CASSANDRA
I met Hugo at a wedding.
I was the plus-one of a friend, who was herself a friend of a friend of the bride.
But this was the kind of wedding even fringe acquaintances were invited, an event-of-the-year kind of ceremony.
There was so much money on display I felt like I needed sunglasses.
I was in a dress borrowed from my friend, a nice one but not designer like everyone else, and I know now I must have stuck out like a sore thumb.
It was probably why no one was talking to me, why I spent most of it sitting at a table pretending to be busy on my phone.
This was before everything. I had no money, and this was the only event on my social calendar all month.
So eventually, I decided to enjoy myself and went to the open bar alone while my friend chatted to other people she knew.
And it was there, halfway through a cosmopolitan, that Hugo introduced himself.
He told me later he fell in love with me at first sight, and it was easy to believe.
He flirted with me the rest of the night, and when I wouldn’t go back to his hotel room, he begged for my number.
The next day, he called. Took me on a date complete with the works: red roses, expensive restaurant, a kiss good night.
At the beginning, it went so well. I suppose all beginnings do.
I knew then I was never going to let him go.
There is no going back when you see how the other half lives.
It isn’t all the shiny trinkets and lavish dinners and ostentatious clothes, though they certainly don’t hurt.
It is, above all, the implicit security that comes from this life.
There is no late-night worrying, no stresses about waiting until the end of the month.
There is simply being, and all the joy that comes along with it.
The tight ball of tension that had wound itself in my stomach for so long it felt like an extension of the rest of my body had slowly vanished without me realizing.
I was not in love with Hugo, but I loved him. My life, in all aspects, was better with him by my side. If this meant I had to look the other way at his behavior, so be it. Far easier than what I had come from before.
Some might say I had turned into someone like him. The same selfishness, the same arrogance, the same greed. That my morals disappeared with my past, disappeared as Hugo did.
In all honesty, they are probably right.
But would I do it all again, to end up at this moment, if it meant I lived the life I did?
Absolutely.