Cleopatra's Bath

'I could really get used to this.'
Cleo thought to herself and added more bubbles to her bath. 
The four candles she lit gave the small dark room enough light to read through her words on the page:

"Dear Marco,
I don't love you anymore. 
In fact, I never did. 
A carrier will come by to take your things in the morning. 
They will be delivered to you by nightfall.
Sincerely yours, 
Cleo."

She smiled to herself with satisfaction, feeling the pleasure of breaking yet another heart.
It was an art she had perfected over the years.
She signed the letter with a kiss and burned the edges of it just as she did when she was eleven. 
'It's romantic.'  She thought to herself, just as she did when she was eleven.

Marco was conquest number fifty three, and a solid heartbreak job well done. One of her best works thus far. And her celebration was much deserved. But when it comes to heartbreaks - he was only number fifty two.
There, on the wall of her heart, hung a framed portrait of her first love Samuel. Her only love, perhaps. The one that got away. The one that left her wounded, abandoned, broken hearted.
Fifty two conquests later, and she still was Samuel's at heart. 

'Darn him!' She muttered to herself.
See, with every broken heart she was hoping to mend hers, but that was not the case.
She would get instant gratification of course, some pleasure in the reckoning of another's heart, a rewarding feeling of revenge, the sweet taste of surprising an innocent fool. But her heart? Her heart stayed broken. Always broken. Shattered to pieces. She reached to the glass of whiskey by the side of the bath. She knew herself by now and knew: the sorrow was soon to come. 

'I must break one hundred hearts. That is how I will mend mine.' Cleo vowed to herself and took a gulp of whiskey. Some said her logic was that of an eleven year old. Stuck in a mindset of a child hurt by their first loss, limited by her vengeful spirit and forever playing games with others' hearts. Her body was of a woman, but her mind and heart were of a child looking to fix what was broken, to no avail. Some felt sorry for her, saw through the charm and underneath the mask. But others were fooled, the fools. She knew how to spot a fool from a mile away. She would giggle and move her hand through her black as night hair and knew if a man was to be a fool worthy of having his heart broken by her. And Marco was a fool like the rest fifty two of them. 

'But Samuel, oh Samuel...' She teared up, and rushed to her glass of whiskey, to quickly guard her tears. To clumsily connect the broken pieces of her heart. Pieces that were too fragile to be put together ever again. 
'Enough!'  She frowned to herself, and wiped her tears away. She got out of the bath and blew out the candles with the rage she was living with since age eleven.

Another conquest. Another broken heart. Another night Cleopatra longed to be eleven again.