Mommy ✓

if i could fly: (iv)

P A R T  IV

MIDRAND, 2020
*

Anna came home earlier than her girlfriend that evening. She’d stopped by a grocery store for a few essentials. One of them included a small boquet of baby orange roses – they were Paiten’s favourite.

She heard the jangle of keys an hour and a half later and despite all of the breathing excercises she engaged in, her heartrate spiked. She turned her head a little to catch the first glimpse of her girlfriend.

Paiten must’ve been in another world, or Anna’s breaths may have been as quiet as death because the younger girl didn’t see her.

She leaned her forehead against the door and realeased the most defeated sigh Anna had ever heard. She straightened turned and only then did she her blonde-haired girlfriend, watching her with sad, intense eyes.

“Hi,” Paiten said – almost shy.

“Hey,” Anna replied. Then, “come sit by me.”

Paiten nodded and walked over to their couch set and plonked down delicately next to her girlfriend. The air between them crackled with the tension of unspoken words, of guilt, of sadness.

“Paiten, I want to ask you something and I want you to be honest with me.”

Paiten turned to look into the mystical brown eyes she’d grown to love so much in the past four years. They were clouded with so many heavy things, no doubt they mirrored her own.

“Always,” she replied.

“Did something happen between you and Amanda last night?”

Paiten couldn’t help the incredulous look that creeped over her face as she scoffed. Anna had to have been joking, surely.

But a few minutes passed and her girlfriend was still giving her that tortued look and she realised that Anna meant what she had asked. There was no accusation in her eyes, just sadness and what was that? Resignation. Paiten felt something in her chest collapse. This was not a fight, she realised, but a surrender.

“No,” she replied softly, honestly. She slid her hands across the seat to reach for Anna’s. They felt cool in her palm. She was nervous.

“I would never do that to you, Anna.”

“I’m sorry,” Anna huffed, “I just – when I came in this morning and I saw you two togther in our bed - ”

“She’s my best friend.”

“But you two have history.”

“Yeah we had sex the one time and she ignored me for five months afterwards.”

The bite in Paiten’s tone felt like a physical attack and Anna felt the goosebumps rising on her own skin.

“I’m sorry, this isn’t how I should’ve approached this topic. It’s just I fucked up big time last night, okay? I should’ve been there for you but I wasn’t and she was, she always is.”

“What’re you saying to me?” Paiten asked.

“I don’t know. I just – I wonder if you don’t ever regret not choosing her instead of being with me.”