I couldn’t believe it! Michael was crying!  That big bully of a guy who beat up his woman was crying. And I had thought all along that he was all stone with no heart.

His woman had merely fainted, but he must have thought she was dead or something. Well, I had fainted enough times before to know that it was perfectly harmless; it was the brain’s way of dealing with seriously stressing and mind-straining issues. But tears were running down the guy’s cheeks like a little girl! I wanted to laugh out loud.

As I turned back to Dina, I realized she had recovered from her faint. Common sense told me to make my exit there and then, before Michael became violent again. But I just couldn’t walk away from Dina. Seeing her looking so vulnerable had made me fall for her even more. I could certainly risk her man’s fury.

But Michael wasn’t in a fighting mood. He came and crouched besides Dina, and very tenderly, he kissed her. I burned with envy. Suddenly I was so jealous that I couldn’t breathe properly. She was his woman; he had every right to do that. But this same guy also beat her almost every day. This guy was truly messed up!

I stood up, paced around the room twice and decided to go back to my own flat. I wasn’t needed here. Dina had recovered, and Micheal was suddenly the loving man, and I was the bad neighbour who had a maddening crush on his neighbour’s wife!

But as I reached the door, Michael called me. I didn’t even know he knew my name. "Where are you going?” He sounded angry. Without looking back, because I didn’t want him to see the fear in my eyes, I answered him "back to my flat”. "No, wait,” he said, "We haven’t finished yet”.

This boy had recovered fast. One second he was crying, probably thinking his wife was dead. And the next moment, he wants to restart the fight that had caused his wife’s faint in the first place. Hell no, I wasn’t waiting around to get a beating. I told him I had to go, and without waiting for his reply, I opened the door, and walked out back to my flat.

I fell on the sofa, and started thinking. I wondered what I was going to do about this whole thing; Dina was a very pretty wonderful woman. But she wasn’t single and available.

She was living with that man, although she had refused to tell me the exact relationship. The man is a violent man, and I didn’t doubt for a minute he would beat me up if he even got the slightest excuse. And now he knew I was interested in his woman.

It wasn’t exactly a comforting situation, and I wished I had a way out. But I didn’t, short of moving out of the flat. I dozed off, and I don’t know how many hours I slept before

I was woken by shouts; Dina was crying, and Michael was shouting. The woman had been unconscious just a while ago, and Michael had acted like a loving husband, but now he was already beating her up. Listening to what Michael was shouting, it wasn’t hard to figure out that they were fighting about; me. Michael wanted to know what I was doing in his house, and why I had been hiding behind the curtains.

Evidently, he wasn’t satisfied with the answer Dina was giving him, because he kept repeating it. And slapping her, I think. Before I knew what I was doing, I was already on my feet, and I was opening the door when I realized that if I walked in there, Michael was certainly going to kill me.

His fury had become uncontrollable, and he was throwing things around. That guy was really mad. I slowly closed the door, and walked back to the sofa. Let them sort themselves out, like they always did.

I was not going to go into that man’s flat, I still liked being alive and healthy. But in the end, it didn’t make a difference, because Michael came for me.

Ends