Chapter Text
“I want to finish.”
The ticking of the clock hanging on the wall vibrated between the structures as she blinked, in a phony attempt to reason while he looked away. The clock marked exactly eight o'clock at night, like a cunning decree, immortalized with hot wax and a mournful seal.
The gavel of the court decreeing the end of existence.
“What?”
Mabel stared at Adam, her boyfriend of four years and best friend of seven years, scared from head to toe.
“Why?”
Adam looked up at her, but remained silent for a few seconds.
“I met a girl” and that was it.
It took Mabel a moment to react. The gears of her mind jammed and she blinked at him with the same stoic expression that her body was used to reacting to in extreme situations, but her mouth half-opened as she lost her breath. The sour, bitter feeling in her stomach, and she straightened her posture and squared her shoulders, as if that would build protective walls around her. The atmosphere in the diner no longer seemed anything but suffocating.
“Right.” Her face was expressionless and his voice sounded vague. “When?”
“Five months,” he answered.
The dark strands of his hair were freshly cut, making him seem older than he really was. His dark blue t-shirt had sleeves, his lips were slightly pursed, and his dark brown eyes were slightly defensive.
She didn’t answer. And the tablecloth was almost the same crimson red as the t-shirt she had been wearing two weeks ago, when she had noticed that Adam was acting weirder than usual. Fourteen days that had passed slowly and that had haunted her with an unsettling feeling in her chest.
And now, things seem to have become cleaner and clearer. And it's like a snap, a click, bringing back memories that, no, it wasn't just these last few weeks.
It had been almost three months since his behavior had changed. Abandoning the boy she met when she was still a dreamy girl, who idealized her biggest dreams every day before falling asleep. And maybe the reason she always ignored the signs was the image she created of him, the one she wished he was , and that she clung to with all her strength.
He almost never met her for lunch in the cafeteria anymore; always full of excuses, missed calls, quiet and full of silence when he did see her. Mabel couldn't remember the last time they had even held hands, although she wasn't very intimate with physical contact.
She left that glaring warning that flashed incessantly buried, ignoring any kind of thought. She felt like an idiot. It was unbelievable to think that seven years had been summed up for nothing because he had met someone else five months ago.
“She's the daughter of one of my father's partners” he began, sounding uncertain. Mabel's heart was beating apprehensively, painfully, and she could hear the beating echoing in her ears. “I've been working with him these past few months, you know, to take over the company. She and I ended up seeing each other quite often…”
“You cheated on me?” she blurted out, all at once. The words carried even more weight when said out loud.
Adam was startled.
“No” he denied, his eyes frightened “I would never do that.”
Mabel stared at him, pursing her lips. She tried to be rational, although her heart was still pounding and, when she tried to swallow dryly, it went down like thorns in her throat. She brought her hand to her head, resting her fingers on her temple and feeling a headache coming on. Trying to gather all the courage she had to ask the question that deep down she already knew the answer to.
In a rush of adrenaline, Mabel asked all at once:
“Do you like her?”
He stared at her in silence.
“I do,” he answered after a while.
The feeling came stronger than she expected, and it hit her as deeply as a cruel knife. She let her head fall, holding it with both hands. The uncomfortable sensation made her fingers tingle with the sudden urge to touch her fingertips over her chest, where it hurt so much, and run the palm of her hand over the place in a cheap attempt to make the anguish go away. But she stopped herself.
Mabel had never felt anything like it before.
“So,” she murmured, “Is that it? Are we not together anymore?”
Her face burned as if she could explode at any second. All she could think about was how much she wanted to leave and go back to her dorm. God, what would she tell her mother?
Adam nodded slowly, and she shrank under the bench.
“This is hurting me too,” he said pathetically.
Mabel was silent, trying to direct Adam’s words and gather her thoughts. It made no sense.
“What’s her name?”
“Mabel,” he began slowly, “I don’t think that’s necessary. You don’t need to…”
Adam's voice became distant, an echo in the void, as a fleeting memory came over her; a flash of everything they were and everything they could never be again.
The peak of their fourteenth birthday, on an autumn afternoon and a Friday marked on the calendar. That day, her mother and father's argument echoed through the structures of that enormous house, and the cold and methodical atmosphere that haunted the days seemed to become denser and heavier.
Ethan, her older brother by three years, appeared at the bedroom door with his familiar blue jeans and a basketball under his arm, saying that there were visitors downstairs. He turned his back on her, exposing the number eight printed on his team jersey. And, as Mabel put down the book she was reading, she wondered why Ethan was there if there was practice at that time.
When he came downstairs, with his blond, curly hair tied in braids, Adam was standing next to his older sister, Lauren Smith, sixteen, holding some kind of electronic game in her hands.
She watched him curiously, even though her face didn't show it. At the time, Adam's dark hair still covered his entire forehead, and he still wore the tacky clothes his mother had chosen. Adam was the youngest son of his father's new business partner.
The Smith brothers and their mother visited three times a week. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and sometimes between Fridays and Saturdays, due to the friendship their mothers had developed. While his brother was busy talking to Lauren about "grown-up stuff," Adam was pushed toward Mabel. The fact that the boy and she were the same age always seemed to be a coherent excuse.
But in the end, he wasn't much of a talker, and, well, neither was Mabel.
But when it came to his favorite movies on TV, the only ones Mabel knew, or when he said he would let her play his game if she taught him the school material he hadn't understood, they simply understood each other.
A while later, Mabel started going to the same school as Adam. Her mother claimed that she could become friends with Adam's friends and she wouldn't be alone anymore.
After years, Mabel realized that her lack of friends was partly her fault. She was so busy with tests, competitions and things in her own life that she didn't make room for new people. Or she simply didn't see them coming.
Contrary to what her mother said, Mabel didn't make friends at her new school. She didn't have time.
And she wouldn't become close to Adam if she didn't see him every day at school and, occasionally, at his house. They only talked outside of school for a while. Then, waves and "hellos" started to be part of the routine.
Before you know it, in the blink of an eye, Mabel and Adam became friends.
The conversations were no longer shallow and superficial, and they didn't just talk about movies or agreements.
Mabel had never really been close to anyone other than her older brother. When Adam had made his way into her life, it would be an understatement to say that, at first, she wasn't scared. But it wasn't all bad that Adam was there too.
She had started to like him in her late fifteenth. The butterflies in her stomach were suddenly there, and her hands would sweat when he got too close. Even if she had feelings for him, Mabel had never confessed them. But she thought he knew, as did everyone else in the family.
Weeks after her seventeenth birthday, Adam asked her to be his girlfriend. And they had been together ever since, after going to the same college after high school.
They had been together for so many years that Mabel simply didn't understand why he was breaking up.
Had he gotten tired of her?
Mabel stood up from her chair in a sudden and quick act, pulling her bag and putting it on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry about that,” Adam said, also standing up. “I just…” he pondered. “I didn’t want it to end like this.”
His eyes were drooping, and Mabel searched his face for any sign that this was some kind of joke. She wanted him to give her reasons. Tell her where she had gone wrong.
His cold hands slid down her neck, and Mabel swallowed hard, worsening the burning in her throat. Anguish crawled through her chest, and being inside that diner with smoke and murmured voices in the background only made things worse.
“Is that all you had to say to me?” Her voice sounded hard and angry. When Adam didn’t answer, she returned: “I’m leaving.”
Something inside her hurt. Mabel wanted so much to get rid of this that the feeling consumed her desperately.
“I didn’t want it to end like this, Mabel,” she heard him say, continuing to complain, but she was already too tired of all that to pay attention to him.
“Goodbye, Adam.”
The steps she took out of the diner were heavy as lead. She felt her eyes burning and her throat scratchy. The tinkling of the bell attached to the top of the door echoed in her ears as she passed and left the establishment, being greeted by the cold night wind. The wet sidewalk gave away that it had rained, as did the windows and hoods of the cars. The wind was still present; her arms shivering with the strong jet of wind and freezing her bones.
Mabel raised her hand to the taxi that was coming with its headlights on; which illuminated the wet street.
Mabel’s quick steps collided with the wet asphalt and made low sounds that she could barely hear. Her hands struggled to open the door, shaking slightly, but when she finally stepped inside, welcomed by the warm atmosphere and quickly closing the door, she let out a sigh of relief that hurt her lungs as she gave the driver the address.
The college and the girls' dormitory weren't that far away. She could walk, as she had done countless times, but the idea of facing Adam once again sounded too terrifying.
The drive to the college was silent, and Mabel could only hear the sound of the rain falling outside again. The drops hitting the roof of the car made low, distant popping sounds. When the college campus materialized through the window, Mabel paid the driver and stepped out of the car into the rain.
The lights in the small kitchen were on when Mabel entered the dormitory with damp hair and slightly damp clothes. Samantha, her roommate, was sitting at her desk with a pen in her hands and the notebook she used for her creations, and her eyes went to the blonde when the sound of the door closing echoed throughout the room. The serene expression on her face and the smile that threatened to sneak onto her lips faded when she saw Mabel, and her eyes became confused.
The blonde took a few steps forward, her hands trembling and the rustling of Samantha's movements as she stood up; her voice that showed alarm asked her for the third time what had happened.
Mabel walked past her and opened the bathroom door, entering and locking the handle. She didn't want anyone to see her like that. It was embarrassing.
She sat on the floor. The floor was cold.
Her back was against the wall and Mabel raised her legs, wrapping her arms around them. Her eyes fixed on the wall, drooping, tired and expressionless. Mabel stared at the white tiles, feeling her chest rise and fall unevenly, while that bitter sensation corroded her insides. Samantha's voice invaded her ears, sounding distant, along with the sound of knocking on the door. Mabel leaned her head on her legs together, closing her eyes.
That Friday, it rained all night.