I'M NOT YOUR WOMAN. (✓)

17. assumptions.

|◁ II ▷|

frank ocean — lost.

THE DEFLATED SOUND OF Ebén's guttural voice as she demanded him to exit made her wrestle with her own compassion that she had stepped too far.

Maybe.

I hope nobody will ever judge you as quickly as you've judged me — Maya directly faced Ebén's stony face that couldn't mask the fact that she was letting perjurious words dictate her opinion of him.

He thought she was the type to make her own judgments about him through her own experience of him as she presented herself as a woman who thought for herself and by herself.

It was a quality that he liked best about her.

He was wrong.

Maybe she had been too impetuous in judging him but he stood for, and, symbolised everything she hated in men especially with their brash egos and this glorification of having multi-sex partners.

And Ebén was that exact type of man who women had glorified him and in return he mistreated every single one. Maya had also been a witness to the lack of decorum he showed to that redhead in HEVN.

But maybe, just maybe, I was fault finding?

But... yesterday felt like the first time in forever that he finally heard her, without the noise.

Without the goading.

Without the room trapping — even if it did come at the expense of watching the dagger fly straight into his chest and then twisting it in herself.

Blaze shouted from the bathroom sink with toothpaste pasted around her mouth, "So he... just left?" Maya stirred her coffee relentlessly, her metal spoon clacking again the mug's rim; not in a morning mood to even have this conversation.

She popped her head through, expecting an answer.

Maya slowly sipped her mug of hot decaf coffee, noting that she would need another cup asap — stronger than her first, "Isn't it a normal response when you've been told to leave?"

Blaze didn't warm to her bitty tone, "You told him to leave? Wuh-w-why?"

"I did," Maya took another strained, slow sip and felt Blaze's shadow loom over her eye that refused to let her enjoy her black cup of indulgence in peace.

I need another double shot of caffeine... and maybe a swig of Hennessy to escape this.

"Why?" Blaze pondered hard as to why her best friend would opt to cock block herself like this.

"I don't know. I felt... like it. And it kinda felt good" Maya confessed, sinking her shoulders into her body — feeling slightly amused that she had firmed her no and taken back her power.

"Nah, I swear you heterosexuals confuse the fuck outta me" shouted Blaze as she went to go spit in the kitchen sink, "Do you think he'll call you?"

"He don't have my numba" Maya said slackly, not giving weight to the potential ramifications that Ebén was a man who was determinedly sly.

And wasn't afraid to step on toes that blocked his path to get that thing that he wanted.

But Ebén had signed himself out from their game of cat and mouse; finally realising that she had, and would only ever, give him nothing but a curt tongue.

"As if, that would stop him" said Blaze loosely, as she adamantly refused to underestimate how easy Ebén could call in a favour; since he was... resourceful.