Ruby Red Marionette

twenty | glacier

He told me what to do.

I was so caught up in the whirlwind of hating him and sympathizing with him that I didn’t listen to him when he told me to create a gray area instead of being so black and white. When I looked at him that night, all I saw was someone who thought of me as a sad case. I saw someone who looked at me as a lost opportunity, as a little girl that could’ve been something great - or at least remotely significant - but ended up being the black sheep.

But then I took a second look at him, and I realized that it would be unfair for me to group him with every other person I knew from the “before” time of my life. The mere fact that I was in his house that night signified the fact that if anyone, he was the one who still loved me. He was the one who had a genuine care for me, the one who wouldn’t say “I told you so” if I finally fell on my ass and decided to change back to what I used to be. And in the midst of all of this, I still didn’t love him. I still didn’t want to marry him or spend the rest of my life with him as he did me. I didn’t reciprocate the love, or even the lust, that he had for me. I wanted to, though; out of guilt, I wanted to give him what he’d always wanted, what he was still sticking around for: my heart.

That’s what I told him that night: I just want to love you. But instead of loving him, I made love to him.

And now there were three.

I sat on the bathroom floor for a while. The longer I sat, the floor got colder and harder and closer to the ceiling. The latter probably wasn’t actually happening, but I might as well have been helplessly sitting in the middle of a floor-ceiling sandwich closing in on itself. I might as well have been on the verge of death. I had dry eyes and a severe case of heartburn. I couldn’t exactly figure out whether the heartburn was real, or the result of my emotional distraught and confusion. I couldn’t figure out whether the desolation in my mind was a good thing, or a component of a quiet, furtive hallucination.

Still, as all of this was happening and my mind could barely grasp the fact that there was a human being inside of me, much less figure out if I was going mad, I had to get up. I had to reconnect myself to the tangible reality around me, stand up, and prepare for Isaiah’s arrival.

Mapco wasn’t that far. He’d be back in no time. I had ten, maybe even five minutes to clean up and make things look like I had an upset stomach.

I picked up the test, wrapped it in a paper towel, and put it in my bag. I could imagine my mother if she saw me now; she was already disgusted at the fact that I carried around a pregnancy test, but if she found out that her theory that ‘preparing for events like this only makes them happen’ was right, she’d love to shake her head and give me her classic sneer. The irony of things was that, if anyone, it would be Simon who she would want to father my kids.

But, of course, not this way.

Isaiah came back, finally. He opened the door, his half-eaten sandwich in hand. He handed me my bag of food, talking and talking about how he’d forgotten his wallet at home and was two dollars shy in paying for the food, but the cashier happened to be his ex-girlfriend from middle school. The rest of the story was probably interesting, given the animation in his eyes and his laughter every few words, but I couldn’t listen. Not because I didn’t care - well, in fact, I didn’t - but because for a few moments, I couldn’t hear anything. The only sound that filled my ears was a low, deep humming, probably the noise people hear right before they die.

Isaiah stopped talking for a moment. I looked at him, marginally excited that his pause was because he’d seen in my eyes (and silence) that something was wrong and he was about to offer me the emotional support that I direly needed right now, but he didn’t. Instead, he sniffed the air a few times and then looked at me.