Why I Hate Hunter

{12}. Stealing His Spotlight

The first time Mavis told herself to stop crying was barely a week after her mom's death. The whole ordeal had been devastating from the beginning, but their father had kept his cool. He had woken up every morning making them all eat an sleep, making the house run as smoothly as he could trying to be there for his children so that they wouldn't feel the absence of their mother heavily.

But that one night she couldn't sleep and she couldn't stay in her room either, so Mavis decided to go have some water and hug her dad one more time, fearing he would go away too if she closed her eyes for too long. She needed the water for her dry throat since once again she had slept crying, making the sheets wet and subsequently getting cold every night. If her mother had been around, those sheets would have been removed long time ago and Mavis would have never been sick. Nothing ever escaped her mom's bright eyes.

When she had made her way to the kitchen, she had heard sobbing; faint but distinct sobbing. As she stood frozen by the door without making the smallest of sounds, it dawned on her that their dad was hurting as much as they were, if more, having to see his children so miserable and the house so empty without the woman he had built everything up with.

That night, she decided to not cry again. If she cried her dad would get hurt. If she cried she would get sick and she wouldn't be able to help around anymore. She was a woman, she had seen her mom do a lot of stuff, so she was sure she could do it too. If she cried she would seem weak and fragile.

She could show her dad she was perfectly fine and capable of being a grown up alongside him if she didn't cry like a child.

At first, it had been quite difficult to keep tears in. There was always something that made her sad, angry or helpless. But the more she worked to solve something, the more she distracted or convinced herself that crying was not the answer.

Crying never solved anything.

And until that very day, Mavis had thought everything was solvable and there was no reason to cry. Only that, with her friend gone, with her brother still distant to her and with everything else, she felt for once like just crying. There wasn't much to do, and she could surely distract herself, but the knowledge that she had so easily lost a friend that she somehow never fully had, made her heavy. Too heavy to move, as she sat at the end of the bed, her legs hugged close to her chest.

But there are consequences when teaching yourself to not cry.

Over time it became quite difficult to cry. Sometimes she didn't even know she wanted to cry and at other times, she felt like she got emotional for no reason. Sometimes she couldn't even breath with all the pressure she was putting on her chest to stop any sobs from leaving, and at other times her head would thumb loudly in protest.

Today she had both the intense pressing in her head and a heavy chest, and the only thing she could do about it was to think how the heavy chest was probably because a fat Hunter was sitting down on it. She could get rid of Hunter easily, push him away like she had always wanted, so she liked the idea that the pain was pushable too. The pain would go away eventually.

Among all that she almost forgot about the kiss, or almost kiss for the matter. She was sure she still hadn't kissed Hunter, not really at least, but it did make her wonder about all that scene.

Why would Hunter even kiss her or come up with such a scenario to hurt two people in one go?! Because that was really just a plan and she could tell by how Hunter's body felt like it would rather disappear into the thin air then stay a second closer to Mavis.

His goal wasn't to make Mavis realized how bad of a friend Lily was to her. No, she had gotten that message clear. Even her own brother had made a face when Lily got mentioned so there was a high probability that both Hunter and Cole had disagreed with her choice of friends a long time ago and if they really had cared about Mavis, then they would have told her about this many years ago.