Isabella
Sheepishly, I sit cross-legged in the passenger's seat, hand on my bouncing knee and key chain looped into one of my fingers
I've been cooped up in here for a slow half hour, so I've had enough time to fidget with the leather of the car seat and concentrate on the conclusion that I'm too fretful to even open the windows and invite in some fresh air. To distract myself, I decide to do what I've stalled and finally call my parents.
I get an answer on the first ring, the howl of fierce winds greeting me from through the line.
"Hey, mum." I press the phone to my ear and frantically tap at my thighs.
"Bella! Sweetie, how have you been?" The cheerful sentiment of that voice keeps me from blundering. I haven't heard it in ages, and we've only contacted a few times after I'd moved from my hometown to complete my studies here, back during my initial stages with Jasper and when I'd lived with my cousins.
"Yeah, I'm doing alright. Tell me about―"
"Isaac! Get over here. Your daughter might have some news on that boyfriend of hers."
My arms tense. "Um, actually, we―"
"Has he mentioned marriage?"
I grit my teeth.
How am I meant to tell her that I've cemented myself into a confusing and corrupted game of Boyfriend-Girlfriend with a sexy man that's left me in a car with not a word of what he's doing? I peer out the tinted windows with the hope that he's the person walking through those automatic slide doors. He's not.
"Sweetheart, you're here?" Another nostalgic voice. My father.
"Yes...yes. I'm here. How are you?"
"I'm doing lovely. We just got the garden landscaped and it's looking gorgeous." He inhales through that irritatingly blusterous air that's whacking through the phone line. "And last week the home was renovated. But I want to talk about you. It's been too long since I've heard my daughter. How's work coming along?"
Jasper opposed the idea of me working.
"Awesome, awesome," I exclaim with false joy. "I'm, uh...researching the use of human embryos at a laboratory near my place. It's to advance cloning technologies. I've been doing it for months now." Words extracted from an unfulfilled dream where I'd fled from Jasper immediately after getting my degree, busted out his appalling house with a job application in hand, then slapped the papers before the secretary of an ideal workplace.
"That's amazing. What does your boyfriend think of it?"
"And again," my mum adds, "his mentions on marriage."
Andreas trudges through the carpark, a large amount of paper bags hanging over his arms. Each of them are bloated, stuffed with whatever's inside.
"Um, actually, I need to go now because--"
He opens the car's back door and throws the bags inside.
I hang up and twist around to observe the herd of purchases as he flumps onto the driver's seat. "What is all that?" I ask.
He ignites the car. "Bikinis."
I unfold my legs at full speed and grip the sides of my seat. "All of it?"
"Half of it."
"Andreas!"
"What?" He steers the driving wheel, leading us out the parking lot. I glimpse the litter of bags once more, and a few topple over, landing onto the floor.
"Why did you do that?"
He exhales and leans forward, squinting at something on a distant road, then says blandly, "Because I felt like it."
Now's not the time to snap at him. Now's not the time to snap at him. Now's not the time to―
Some steady breaths ensure I don't lash out.
"Okay. So you bought half the clothes in the swimwear store. That's okay. It's fine. It's fine you spent a countless amount of money on bikinis. Thank you, Andreas. Thank you so much." Deeply, I am thankful―but am also fucking enraged at this retaliation to his emotions.
And all of it because I doubted his attraction to my appearance.
I repose and think of the tattoo on his upper abdomen, of my eye on his skin. Of the feelings we were meant to keep away from this muddled relationship.
The ones that are buried too deep, shying away from the surface.
⚘
I need a new way to crack open his frustrated exterior.
I've done everything as of right now. I chased after him during his storm through the house, but he dashed into the shower; I made him those stupid pancakes he always makes me, but he said the food will harm his physique. I assembled him a platter of fruit and got told he couldn't risk spiking his glucose levels. Fucking liar.
Aya taps at her phone and scavenges the internet for suggestions. She's close enough to the edge of her bed that I'm worried she might slip off, thud her head on the bedside, knock over the lamp, and fall straight to the dark wood floor. I'd share my concern if I hadn't been told no one gives a shit during my previous attempts.
Other than failing miserably at reducing his petty frustration using food I had to eat on my own, I reorganised the clothes in his dresser, cleaned the already spotless desk in his room, asked if we could watch a movie together, and then apologised upfront.
And none of it worked for the giant baby, so now I'm relying on Aya's hunt.
"Have you tried giving him a massage?" she asks.
"I can't give him a massage." I twist onto my back. "He won't even face me."
"Then make him want a massage." Her eyes lighten as she turns to me, and she finally scoots away from the edge of the bed.
"What are you talking about?"
She looks directly at my breasts and raises her eyebrows. Then I remember I'm wearing a thin tank top with no bra underneath. "You want me to use my tits?"
"Yes!" She slams her phone on the bedside and pulls a pillow beneath her cheek, a pink nightgown flowing loosely over her plump body.
"No, no, no. I need to be...considerate." I roll off the bed and get onto my feet, tugging down my shorts.
"He's a fucking baby."
I know.
"Maybe. But..." I watch her as I walk towards the door. "You're getting a shit load of hot stuff to wear for the summer." She opens her mouth to speak—and the words don't come. I grin conceitedly. "Exactly."
I've decided I'm going to fling open his door and let the future run its course, and I do just that once I'm across the hall.
He's beneath the blanket, tapping on the pad of his laptop which is illuminating his darker features with a yellow sheet of light. Sticky notes, with something written onto the top one, and a pen are beside him.
He snaps his laptop shut and tightens the sticky notes in his palms as I slip into the covers. Hiding whatever from me.
"Really?" I decide to take on a less fussed approach. "Are those business-related stuff you're writing?" I shift towards him, ignoring that my breasts are hanging loosely in this ineffectual top.
"No. Who were you talking to on the phone earlier?" His gaze doesn't meet mine. He latches onto the notepad I'm itching to pluck.
"No one."
He deigns to glare at me.
"Who were you talking to?" This is the most focus I've received the entire day—other than when he'd watched me jump in and out of bikinis.
I blow out unhurriedly and face the ceiling. "My parents."
Now he faces the ceiling, and something goes...soft in him. He puts the sticky notes to the side, along with the pen, and folds his hands over his chest.
"What did they want?" He does a horrible job of concealing his eagerness.
"They asked about my career. And...Jasper." From the corner of my vision, I see his arms tense under his long-sleeved shirt. The silence is a demand that he wants me to continue. "I told them I'm working at a lab. They don't know that Jasper..." Didn't let me work something out of my degree. I don't need to finish.
Quiet extends in a time span of two minutes in which I pinch the quilt of the navy blanket.
His next words are hesitant. Strained. "And they know of me?"
The truth is nothing but a bearer of guilt. I force it out. "I didn't tell them I left him."
The stillness among us is disconcerting. Andreas doesn't move a muscle. He tries to hide the disappointment on his face with a façade of carelessness―one that I see right through. It vanishes instantly.
"You're not to attend work in the following week."
"What?!" I nearly jump out of the bed.
"The request has been issued by your boss, and I believe it's time I take a break from fucking you."
He pulls the covers over himself, and I silently laugh to myself. Does he think he'll last?
"This matter is not humorous," he continues. "I suggest you apply the break to fucking yourself, too."
Oh, wow. How I know tonight will be so long and wordless.