are sometimes difficult to hold and control, even just waiting to be expressed in a more decent place.

“I thought I was just blown away, who the hell? But after all this time I realized, it seems like I really fell in love with you. You know, it might sound ... well, cheesy, but want how else?”

Elle gawked in disbelief.

“I'm not asking you to answer now, think carefully, but ... please Elle, let me make you mine...” whispered Rayhan expectantly.

No one noticed when Rayhan moved. Pulling slowly body wrapped in satin dress magenta color was approaching. The man was still looking at Elle deeply, when Elle's lips unwittingly opened, knowing Rayhan had already dyed him. Slowly. “I beg you, think of my request.”

Elle could only nod. Moments after Rayhan left, he was still quietly glued to where he was standing. Digesting what just happened. Rayhan Danubrata expressed love to him? Not something he didn't predict. But when it did happen, it still seemed quite surprising. He smiled to himself as he shook his head and decided to immediately enter the elevator. Just a few steps away, a voice called out his name. He turned around and turned his head, then was stunned to find who was standing a few meters away from where he was standing now.

***

“You ... why here?”

“From you, what do you want again?” “What do you need?”

Raffi laughed. “Since when do I need to come here?” Elle looked at Raffi like he was a strange creature she had never seen before. The woman shrugged her shoulders and said nothing.

“Elle, what is your relationship with Rayhan now?” raffi asked just like that, looking at the woman sharply.

Elle shakes. “I have nothing to do with him.”

“Same as our relationship?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, we said we have nothing to do but. ” Raffi stopped his sentence seeing Elle squinting at him. “As you also said there is no relationship with Rayhan but just want to kiss him, so?” dengus Raffi cynical.

“Raff! Keep your word, yes!”

“Oh? Then, just now what does that mean?” raffi asked sharply.

Elle tightens the jaw. “It's not—”

“It's none of my business? Nothing but an answer other than that?” cynical Raffi.

“Because–itu–indemang–not–mur–kamu,” desis Elle, full of emphasis in each word.

Raffi shook his head, rubbing his face in frustration. “It's none of my business, okay. But that's if I don't love you.” Raffi said it slowly, lowering his tone that had risen. “But have you forgotten, when I have said many times I love you, and I care about whatever happens to you.”

“And you must also not forget that many times I also said, there is not a single thing that binds us, which makes you have the right to interfere in my life.”

“Elle ... why don't we make it easy?”

“I have never made this difficult for you, or for me. We both have fun. Nothing to lose either, right?”

Raffi looked at Elle in disbelief. “So? Then my feelings don't you take into account? Coulda-can be.... You know that I like you, love you. Not every day Elle, but since eight years ago!”

“Since the beginning I never offered anything, right, Raff? Moreover, the kind of relationship that makes you feel like you have the right to regulate and forbid me. If you don't like it, you can go anytime, you want. I'm also not forcing you to stay with me.”

“Yes God, Elle, do you really have no feelings, huh?! You think it's easy, just leave the person you love?”

“Yes it's your own problem, why now even complain?” ketus Elle's.

Raffi. Blunt already got his brains when facing Elle. Is it that hard as this woman's heart?

Raffi closed his eyes. Eight years. And he's starting to get tired. Tired of his own feelings. Tired of Elle's indifference.

Raffi looked at Elle again. “You ... any feelings for Rayhan?” he asked, this time not in a defensive tone like before. Even Elle frowned when she realized it.

“I don't have to answer,” says Elle short.

“You want me to keep it here, or I go?”

“Decide by yourself. No need to ask me.”

The two then just stared at each other. If Elle's eyes were the ocean, he would dive to the bottom to search. Was there really not the slightest taste that woman had for him? Niente. Raffi found nothing there.

Love is when you look at it and give it happiness, in your hands or in the arms of others. If all this time Elle was unhappy with him, if the happy expression was the source precisely of another man....

Actually, it's been a long time since his brain told him to stop. But when it comes to Elle, Raffi tends to ignore reason and follows heart more often. And results? He is a man. He does love. Loving with heart. This time, the heart told him to stop.

“I don't know what your heart is made of, so you have no feelings at all. Maybe it's time. Quit. Enough, Elle. Just get here. Why do I keep forcing? So...” Raffi sighed deeply, why did the sentence that was at the end of his tongue feel so heavy he said. “So it's better now that I'm gone. I promise, no matter what happens in your life, I won't interfere again. We take each other's path.”

“Maybe it's better. You're engaged anyway. I'm. ” Elle flicked her shoulders no matter what.

“I will live my own life. Like earlier. Before you came.”

The woman smiled faintly, and turned her body. Passed by without saying anything. Raffi.

Raffi loves Elle, so he complies with whatever she wants, going through whatever kind of relationship she wants. Just for one reason. No why Elle did not want to accept his feelings. As long as he's not driven away from his life. Could die him. Like when a few years ago Elle just left him. That woman certainly doesn't understand what it's like.

When reunited with Elle two years ago, Raffi little hope this is a sign that there is indeed a destiny that has been outlined for both of them. In his heart, love is the same.

But now, will it be like this in the end?

***

Elle turned around by keeping her body straight. Despite realizing very clearly there was a great roar in his chest. The reaching of the button on the elevator door, stepping in, looking down to hide the kernit on the forehead due to an imaginary knot that suddenly like tightening around his stomach. Shortly before the elevator door closed, Raffi was still seen standing in his place. Elle looked up, closing her eyes.

‘Mama, what's that bastard?’

‘Why ask like that?’

‘I mocked friends, Ma. I can't play with them. They say I'm Ma's bastard, they say I don't have Papa hiks.’

‘Mama ... Why don't I have Papa? Hiks, hiks, hiks .. why, Ma, where did Papa I go, Ma.

‘Don't beat them, Honey. You don't need a papa. You don't need. You only have Mama. You just need Mama.’

After the elevator doors opened, Elle stepped down the hallway leading to her unit on the ninth floor. For a moment in front of the door, he realized his fingers were shaking when he pressed the combination code on the panel. Elle just sighed, then went in and closed the door behind her. After turning on the lights, Elle walked in and placed her bag on the pantry table and pulled the high chair there, sitting on it. Then pensive.

‘Elle, dear, after this Elle join aunt and Om to Jakarta, well?’

‘Aunty and Om? To Jakarta?’

‘Yes, honey, you come with aunt, you go to school there. Yeah?’

‘But, Aunt, said Mama, Elle can't trust anyone.’

‘Yesterday Mama you said with Auntie, so bring Elle along with Aunt.’

She was eight years old when her mother was rushed to the hospital. She's alone. Don't know shit. Got nobody. Just the two of them. As her mother slept for longer, and never woke up, came Aunt Indri and Om Adji, her husband, took her away from her mother's nursery. Elle did not really remember what she felt when a few days later Aunt Indri took her to a tomb with a headstone bearing her mother's name. He only knew, from that moment on he had become completely alone.

‘He used to be an aide to your grandfather's trust, and when that happened, he already had a wife and one daughter. Aunty never agrees, Elle. Because anyway, it's wrong. But your mother fell in love with that man. Even when your grandfather was angry because he knew his daughter was pregnant, your mother still did not want to talk about the identity of the man, instead chose to leave the house and take you.’

So ... He was an unwanted child. From there he understood why almost all of his childhood friends shunned him, and older women always hated his mother. As he remembered, his mother was not a weak woman. He worked hard to support both of them. While Aunt Indri once told me that her grandfather was actually a respected officer in an elite unit in Sukoharjo. Sometimes Elle wants to know about them. Those who should be his relatives. Then he also always tried to remind himself, that he was an unwanted child. After all, his late mother had entrusted him to Aunt Indri. The only family he has is Aunt Indri and Om Adji.

Elle turned to the small photo she had attached to the fridge door. Look at it with longing. His picture was with Aunt Indri at the airport a few years ago, just before he left for Sydney. His memories are back.

‘Om where are you going? Why carry such a big suitcase?’

‘Om want to move, Elle.’

‘Moving? Same Aunt too?’

‘No, Aunt Indri is still here. Elle accompanied Auntie well, so good boy. Om go first.’

Om Adji finally left Aunt Indri, because Aunt Indri could not give birth. Om Adji has met another woman who can do that. Raffi called her a selfish woman who had no heart because she had to play with her feelings for years? Well, not entirely wrong.

Elle has a heart, of course, but not to love and trust. Those two things, she said, only good women can do, while she has already grown emotionally disabled, and the ability to trust them has been paralyzed. Elle has also learned that being a good woman who is easy to trust will only make her fragile. Like her late mother, who was unable to protect herself from a monstrous monster called love that took away everything she had.

To be broken, heartless ... In some ways, look much better, be more suitable for him. It gave him as much strength as he always needed. That's because he has nobody. He lives for himself. No one would reach out if he did not make himself strong.

Well, maybe he does love Raffi. But be it love or man, there was nothing he could trust.

There's nothing he can trust.

Not his real father, who had turned his own wife to seduce his superior daughter, then dumped her after getting what he wanted. Leaving his mother without revealing even a little bit of a responsible soul like a civilized man.

Not also Om Adji, husband of Aunt Indri, who had made him believe again that in this world there are still good men. In the end, the man could leave his wife for another woman, even though Elle knew how much the man had previously always flooded Aunt Indri with affection and love.

‘Yes God, Elle, do you really have no feelings, huh?! You think it's easy, just leave the person you love?’

Raffi's right. That's not easy at all.

The man shouldn't have been chasing her about pain either. About feeling. Elle knows, more than anyone, about pain. The pain of being abandoned, or leaving. Elle knows.

It seems ridiculous, to hurt yourself by rejecting a man who clearly says he loves and wants it. There were too many traumas that grumbled irregularly and filled his heart. Rejection, feelings of being wasted and unwanted, loneliness.

Elle looked around. Every corner of this apartment left a shadowy trail of Raffi. How will he continue to live after this?

Tears began to fall.

If from the beginning he resolutely dodged, it would not be this way, sinking too deeply into the feelings that he was ultimately unable to control. He himself is guilty of allowing his reason to be overpowered by desire. The desire that he had taught Raffi to try to taste, now in the end even ensnare and burn himself.

Actually, what would be different? Wasn't he always alone? Perhaps, he would only miss the perfect early mornings he had with Raffi, and the cup of coffee they had always shared with both. Well, that's all, right?

Elle squeezed her lips to hold a sob, wiping her tears with the back of her hand. She misses her mother. And miss Aunt Indri.