Chapter 6 - The girl with the colored hair

BETWEEN COLLEGE WORK, extracurricular activities, and the ever-increasing drudgery on the Vecchio Tour, I had virtually no social life left and used traveling around the world to let off some steam. In order not to leave the company alone, Celso and I took turns in charge of the excursions and when he went on a trip, I took over the office in Vila Madalena, and vice versa. We now had a staff of nearly twenty people in the building, and profitability had increased in parallel with the volume at which we provided our special services.

At family lunches and in conversations between friends on the weekends, I only talked about work and started to become the “boring person”, the one who only had a single subject on the tip of his tongue and monopolized the conversations around from the table, bringing everything to himself.

— You need to relax, bro — Vicente, one of my oldest friends from school days — called my attention one day — life isn't all about work. As that phrase from the movie “The Shining” would say, “all work, no play, makes Jack a fool”.

I could see that in that period I was using work as an outlet to not dwell on the feelings that still existed because of my failed relationship with Shanaya and although I had a lot of fun during the trips, visiting countless places, absorbing their culture and getting to know lots of new people, there was no denying that it was great to have someone to come back to at the end of each journey. I had lost that reference and with a very confused mind, I ended up trying to solve my lack with another relationship too soon. Everyone around me knew this was a mistake but me.

Cibele Antunes was a girl with pink hair who had been introduced to me by Nalanda in a conversation circle on the college campus. She was two years younger than me and styled cool, both in her hairstyle and in the clothes she wore. He liked to dress in an underground way and combined several well-known styles ranging from grunge to tropical, from heavy metal to hippie. He was studying physiotherapy and had met Nalanda during one of the breaks, in his first year of the course.

Cibele and I got together for the first time on a weekend, after returning from a night out in Vila Madalena. We had gathered friends that day and as it had been a while since we had gone out to enjoy, we opted for a night full of drinks and loud music.

I was high on drink and since I hadn't left the car that day, I called a taxi and insisted on taking the girl to her house, which was a few blocks from mine in Perdizes. As it was a road, I thought it wouldn't be a problem for the driver who drove us calmly in the middle of the night.

The car stopped in front of a house on the corner and when it was time to get out, Cibele gave me an enigmatic look, remaining silent for a few seconds, before speaking shamelessly:

— My parents must be sleeping by now… Come up with me. I want to give to you!

We'd been hanging out together in the same group of friends for quite some time and it wasn't like we were strangers. We were acquaintances, we just didn't have enough intimacy for a conversation like that.

The driver glanced at the backseat in the rearview mirror and it was pretty clear he'd heard the invitation to casual sex. Cibele was without any social constraints, as drunk as I was and she repeated, now holding my arm.

- He comes. No need to be shy. Never had a girl ask you out for sex before?

I confess that with all this detachment, no, I thought at the time, but I just took the money out of my pocket, arranged a ride with the taxi driver and then got out of the car, accompanied by Cibele.

After stumbling up a flight of stairs, we started having fun together in the living room of her house and before we were caught by her parents, we ran to her single room, where we had sex for the first time.

"Dude, I'm in love!"

It took a week for me to be overjoyed announcing at the top of my lungs in my office on the third floor that Cibele was my new love interest and Celso was the first to advise me.

"Are you sure you're not going too fast, brother?" It's been a while since you broke up with Shanaya...

“That she broke up with me. - I corrected, interrupting him.

“Whatever,” he said, continuing his reasoning, “even so, don't you think it's early to fall headlong into a new relationship so quickly?

I didn't know how to differentiate if what I was feeling for Cibele was the initial excitement of starting a relationship or if all that was nothing more than a desperate attempt to occupy the vacant place left by Shanaya, but I confess that I ignored anything that wanted to distance me from the idea. to have the girl's company, including advice from my best friend.

In the first few months, it worked very well. Cibele and I were incredibly in tune with each other and we seemed to understand each other even through our thoughts, which made our interaction almost completely easier. Her parents had been much more receptive to me than the excellent great asshole Pedro Luís Villas Boas and even my mother had melted in praise of her new daughter-in-law, loving all her spontaneity and the positive energy she transmitted.

After seven months of dating, things started to go inexplicably wrong after she was invited by Nalanda to visit Itajubá Island at one of our naturist community meetings. Cibele was a very liberal girl and there was nothing conservative about her, however, the girl went into a frenzy of jealousy from the moment she got to know our leisure environment and started to want to censor me every time I mentioned the subject near her .

“I don't want you to go without me anymore. In addition to nudity, there is sex inside those tents and a lot of naughty things… I forbid you to go!

Cibele, suddenly, had become insecure around me and started to distrust everything and everyone, even those who were already part of my circle of friends and were far from being my romantic interest. At a certain time, she even felt jealous of her friend Nalanda and called me almost all the time during my working hours at the agency just to find out if I wasn't, according to her, “in conversation with a certain employee”.

Despite the jealous outbreaks and excessive lack of trust, she and I stayed together for some time and were quite happy. We had amazing chemistry in bed and out of it, we were even more than nail and flesh. She knew how to be a partner, friend and even affectionate when she wanted to, which made me close my eyes to the problems that grew more every day and that ended up, one way or another, culminating in our breakup.

When we celebrated a year of dating, I scheduled a romantic dinner just for us at a pasta house in Santa Cecília. That day, a band was playing various Italian styles on the stage and the sound of the accordion and violin rocked our special day. She had been extremely excited to find out that we were going to celebrate our day at one of our favorite restaurants, but time had passed when, by sheer and unfortunate coincidence, Shanaya showed up at that same location, accompanied by two friends from law school.

I had no idea that the girl also frequented that place or that she would be there on the exact same day that my new girlfriend and I were completing a year together, but when I saw her, my face fell at the time and it was impossible to disguise the my malaise. The radiant air on Cybele's face also faded and she realized right away what was happening.

"You're still in love with your ex, aren't you?"

I thought I had solved that problem a long time ago, but my lack of response ended up creating all the confusion and after that, our dinner was ruined. Some time after that date, Cibele gave me back the engagement ring and didn't want to hear from me anymore.