-mommy when is daddy coming?
Ayça looked up from her notebook to meet Mavi's beautiful blue eyes. She sighed as she reached out to stroke her soft dark hair.
Every time she touched Mavi's hair, she inevitably remembered how it was like to stroke HIS hair.
It was amazing how their little girl was the perfect mix of the two of them. Mavi only had the eyes of her mother, she had taken everything else from Alp: Alp's mouth, Alp's hair, Alp's nose, even the small mole on her left cheek was the same as her father's.
-he will come soon, kızım.
Actually Ayça knew that to see her father again, Mavi had to wait for the New Year's holidays.
Since they had moved to Siğacık, the little girl saw her father only during holidays or festivities, because due to their work and the distance it was not easy to go back and forth from Istanbul; and Ayça hardly returned there, since she had decided that her life had to be where she had been happy for the last time. Ayça left her acting career to move there, now she was writing scripts for a major production company and the place where she lived now gave her incredible inner peace and the ability to concentrate and let her imagination run wild. She had always enjoyed writing, but she had realised that she could really do it and make it a job, only thanks to HIM; once he read a letter written by her and he was pleasantly impressed by her prowess. And she had taught her to do it better, they had started it as a game: she was writing, he was reading and giving her advices on how to better render a concept, or improve a description, or where it was necessary to dive deeper into her inner self. It hadn't been easy for her to leave everything and go away, take that child away from her father, but staying in Istanbul and not being with him, seeing him every day and not being able to touch him, had become unbearable.
It started out as a vacation, but they had been there for a year now. Of course they were often talking on the phone for all the decisions concerning Mavi, but she had never seen him again. All the times he had come to Siğacık to pick up the baby girl, Ayça didn't show up, and he went straight to pick his daughter up from school or after her swimming lessons.
Ayça just couldn't meet him yet. Her heart was still too shaken and the feelings of guilt, the torment, for not having dealt differently with that difficult moment between them, were still too much alive.
-mommy tonight can I watch daddy on TV?
Actually Ayça didn't want Mavi to watch that TV series, it was a fairly difficult drama to explain to a five years old girl, but she didn't even feel like denying to her daughter at least to see her father on Tv.
So on every Wednesday they were watching the show together and Ayça was always there to explain everything with easy words, while Alp's green eyes were stabbing her heart across the screen.
- tamam, we will watch it, but first you need to call your dad and then eat something for dinner. Here, pick up the phone, he should already been done working by now.
Mavi grabbed the phone and ran into her room to talk to her dad, while Ayça closed her manuscript to go make dinner.
Before going to the kitchen, she looked out the living room window, the sea was particularly rough that evening, there was a strong wind and it was very cold.
-Mom dad has his phone off.
Mavi came back after a few minutes with a disappointed look on her face, she left the phone on the table and sat down to wait for dinner.
-you will call him later, maybe he is still working.
Or maybe he was on a date. Ayça didn't know if he was having an affair now, paparazzi recently wrote something about his possible relationships, but she'd never dared to ask. God, she couldn't even bear the thought of him with another woman.
But sooner or later it was quite normal that it would happen.
Alp and Ayça decided to separate a year earlier, following to a conflict that had become unbearable for both of them.
It was a very hard time for them, full of tensions and everyday quarrels; They were fighting over everything, even for what to eat for dinner or even when Alp sometimes made a noise with his mouth while he was chewing his food.
Ayça reached her limit and had she brought him there too. There was no real reason, it all started after Mavi's birth, due to a state of mind in Ayça that not even she could explain, and they had dragged their relationship for years to the final breakup.
He took the decision first and she adapted to it, even if it was a huge pain, because she understood that she had gone too far and that she had not been there for him when he needed her the most, but in fact she had even made things worse.
They understood that even if they loved each other, their story could no longer go on like this. But Ayça had never stopped missing him. She wanted to let go of all that suffering, or just a part of it, but she couldn't do that because he would always be there anyway.
Ayça learned how to live together with his absence; she couldn't delete him from her memory, because he was always there anyway, drawn like a painting on their daughter's face.
Ayça thought she had found the love of her life, then, in an instant, it was all over. During the first days after the separation, she felt like she couldn't even breathe.
She lived in an inconsistent atmosphere, fragile as the breaths of the night are, blurred and deceptive.
Not a single step she took had the same reason as before, no sensation was stronger than that pain that tore at her soul. But she had to be strong for her daughter.
And she ran away. She ran fast on that train and then on another one, far from that life, from his scent, from his skin, from his gaze, from that love that she just wanted to forget.
Later, Ayça and Mavi had just sat in front of the TV with a warm blanket on their legs when they heard the doorbell ring.
Ayça wondered who could be at such an hour, they weren't waiting for anyone.
It was true that in that small village everyone knew each other and often the neighbours went to visit her, especially when they had cooked something good, they always brought some delicious food for Mavi.
-Mavi, stay here, I'm going to check and see who it is.
Ayça opened the door and suddenly she had the feeling that the walls of the room were falling on her.
- What?
Maybe it was a hallucination.
A second later she met his green eyes and the emotions that followed that moment overwhelmed her as she was petrifying in front of him.
She opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn't even make a sound; then she cleared her throat, maybe she said something that she herself couldn't hear because her heartbeat was rumbling in her ears.
-A..Alp?
