Marriage of convenience

Chapter 33

The room was silent and I could hear the sound of my own heartbeat. What Hunter told me just moments ago felt like a thunderbolt straight to my head.

Marylin was pregnant.

Marylin was pregnant with someone else's baby.

She got an abortion done.

An abortion.

She had cheated and slept with another guy and also got pregnant with him.

I looked at Hunter for confirmation and his face looked as gloomy as mine did. Whatever he told was the truth. He wasn't even remotely kidding about this entire thing.

"Are you sure?" was the first question which came out of my mouth. Somewhere deep inside I didn't want Ray to be cheated on by someone whom he loved so dearly and also had decided to spend his life with. Somewhere I gave his happiness the priority than my own.

"Beatrice, Marylin's best friend confirmed it to me," he replied. I wanted him to tell me that he wasn't sure of any of it and that it was just his assumption. At least that way I could live in peace by being in total denial. Now that he had confirmed it, facing Ray was next to impossible. "Now that you know all about it, would you be able to tell it to anyone?" he asked.

When I thought that facing Ray would be so impossible, how could I ever bring myself to tell it to him? The heartbreak in his eyes would kill me. I could only imagine how hard it was for Hunter to keep it all to himself all the time while being right beside the both of them. 

"I can't," I steadied my voice. "But are we gonna let Ray be in the darkness forever? Should we let Marylin cheat on him forever?"

It turns out, that was the exact question which Hunter seemed to be avoiding all these days. He couldn't let his friend's heart break, but neither could he just let it be and see his friend get cheated on. Both of them hurt him and he knew that. He just couldn't reply and I understood that. I couldn't just force out an answer from him.

After all the enlightenment from Hunter, I couldn't bring myself to face Ray the way I used to before. Looking him in the eye was next to impossible. I cowered around him as if I was the one who did something bad. I just couldn't talk straight to him and fled from our conversations. This kind of behavior from my side put Ray on the edge. He tried to make me talk in several situations, and even asked me if something was wrong and was bothering me, but I never gave him a proper answer, which made him slightly irritable.

A few days passed by and it was the end of his patience. He couldn't take me be like that anymore. Even in the college, I often avoided him and sat with Hunter, or disappeared with Hunter altogether because we tried to brainstorm some solution to make Ray's upcoming heartbreak a little better. Thomas and Dylan were oblivious to our knowledge and we decided to keep it that way. Thomas wouldn't bear the injustice which was happening to Ray and would take it on himself to go and talk to Marylin about all the chaos, resulting in episodes of unnecessary drama and denial. Dylan, knowing his personality, would directly go to that guy who Marylin cheated with, punch the daylights out of him, drown in sadness because of the unbearable thing that had happened to his dear friend and would share his sorrow to all the people he would come across, making it completely public. Hunter and I didn't need that kind of drama, so we thought it better to keep it to ourselves and come up with a solution soon.

One day when I was keeping quiet at home, Ray couldn't tolerate it and barged into my room. I was quite startled to say in the least because Ray seldom comes to my room for anything. He'd rather prefer to yell out my name and annoy the hell out of me, but to come to my room to look for me.