
"A-I .. and Wildan, um ... We were close when I was in high school."
"What's? Near? A boyfriend?"
Abrine shook his hand. "Yes, uh. It's not that!" the answer.
"Yes or not, Brine?" el Desperate. Why couldn't he have guessed that. He should have been able to judge from the attitude and behavior of Wildan who did seem to care too much about Abrine all this time. Damnit.
"Look, he used to ask me out at the time, but me and the rest of the family moved to Germany, so---"
"So his feelings have not been reciprocated, until finally you came back and actually married me, so?" cut El fast.
"Don't talk about this again. I don't have feelings for her, El."
"But him?"
"That's his right, we can't ban him!"
"I can! I'm your husband, Brine!" Apparently El really feels he has Abrine now. Indeed he has not said it is love, but he is not willing to be targeted by others. Especially that guy is Wildan.
"Why do you have to be this angry, El?" Abrine doesn't understand why El should be angry. He said he had no taste, but hearing Abrine being waited on by Wildan he looked angry. Not yet half an hour ago El said if he did not believe in love, but this attitude of his was already like a person who was acute wash on Abrine. If it was love, would his attitude be worse than this?
"I'm not angry...." El breathed out softly, he tried to control his emotions. "I just don't like being lied to" he said later.
"Nobody's lying here, El."
"You lied to me."
"When?"
"From the beginning, you should have told me about your relationship with Erland."
"I haven't been able to tell you, El. Not lying." Abrine sits on the edge of the bed - next to El - while scrambling his own hair.
"Then tell me all about yourself, now!"
"For?"
Elrich rolled his eyeballs. "I want to know everything about you, didn't you ask me to learn to love you? So, I'm gonna start by recognizing you inside and out." El stared fixedly at Abrine, as if his gaze could penetrate into the cornea of the wife's tanned eye.
Abrine always misbehaved if it's been stared at by El like this. The same thing happened when they spent the night together last night, he remembered the moment at a glance so that his face was increasingly blushing now.
"You why?" el asked who watched Abrine's face turn red.
"No." Abrine looked the other way. Throwing out a glance in order to stare at the others except El.
"So, do you want a story or not?" el asked.
"Yes, but first put on your clothes, El."
El only realized that he was only wearing a towel because he had just finished bathing, due to hearing Abrine and Wildan's conversation over the phone, he forgot to himself.
"Where's my clothes?" She asked Abrine back.
"Where do I know!"
"Hey, you're my wife, miss! Prepare my needs."
Abrine was so misbehaved, El kept looking at him with the same gaze. Finally he got up and looked for El's clothes in the suitcase, he pulled the shirt randomly and handed it to the man.
"Underwear, where?" el asked as he raised his eyebrows teasing Abrine.
"That's ehm, find yourself...."
Elrich looked up, "Then I don't have to wear it all day."
"El!!!" shriek Abrine whom El responded just by sniffing his shoulders. Sucks.
With a gesture of ogah-ogahan, Abrine finally searched for the most personal possession of El, he took it with his fingertips like a disgust. Actually he did not feel that way, but he was embarrassed and uncomfortable holding the private triangular cloth.
Elrich chuckled incessantly at the wife's behavior.
"You're! And last night you touched the contents" she said, making Abrine throw his face. Shame, of course.
Elrich was wearing his clothes near Abrine. Keep in mind, he wore everything without shame, it was Abrine who misbehaved himself to see El's behavior.
"You can wear it in the dressing room, why in front of me" Abrine murmured, still heard by El.
El just smiled faintly. "What a trouble to yourself, you've seen all mine, too" he replied lightly.
"A ready. Now back to the original topic, tell me all about you. Including about your ex!"
Abrine shook his head faintly. This man is like a real husband to her. Uh, but it should be like this, right? This is what I expected from El. All right, he'll tell El everything.
Abrine said that she had never dated all this time. Only Wildan approached him. They got to know when Wildan became a substitute karate coach at the school's extracurricular activities. Wildan said he would wait for Abrine until he returned to Indonesia. Unfortunately Abrine did not want to hope for more, he thought Wildan must have changed his mind as time went on.
Gradually, Abrine was close to Raymond while in Germany. Raymond taught Abrine many things.
"I've never put more on Wildan, I feel like he'll forget me and what happened to him is just the monkey's teenage love."
"After I deliberately moved away from Wildan, cut off contact with him, I became friends with Raymond in Germany. He taught me a lot of things I never knew."
Elrich was still listening to Abrine's story carefully. He wasn't angry about Wildan anymore, but now he's upset to hear Abrine tell him about Raymond.
"Raymond taught me to ride a big bike, dive, he also took me to many places, gather and meet new friends. We form social communities that help people who can't afford it...." Abrine's face looked bright to those times, where he was very close to Raymond.
"Raymond helped me a lot too, he used to conspire with me to help Airish get out of a brazen old man's mess and throw him in jail."
".... Raymond was also the first one to always save me. It's there when I need it. I.... I. can not resist my feelings that come just like that, I feel he is my first love," Abrine said with tightness.
Somehow the pain that Abrine felt was able to make El filled. He grabbed his wife's body, then grabbed her. She was upset to hear Abrine praise Raymond's kindness, but she couldn't ignore the sadness and joy on Abrine's face when she told him about the man.
"It's only natural that you love him" muttered El in a soft voice. Somehow he was hot himself knowing this fact.
"Hmm, but he's also the one who destroyed me. She lied to me. I've seen him twice with Freya in bed."
Elrich tightened his embrace of Abrine. He knew enough of what it was to be betrayed, even though he did not see it directly like Abrine had experienced. Abrine must have been devastated by it.
"There's me now, right? You can count on me! Don't expect it anymore. I'll be the first guy you call when you need anything, hmm?" Elrich framed Abrine's face and panned into his wife's eyes.
Abrine nodded. "I will count on you" he said.
That day, they did not leave the hotel room. They spend time together telling stories.
When they were hungry, they called room service and resumed storytelling sessions. El also tells about his family who had been very eager to know Abrine.
"Mama Erika cheated on me, she betrayed my father. I don't know since when, but when I was a teenager, I actually saw him kissing a man who was my father's driver."
"really?" Abrine was surprised to learn this.
"Yes, it was one of the factors that also affected me, that there was no genuine love in this world."
"Somehow, we all also finally learned that Erland was not my father's son. He's the biological son of the father's driver. That means that Mama Erika had a long affair with him, or even had a relationship before marrying my father. I don't know."
"But not everyone behaves the same as him, El!" abrine Response.
"Yes, I hope you're not like him either."
"I? It can't be!"
"I hope so, that's why I forbid you to be close to other men. I don't want what happened to my father to happen to me either."
"God El...." Abrine stroked El's face with his fingers. "Forget our past, I hope we can be just as open-hearted. How's it?"
Elrich nodded.
"After all, I feel that Mama Erika has learned a lot in the past. Now he must have regretted it and learned to be even better."
"Hopefully, I'm very happy if anyone comes back to his nature. God made us good human beings, right?"
Abrine chuckled at El's deeply religious-sounding speech.
"For that, you return also to your nature... God created love for his people, so you don't deny that by saying you don't believe in love."
Elrich gave a smile at the ultimatum his wife delivered. Sometimes Abrine can compensate with an attitude and mature speech. There is one admiration in El about Abrine that Abrine can always understand him without him asking.
"Well, I don't think it's hard to love a girl like you. Looks like I'm not gonna be a creature fast." El raised both his hands into the air, as if a sign that he had given up and expressed his feelings.
"I told you, you don't believe that love exists. You're the one who's fortified yourself. You built that giant wall that made you a hard person to touch."
Elrich looked at Abrine with his own thoughts.
"Don't leave me, Brine! Not for me or for you, but for us!" he said as he approached Abrine and left a deep kiss on his wife's forehead.
Abrine could feel the sincerity and warmth of El's kiss touching his forehead. She feels very wanted even though El has never expressed her feelings for her.
*******