The Laws of Water

7. Isn't It Ironic?

Mila took the cup of coffee that her husband left her on the counter along with her knock off Gucci purse and got into her Toyota Camry.

She was a woman of small rituals. Every morning she'd listen to her Jagged Little Pill CD on the way to work. It was her favorite album and she knew every word from every song. Mila Tamidova would not be caught dead singing along. She did not have a nice singling voice and no one needed to know that.

Mila got out of her car and walked into her office. From behind an ocean of cubicles, she could see her assistant, Megan, rushing to straighten out the last little details before her boss' arrival.

As Mila's heels clacked through the runway of cubicles, her workers all wished her a good morning in their turn. Their timid little voices like a school of fish.

She always replied with a greeting once,  when walking by cubicle number eight. She never smiled. Never looked back, never looked down and never looked them in the eyes unless she fired them.

Mila had good posture. Not from years of her ballet teacher screaming at her, demanding perfection in a combination of French and Russian and Spanish. But from years of being beaten by her alcoholic father who demanded she stood up and looked him in the eyes as he hit her.

The tattoo on Mila's hip that was removed was a colorful dragonfly she got when she was 19. It was on her for less than a month. Mila liked the tattoo, her father didn't. He unmounted the razor blade from his Husky knife and cut it off her skin in two motions.

The next day he forced himself on her.

The day after that, he was dead.

Mila's kisses would start out soft and slow. Denver described them once to her as being brushed with rose petals. He said it made his hairs stand on edge. It made another thing stand too.

But Mila only kissed Denver when she meant it, and she rarely did.

Despite his masculine appearance and charming green eyes, Denver Atkinson was a shy man who didn't know how to ask for what he wanted. He wanted his wife to love him, unconditionally, eternally, endlessly. He wanted those rose petaled kisses, every single day, for the rest of his life. He wanted to be let in and consumed by her world. He wanted her to break the dams that were holding back a sea of emotions and colors and pain and treasures that he'd been holding back since the beginning of time.

Mila didn't murder her father but she watched him have a heart attack and did just that. Watch.

Her life, in that moment, turned into a marathon for survival. She was always ready to leave anything behind if it meant survival for her. If she found a better man, if she'd get promoted to Europe, if the opportunity just presented itself, she'd leave Denver in a heartbeat.

Mila Tamidova could never get too attached. No amount of therapy could undo the trauma she had been through. It was a part of her. At first it only infected her blood, but slowly turned into the only thing that ran through her veins.

Denver never came to find out about Mila's father. Never fully understood why she is the way she is. Why her love hides behind a mask and only seemes to peak through, accidently, on Fridays and Tuesdays.

You don't have to be in love with someone to love them. Few were the moments that Denver was in love with his wife and even fewer were the times when the feeling was mutual.