The Billionaire's Secret System

Two: Hope Is Only A Word

He drags his feet through the door as he enters the house.

His head bend from the disappointment he had faced earlier.

The zipping sound of a bag pulls him back together and he lifts his head.

It's Elsosa.

Her clothes were neatly arranged in the bag she just closed.

She took hold of the bag's handle, ready to leave.

Nathan stood still before the door with eyes widened by shock.

"Elsa...What are you doing?" He asked her.

Elsa was what he usually call her as a cut from Elsosa.

"What does it look like I'm doing? I'm leaving." She said while pulling her bag on the floor as it felt heavy to carry.

"Why..." His voice breaks.

Elsosa’s got her duffel bag slung over her shoulder, zipper half-broken, the strap fraying at the edge. Her eyes are not wet. 

She doesn't look at him. "Move aside!"

Nathan stands between Elsosa and the door. His shirt clings to his back, damp with sweat.

“Please don’t,” Nathan says. The word comes out low, thick, like it’s been dragged up from his throat. He holds out his arm, not across her chest, but enough to block the doorway. His palm rests flat against the splintered wood, fingers splayed.

Elsosa doesn’t stop. She steps forward until she’s a breath away from him.

"I'll get a job, I swear. Just give me a little more time. I'll take care of us both. I promise." He pleads.

"And when exactly is a little time? A year. Two years or three? We've spent six years together Nathan. Open your eyes, nothing has changed." She heaved a sigh of relief and looked him in the eye.

"I can't believe I disobeyed my father just to be with you. I wasted all my years thinking my life could actually be better with you!" 

His eyes released tears from them.

“Elsosa…” His voice cracks. “Please. Don’t go. I can still make it. You said...”

"Forget what I said about hope Nathan. You're cursed and being with you has only bring suffering." She closed her eyes as though she regretted her words, but then opened them back.

“You’re useless Nathan,” she says. The words land flat, without anger. That’s what makes them worse. “Do you know that? You’re useless.”

“You promised me a life,” she continues, stepping in closer so there’s no distance left between them. “You promised me we’d build something. That I wouldn’t have to choose between eating and paying rent. That I wouldn’t have to lie to my mother and tell her I’m 'doing well'. But all that is a lie.” She laughs, but there’s no humor in it. It’s brittle, broken. “My life will be meaningless if I continue staying with you.”

The sentence hangs in the air like smoke. Nathan feels it settle in his chest, heavy and suffocating.

'Meaningless'.

“Move, Nathan,” she says. Her voice thicker this time. Colder than the rain.

“I can’t.” He doesn’t look her in the eye. He looks at the floor, at her worn sneakers, at the spot where her shadow meets his on the concrete. “Not like this.”

She tilts her head, and there’s no pity in it.

She slapped him hard on the face, while he flinches.

“I’m trying,” he says, and he hates how weak it sounds. How pathetic. “You think I don’t know I’ve failed you? You think I don’t lie awake at 3 a.m. listening to your breathing and wondering where I went wrong?”

“Then stop trying and start doing.” Elsosa snaps. “Trying doesn’t pay for the rent or the wasted years. Trying doesn’t put food on the table. Trying doesn’t...” She stops, swallows, and her composure cracks for half a second. “Trying doesn’t make me feel safe, Nathan.”

He staggered backwards. His eyes twitching.

Safety. That’s what he wanted to give her. It's a dangerous world after all.

“I’ll get us out of here,” he says. It’s the same promise. The same one he’s made for months. And he hears how hollow it sounds even as he says it. It feels like a total lie.

Elsosa shakes her head. “You’ve been saying that for six months. And every month it gets worse. The lights go off earlier. The food in the cupboard lasts fewer days. And you…” She gestures at him, at the bottle few distance away on the floor. “You get worse.”

Nathan’s jaw clenches. “So that’s it? You just leave, when it gets hard?”

“When it gets hopeless,” she corrects, brushing his shoulder as she walked away.

Nathan’s hand stretched out, not to grab her, but to touch the doorframe beside her.

“Elsosa.” He calls softly. Almost as loud as quiet.

She stops but doesn't turn. "Goodbye Nathan."

Her final words left him broken.

The door hangs open for a while. But then he walked through it. Pacing hurriedly to catch up with her as she was stopping a taxi.

"Elsosa!" He yelled.

Elsosa’s expression shifts. The hardness in her eyes doesn’t disappear, but something else cracks through it. Sadness. Grief. For the man he was. For the man she had wasted her time with.

She got into the taxi and it drove off immediately.

He stopped pacing any further and kept staring at the taxi, until it disappeared from sight.

“She left me, because I'm a nobody." He muttered to himself.

His eyes began blurry with tears that filled.

Elsosa is the only one that ever had hope in him. What will become on him now?

He lets out a shout. Loud enough to disturb the neighbors.

It was a shout of regret. Bitterness. Pain.

He has lost it all. His only will to live. 

The woman he promised to marry.

He scoffed. Tilting his head to a corner, he thought, “Who would ever marry a loser like him?”