After a year and a half of trying to move on from the what-ifs, the tides have pulled Alexandra Rivera and Zachariah Kim back together again.
*****
In the h...
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I awoke with his arm draped across my stomach.
He looked so peaceful that I didn't dare move an inch for fear he'd be woken up. So I lay there waiting, remembering last night in hot flashes of light. The second time felt even better, but I'd been left raw and bare, and had knocked out almost immediately after.
Zachariah stirred, muttering something under his breath.
Deciding I felt too stir crazy laying there, I slipped out of bed without disturbing him and walked to the kitchen. With Zachariah's favorite shirt draped over me, I reached into the cupboard to grab a glass. By the time I finished drinking, I had downed the entire thing.
The realization of what we'd done hit me like a freight train and I slid onto the ground, leaning my back against the fridge.
It wasn't that I regretted what happened. I promised him I couldn't feel that way about us, as our relationship was one of the purest I'd experienced in life, but it didn't make things easier.
All of the dishes I had left still sat on the counter, so I knew my roommate hadn't come home last night. Since I hadn't brought anyone over since moving in and she spent most of her time out of the apartment, we'd yet to deal with those kinds of run-ins.
Once I'd talked myself into something besides sitting on the kitchen floor, I worked my way through the mess. While I scrubbed the pot, someone dropped their keys outside in the hall. Figuring it was my roommate trying to get into the apartment, I opened the door for her.
I was greeted by our next-door neighbor trying to balance a few grocery bags in one hand while using the other to open their door. After gracefully declining my offer to help, we bid each other good morning.
Just as I was about to close the front door, a force propelled me forward until Emmie and Jem walked through the door.
I froze.
Not because Zachariah was feet away from us sleeping completely naked, but because tears were running down Emmie's red, splotchy face.
I was fucked.
I waited for the blow. For Emmie to lash out and rip me a new one, call me a bad friend, scream obscenities at me until she was blue in the face. But she opened her mouth and I realized she wasn't sobbing because of Zachariah and me. It was for something far worse, and I wished it'd been for that other reason all along.
Her words came out so strangled I couldn't understand her at first. She'd been crying so much that her breath kept catching, causing her to hiccup after every word.
Jem was a wrecking ball of nerves. Her eyes darted back and forth between the two of us like she wasn't sure what to do. I'm sure she wanted to give Emmie the chance to explain what was going on, but we were about three seconds away from her not being able to say anything at all so I couldn't just wait around.
