NOTHING BUT A BAD TASTE. (✓)

24. WILTED HOPE

( unedited ) 

THE PINK AND BLUE BUBBLE BALLOONS spelled celebrations glitzed on the glass stairwell; but Maya felt she had very little to celebrate. She silently corrected this thought; knowing she had a lot to celebrate. Her baby was almost full term, and she had carried her baby with no major complications. It was just that life looked very different, almost unrecognisable, from when she first fell pregnant.

Ebén and Maya had spoken about not wanting to build another a broken home; and yet, they were a mere few weeks away from welcoming their baby into one. And whilst, Maya hated the cards currently at play; she knew that a large portion of the blame lay at her feet and the dust still had not settled.

When would it finally settle?  She mulled it over with herself but it was only Ebén who knew the when. Whenever he was ready to stop freezing her out and finally talk it out like the adults they were. She didn't speak with conviction anymore; only misery. 

"Blaze, I know what I saw," said Maya in a heavy burst, taking refuge under her mountain of sheets. Even her hiding spot was infused with smells of Ebén, now largely faint, evidence that Ebén was no longer a permanent fixture, but a thing reminiscent of the past. This wasn't the direction their love story was supposed to take, but dirty baggage and lustful confusion had transported them here.

*Correction, her here.

"Are you sure you weren't mistaken?" poked Blaze; who attempted to prise Maya out of the lump of sheets she had buried herself in to avoid the god awful truth. Maya could recognise that Blaze was attempting to add some balance and reason, but there was no other side, no explanation for Ebén to offer. There was now just another woman.

Maya despised that she remembered how Ebén's eyes seemed to brim with joy at a distance — the type of the joy that had been absent in their interactions. The type of joy that used to lessen the load and quieten the thunderous beating of her heart whenever she happened to overthink. The type of joy he used to look at her with; lucky he got to love her and she'd do the same. She had watched his love bloom like the wildest flower, but also wilt too quickly, right in front of her beads of hazel green.

And that was the part that hurt the most; how quickly he pulled his love from beneath her feet.

"How can I be? He looked at her... the same way he used to look at me," Everything about Maya spelt utter deflation, wanting to cover her vicious heart rip with hot coal. Maybe, doing so would make it hurt less, or stop hurting altogether, even.

"He still looks at you the very same way. That hasn't changed," replied Blaze; but being the intermediary was too exhausting. She was tired of forming all these explanations for Ebén's behaviour and was sure Maya felt the same. "Why don't you ask him?"

Maya's head emerged slowly out of her sheets, the shape of her eyebrows, confused, "Ask... him what?"

"Who that woman was instead of guessing who she might be," said Blaze simply, speaking to Maya's buried body. Speculating about Ebén's potential love interests was not doing Maya any good; only aggressively riling up her blood pressure and it would be better if she just asked him instead of assuming. The drawback of doing so was that Maya would now know for certain if her home was under siege. Surely, that would be better than constantly living in this glasshouse of limbo, wondering what and who ifs.

"No, no, no. I can't." Maya's stammer was reintroduced; "It's not really my place." Her low pony no longer had the sleek finish to it as a result of her taking refuge beneath the silk, and would need seeing to before she had to face her crowd of guests. She wanted to wail so loud — loud enough for Saturn to hear and give her an excuse for her non-attendance. She was about to walk into being a public spectacle — where guests would prod and poke her belly, asking her questions about how her pregnancy had been when she didn't want to do nothing of the sort. She just wanted to disappear.