My frown tugged. Ben, my boyfriend, if that was what he wanted to call himself.
I hardly knew what the word meant other than we sometimes spent nights together, the occasional day, sent dry texts back and forth, likegood morningandgoodnight, and fucked.
Guess all that was supposed to mean something.
It always felt hollow.
I never lied to myself about him, or any boyfriend I’ve ever had.
Ben just didn’t really matter to me.
Now, he felt even further away, a memory of a person, not someone I could have called now.
I pushed from the window and slinked by Bee. She backstepped to make the space for me, and her greyish eyes followed me out of the kitchen.
I went upstairs to my room, shut the door, and dropped onto the bed. And I stared at the popcorn-textured paint on the ceiling.
I was certain only ten minutes or so passed before there was a soft knock on the door.
“Fuck off.” My answer came unenthused, without vigour, but I meant it all the same.
Still, the door creaked open, just a crack, and I threw an exhausted look at the face in the threshold.
Bee shimmied inside, holding one mug and one tumbler. “Wasn’t sure what you drank, so…” She set them both down on my nightstand. “Tea or tequila.”
I made a face at her. “Tequila?”
She lifted one shoulder, smiling.
The look I spare her is harsh, all curled lips and sharp-as-diamond eyes.
Unwavering, Bee handed me the tequila. “Definitely this one.”
“Can you just fuck off?”
My retort didn’t so much as flinch her.
Her smile remained soft as she sank onto the crates of records pushed up against the wall.
Something about Bee I learned in that moment, an unwanted intruder into my bedroom, is that she doesn’t ask questions when I’m unwilling to answer them.
She doesn’t fill the air with chatter, like most people do.
She just… waited.
Waited until long after the rain softened into a drizzle, and the noise from outside in the garden started to rise with cheers and laughter, and the hum of the TV downstairs became a constant background sound to my stunned misery.
That is where I was.
Somewhere between the shock and the pain that a part of me refused to let in.
Mum…
My mum…
“My mum has cancer.”
The admission escaped from my lips in a breath, a murmur, and yet I felt nothing about it releasing, no shame, not even relief.
