In which Neve keeps texting her deceased friend's number, at first in order to cope with the loss, and later on, as a force of habit. After four years, she is about to stop, but suddenly, the number responds.
***
An MNR epistolary collaboration wit...
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Style: drabble / ficlet format
Prompt: Six times Benj wished he wasn't a Vallejo, and the one time he didn't.
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i:
The first time he hears about it, he's ten and it's by accident. They're out on vacation and he overhears when his lola asked his mother about his dad. It takes him by surprise why she's asking because Benj has been told that his father is dead.
But turns out he's not.
ii:
The first time he meets the man, he's already fifteen and in high school. He introduces himself as President Marko Alonzo Vallejo, a friend of the family, but he's not stupid. Based on the frown on his mother's face, and the silent cry she made later that night, it clicks. He knows he's finally met his not-so-dead father.
The Vallejos are well-known, so he puts two and two together right away. That his mother had an affair, with a married man, who's also famously having an affair with another woman. It's all kinds of fucked up and it makes his head hurt trying to make sense of it. He doesn't understand adults and their bad decisions in life.
But he never tells her that he already knows. He loves her too much to do that.
iii:
Benj is used to coming home to an empty house since his lola passed away. His mom works two jobs and can't make it home early, but he's excited to come home everyday to make fresh dinner for her. He loves his mother, more than anyone else, because it has always been them against the rest of the world.
Tonight, another pair of shoes are waiting outside the door. Benj doesn't miss the traces of dinner now on the sink waiting to be washed.
Before he can call for his mother, the door to her office opens, and a guy only slightly older than him walks out and mutters a quick thanks to his mother.
His mother smiles back, and the guy only notices him then. He gives him a look, nods, and then without introducing himself, turns back to his mother.
