RIZA PART 6

It had been six months.

And in all that time, we had never even gone out on a proper date.

Not once.

Not because she didn’t want to.

But because I didn’t have a single peso in my pocket.

All I could do was help around the house.

Keep things clean.
Do the chores.
Make sure everything was in order while she was the one out there carrying the financial weight for both of us.

And honestly?

That crushed me.

Because for six years, I had been the provider in my last relationship.

I knew what it felt like to be the one giving.

And now suddenly, I was on the other side of it.

The one receiving.

The one struggling.

The one who couldn’t even take their girl out for something as simple as a cup of coffee.

And the fucked up part is…

That was all she ever wanted.

She never asked for luxury.

Never asked for expensive gifts.

Never wanted grand gestures.

She just wanted to be taken out.

To feel like someone was trying for her, too.

And you can say how messed up that was.

How maybe I should’ve found a way.

And trust me — I tried.

I did everything I knew how to do to give her that simple dream date.

But I was lost.

And every failed attempt made me hate myself more.

I remember seeing her cry one night.

Really cry.

The kind of crying you can’t fake because it comes from years of exhaustion.

And through tears, she told me that she wanted to be treated right too.

That she wanted to feel like a princess sometimes —

not like someone who always had to stand up and be “the man” in the relationship.

Not someone who always had to carry everything.

And hearing that broke something in me.

Because I couldn’t stop thinking:

What kind of monster have I become…

to make someone like her cry over something I used to do so easily for someone else?

I remember her curling into herself, almost in a fetal position, telling me she knew from the start that I wasn’t even her usual type.

But there was something in me that caught her attention.

Something that made her trust me.

Something that made her believe I could become the kind of person I was always meant to be —

especially after everything I had been through.

After being treated like dirt for years, she wanted to help me become whole again.

And somehow…

Without realizing it, I became the person dragging her back into the same kind of pain she fought so hard to escape. 

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