Eternal Longing ✓

56. The Breaking

JAYA

When my insides finally settle, I push myself up, and, much to my dismay, I'm confronted with an image that unsettles me.

I stare, at a loss for words, watching the bleary eyes and the tear-stained cheeks, the clammy skin, and the brittle lips, and I can't help the disgust that I feel at my reflection.

"Over a mere man," I whisper, gently pressing the skin under my eyes, wondering how it could be possible that in a day, everything has come crashing down.

Still staring at myself, I attempt a smile. Just a small, understated one. A serene smile that screams 'everything is fine' but apparently, my lips are too dry to function. Along with my stomach, they've given up on me.

The smile looks more like a grimace, like the beginning of a loud, emotional sob session. I immediately let it fall, the image scaring the hell out of me.

"I hope you are not pregnant," my mom states bluntly as she enters the bathroom, setting down one of her T-shirts and sweatpants on the counter.

"Pregnant?" I ask distractedly, my focus still on the mirror. On my pitiful sight.

My mom is a few inches shorter than me, but she's a woman who can easily pound fufu for a party of fifty without a trace of sweat, so her strength is worlds apart from mine as she turns me around so she can look at me.

"You've been throwing up left and right, dear."

"I'm not pregnant."

I can tell she doesn't believe me, not that I blame her, but at this particular moment, it's hard for me to care enough to reassure her. All I know is that I'm not pregnant.

Not for any logical reason, but because I refuse to be. I refuse to believe that God would allow such a thing to happen at such a wrong time.

With the most wrong person.

After staring at me for a minute, with the sturdy compassion of a mother that refuses to let her daughter drown in her own misery of puke and tears, she nods and sighs, "Okay. You're not pregnant."

"I'm not."

She smiles slightly at me. "That's good, dear. Now, shower."

I frown as I imagine five-year-olds do when they have to shower and go to bed-petulant and completely irrational. "Shower?"

"Yes, Jayakaiya. Shower and brush your teeth."

"But I just want to go to bed and sleep-"

"Shower and you'll feel better. Then you can go to bed."

"I feel fine," I grumble, already turning to twist my hair up into a bun.

"But you look horrible," she tells me frankly, "and you don't smell very nice."

"Gee, thanks, ma."

She nods, completely serious. "You're welcome, dear." She looks around the bathroom, probably trying to see if there's something else she hasn't thought about that I might need. "Do you want your phone? For music?"

I pause in the act of taking off my shirt, and shake my head profusely, just the mention of my phone sending me into hyperventilation. "I-I don't want to see my phone. It's turned off, right?"

She narrows her eyes on me. "Is that boy tracking you?"

Probably. Maybe. I don't know.

But that's not why I want the device off. It's everything that's within the phone itself-the photos, the texts, the reminders. He's everywhere on my phone, and right now, I need him to be far away.