I'M NOT YOUR WOMAN. (✓)

03. fated.

|◁ II ▷|

jazmine sullivan — girl like me.

BLAZE YELLED OUT Maya's name in a breathy huff, almost causing the peeled back-thin walls of their East London apartment to shake at her grating sound. She had a very long list of bad habits, but her inability to acknowledge the need for quiet was no doubt the worst one.

Maya thought, naively, that the throbbing pain of a pounding hangover would halt Blaze from committing her act of terror, after, all, they had been up all night.

It did the opposite, it kept her up.

Her pungent breath had snooped in and hovered over a sleep-deprived Maya, who was desperate for a few minutes to doze. Blaze's eyes were focused on waking up her friend as she wanted something to play with.

Maya's disdain at Blaze's stale breath was now visible, using her duvet covers to turn away from the smell's source, "Blaze... your breath fucking reeks — My God!"

Blaze stood there, planted, stuck between wanting to put her hand over her mouth to smell it herself or try to brave the mockery coming from her straight-talking but equally vulnerable best friend/roommate.

"Of alcohol?" she whispered dumbly, opting for the first choice. She took a harsh sniff, finally putting two and two together as to the cause.

"Yep" Maya nodded, not too fond of the physical alarm clock that was Blaze's breath, "I bet it's that cheap dirty vodka that Barney gave you."

Blaze threw her best friend a knowing look, she was often very reluctant to give alcohol away. Adamant even, to put the last drip to good use before she'd throw the damn thing away.

After all, liquor doesn't grow on trees.

A sudden wave thumped the front of Maya's skull, her entire body still pained by her choice of drink, or drinks. If she needed a reminder as to why she shouldn't try and keep up with Blaze, then she didn't need to look any harder.

Alcohol had always been her crutch, its taste capable of numbing the holes in her body that were designed to feel something. It also entrapped feelings of heartache that would often flood back like a god awful memory, especially on days when all she wanted was to drown.

She often presumed that bad times don't happen to good people but they do. No one is exempt.

Fairytales were never a thing that she found to be endearing nor the prospect of love at first sight.

Or love, at all.

She was known to be a cynic to anything romance, because the battered woman had been scorned by the reality that forever doesn't exist.

Her ex-boyfriend, Reuben Smalls, who she had a treacherous history with, was deceptively charming with a wicked grin. His claw was relentless, breaking every inch of her walls, until he had her surrounded, demanding her and her rock-solid heart. Maya wasn't the type to cave at bold declarations of love but love surprises the most unsuspecting.

It surprised her.

But, houses were torn when the foundation is made of wicker and straw and that was the story with them.

His words grew curt and he was there, but not really there. And then, Maya's crazy intuition confirming that feeling of neglect, that feeling of not really ever being good enough, that feeling of it... finally ending.

He had slept with someone else.

How could she forget... his eyes, that neglected to tell her the truth, even though she did ask — so many times. Or the red plush in his face whenever her name just happened to be dropped into a conversation that had nothing to do with her. She hated that she remembered how he felt no remorse for rocking her life upside down, leaving her to deal with her miscarriage herself.