Page 5 of Cain

“Look how much you’ve changed already, Katerina. You don’t want to speak your native language with your boyfriend because you want to improve your English. Doyou have any idea how pathetic that sounds?” Kryštof scowls, his voice reverberating around my otherwise silent and small apartment.

I shake my head and bite my lip with disappointment. Once again, I feel pressured and pushed. Asking the people around me to understand me feels like talking to a wall.

He doesn’t understand. I don’t know if it’s jealousy or because he’s fed up with this situation. I know how hard it is; I’m also in this relationship. I had to move to the US to follow the career of an upcoming model—and to get the hell away from my parents, their strict rules, and the “shut up and get back into your room already”—while he had to stay behind in Czechia, where we’re both from.

I thought he’d be more supportive and understanding. But why did I believe that Kryštof would change? He, like my parents, talks to me this way because I dare to talk back.

“You haven’t changed at all, Kryštof. You’re the same asshole you’ve always been,” I say, the corner of my lip hooking up involuntarily.

“Watch your mouth when you’re talking to me!” he shouts. “You’re doing this to feed your vanity. You don’t love me anymore.” He fumes even more, making his prominent and clean-shaven jawline twitch.

I don’t think I ever loved him anyway.

I return my eyes to his. He looks enraged, and I feel a sense of disappointment. Devastation. Jadedness. “Are you done?” I ask quietly, trying to remain composed.

“No, I am not done!”

“But I am, Kryštof. Let’s not drag it even further.”

“Katerina!” he screams yet again.

“Ahoj, Kryštof.”

I hang up the phone and toss it onto my dusty pink duvet. I let my body collapse onto the bed, falling back and bouncing into the air once.

During the months I’ve spent living in the US, my mindset has changed. Maybe I am the bad guy in this situation, but I don’t know how to change it.

My life has always been weird. Controlled, I’d say.

My parents come from a prudish family that expects me to save myself for marriage. For years, I was afraid of my dad’s strict rules. But when I reached puberty, I rebelled. I became a renegade and slept with my boyfriend. Shocking!

Mom and Dad don’t know. If they did, they’d kill me, kill him, and then die of embarrassment. As far as they’re concerned, I’m still pure. And it’s best to let them keep believing that.

They forbade me from talking about my dream of becoming a dancer, so I never even took a class. It’s just a hollow dream that’s slowly started to slip away from me.

Becoming a model came easier and felt more natural to me, I’d say, although my parents didn’t approve of that, either.

To them, it was wrong. A disgrace that would expose and humiliate our family name—like everything I did. But the more they denied it, the stronger my desire grew. Was it to oppose them? Or because I actually wanted it? Who knows?

Until one day, someone saw me randomly at a beauty contest that a friend participated in as a makeup artist. She wanted me to become her model, and of course, I agreed. An agent selected me and offered me a job as a model, but in America. Naturally, I seized the opportunity, left everyone behind, and flew away to live the big life. At least, that’s what I thought.

But a model’s life can be tricky. Hard, even rough. People see you as an object, not as a person with feelings. All these years of pushing and pressuring myself to become someone just to defy my parents have left me numb. I don’t even know if I love it anymore.

I’m struggling to keep up with my demanding schedule. “Be thin, be healthy, be athletic, funny, smart; know history, know how to cook, how to drive.” Funny how different everything looks under the stage lights.

I escaped one harsh reality only to become trapped in another.

At least I’m far away from home.

My arms wrap around my pillow, my eyes nailed to the ceiling, and my mind travels.

It drifts back tohim.That guy I’ve been spotting everywhere lately. Why does he keep popping into my thoughts when I haven’t even spoken to him? He’s elusive and mysterious, yet somehow, he keeps appearing wherever I go.

As much as I’m trying to remember his face, I can’t. I can only remember the way his gaze makes me feel. So weird, yet so true.

“Is it over?” my roommate, Emily, raises her thin, brown eyebrow, interrupting my daydream.

“My call or my relationship?”