I deceive myself that the throb of my chest conveys the excitement of seeing her again. Not pain, not betrayal. Only joy and acceptance.
It was quiet inside, almost lifeless, that I doubt the motive behind this, and I try not to, again.
A quiet exchange of relief begets — a subtle smile, none of the creases by my eyes.
“You came,” she sighs and my dimple pops out. “Of course,” I mumble, disregarding her failed attempt to hide her solemnity. I sit on the floor, behind the door, by her side. My head automatically rests on top of Wanda’s shoulders, stiff and unwelcoming. Shuddering due to my crisped and wet hair, my bones rattling not because of the hasty snowfall.
That didn’t stop me from moving, I think this was what was needed of me. Skin over skin, bonds laced, assurance.
“I rushed as soon as I could, I didn’t know snow was-“
“Hush.”
Wanda looks at me to command silence, her green eyes frighteningly fragile. She puckers her lips, finalizing her request, shaking her head as I whisper “I’m sorry,” lowering my head in shame. “Please don’t”
“Please”
Wanda pulls my neck into her, busy cradling my rotting body into her embrace, my neck sputtering burning blood leaking through the slit. She kisses me on top of my head and for a moment everything I’ve lost disappeared. “Warm enough?”
I look up at her small smile, “warm enough,” repeating the words we both want to hear. It is true. She keeps me warm whenever she can.
Wanda couldn’t have done that, she couldn’t have done that to me.
But she is happy now, almost there, my presence filling her lungs, the wilting roses tucked in between the spaces of her sternum unwilting. Soon, the thorns will be strong enough to pierce her. There would be nothing I could do to help.
I am close enough, I can guarantee by the smooth curve of her cheekbones highlighting her blush, the little light in her green eyes that just never shines bright.
Wanda found it difficult to speak recently, most of the time I had to scoot over and hear to her heartbeat, refusing to listen for my sake. Nonetheless in the end, I understand. That is the least I could do for her.
Thus the tilt of her head I welcome, the burn of her green gaze, the moisture of her lips.
Positioning herself to capture me with her lips — “I’m so grateful to you” — I feel her tongue bearing down on me before I could feel her kiss. Rushed and desperate and uncaring; the best way she knows how.
“I miss you”
I am beginning to shatter. I pull her for a kiss in return — the supple flesh, the reason behind it — until we both forget.
“I’m s-sorry, I…” breaking free, I disconnected without sight, shutting my eyes down before any of my other senses. “It’s just…”
“Don’t say anything else,” Wanda whispers and slides her fingers along the skin in between mine, looping them together before they fall. “Stay.”
She turns delicate, peppering kisses along my cheek and jaw each drop of my heartbeat, holding my face like holding a maimed bird. “We’ll go out, have much fun. I’ll take you out to this pub downtown where no one knows it’s us.”
“Are you asking me out on a date?”
Jests work out just fine between us. At least, that’s the normality we can’t shake.
Wanda pulls the middle of my hair so I’d look up, grinning widely. It's almost as if she's trying for an audition.
I just can’t stop being malicious like this.
Her other hand tucks my lengthening side bangs in the backs of my reddening ears, the other massaging my occipital.
“I want to take you out on a date,” she exhales, “I want to eat dinner with you without a care in the world. I want you-“ planting her lips against mine, sucking the air off my lungs. I need her as much.
Wanda tried to take it to the bedroom but I just can’t do it right now.
She smiles through it all, an emphatic nod without exchanging words. Nothing could undo what had been done. Wanda doesn’t let go of my hand.
Until she’s driving the car toward our destination, a park downtown with a nice view. She says there’s a big cherry blossom that I haven’t seen before, and when she can, squeeze my hands three times. It’s a method we’re deeply accustomed to, a cipher unable to be deciphered by the common people.
My love takes the lead in long strides, her and her big feet, and her big eyes that’s looking down at me all the time. It takes an effort — “you mesmerize me” — so I blush when I receive praise from her. She just knows what to say and what to do. Wanda sees me for who I am, and it only makes her bolder to stand by me. She knows me and she chooses me.
We don’t mention the bruises that colors my now patched skin, hidden in between shoulder and jaw. I’ll just have to wait for time to heal it, although it might take forevermore.
Strolling a safe, bare space in the midst of April, the snowfall I encountered was probably last, feels so liberating I believe I had shed a newer skin. Wanda helps by kissing me everywhere she could.
Without a care in the world it is, blabbering mouths and innocent laughter and fiery touches fill our thirty-minute conversation before we decide the weather is ailing for Wanda to remain outside longer, but not before we take snaps of each other under the big pink tree.
“I’ll take water, please, thank you”
The waiter jots down my lover’s refreshment and leaves the table. I am a grinning girl who can’t be helped. “What?” Wanda gives me a suspicious look that transitions into a smug smirk. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”
“I like it better like this. Real and easy to touch. Very 4D,” I giggle and pinch her cheeks, pulling her in for a chaste kiss. A hearty laugh erupts from me seeing her face chasing my mouth. Wanda chuckles, blood rushing through her cheeks, “I-I feel…
“I feel like a teenage girl taking my crush out on our first date,” she confesses, hiding her face with her hands. “And how would you impress your girl crush on your first date?”
“Being here is enough, I suppose…”
“Lame! Lame! Lame!” I shout, booing her. She only coos and purrs like a defeated cat. “I can’t just play with you whilst we’re outside…it’s inappropriate,” Wanda reasons, rubbing the back of her neck as she purses her lips.
“Lame! Lame! Lame!” I repeat with the same emotion and reject the cowardly response of excusing myself to the restroom and have an awful five-minute breakdown. I could never hate Wanda for what she’d done, I could never hate her no matter the cause.
“Let’s talk, please, my love,” Wanda lowers her voice as she reaches for my hand, shaking even before she touches it. “We’re outside, I can’t do this right now-“
“Okay, fine! Do whatever you want,” she fumes, tossing my hand away, refusing to look at me until the server brought us the drinks. “Are you guys ready?”
“Yeah, we’re leaving. Come, Y/N.” I retaliate, sipping on my cocktail like I’m on a vacation. I’m supposed to. “Please,” she tries, “I’m tired, I’m getting suffocated-“
“I apologize for your condition, miss. Is it perhaps the heating system?”
Wanda begs more, “You can screw off, thanks for the concern. Honey, please, I need-“ and when that didn’t work, she
drags me out of the pub where we planned to make everything seem normal, to no avail. It’s natural, that when the edges of a picture have ripped apart, the center follows. Her heavy footfalls, quick and sturdy, impatient and agonizing whilst I trudged along. We come home disorientated, both for the same reason, one I cannot digest the longer she gives me the silent treatment.
I am paralyzed.
“Has this been happening a lot?”
“Maybe,” Wanda responds in a gurgle, nauseated, leaning her palms against the kitchen sink, wiping the residue off her mouth. “Sucks not to be around, huh?”
She tiptoes toward the couch, giving me an accusing look, wobbly as she throws herself on top of it to lay.
“You can’t talk to me like this right now!” I huff and rush to fish a bottle of water from the refrigerator and sit next to her, ignoring my moistening neck, back to spreading red, aiding Wanda’s hydration. My head is a bomb of worry, my heart palpitating in concern.
“Is this your first time? Talk to me, Wanda, please,” I beg, squeezing her hand it turns scarlet.
“I am talking to you,” she whispers, resting against the soft cushion, her mind elsewhere. She swats her hand away, hissing. “It is my first time. Say, you weren’t with me when we first scanned my belly, did you?”
“It is not my child, Wanda!” I burst, the suppressed emotions I had kept hidden came out like the applause and affirmations the masses have shown when they found out before me.
“The child isn’t mine, Wanda, but you-“
And my secret lover is crying now, the best actress of our generation, the wife of Vision to the public eye. “He’s yours he’s yours he’s yours,” she chants until it is enough for me to believe it.
She shakes her head, unable to get a hold of the situation, water leaking out of her fingers no matter how much she clasps onto it. “I thought you wanted this too?”
I can’t believe she’d say that.
“H-how could you say that?” I stammer in disbelief, shaking as I fall to my knees. I crawl to her and bow my head on her thighs, grasping what I can to bring me back to her. “I w-want the- you could have told me! You could have told me!”
Wanda reasons, “I was too overwhelmed I-“
“You don’t forget the one you love, Wanda!”
“I’m sorry, Y/N, I’m sorry, please, get up, don’t kneel-“ and even as I wish to oblige, I just can’t get up, the weight of her betrayal pinning me down. “You could have told me…before…before I found out from them…you could have told me if you wanted to…”
Please listen to me. Please listen to me.
She caresses my head, “I love you, Y/N. My baby…it’s-it-I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you for- so you- I couldn’t-“ ruffling her hair and hiding her tear-stained cheeks.
“F-for you. I didn’t want you to see because it would hurt you-“
“That is not up to you, Wanda!”
“-that you’re showing up as my friend, and not my lover- and you’re-he’s not-“
“You could’ve told me…I would’ve been by your side. That’s all I ever want…” I am begging her for something she cannot undo, something that has passed, something indelible. The three of us agreed to it, so I believed I had the right to know. It didn’t cross my mind they would begin to treat me like the press.
Harder she cries, apologizing. She pulls away from me, hugging her legs, caving in. “I don’t deserve you. You don’t deserve to be kept secret. I don’t deserve to hurt you.”
“N-no, don’t say that,” I countered, “you can’t say that, that only means you won’t try.”
Please don’t give up on me. Please don’t give up on me.
“Is there anything else I could do to stop you from hurting?” She looks at me like she is losing hope in us, but most especially in herself.
“It doesn’t matter now, okay? It happened, and I’m okay with this pain-“ I pat my chest, nodding my head, “I’m okay- we are t- you did it to protect me. We do this to protect ourselves. You hear me?” I reach out and place a palm on her quivering leg, making her turn around. “Don’t turn your back on this, you’re only saying that because you regret it,” I weep, “don’t give up on me, please.”
“I just want to love you in plain sight.
I want to love you without dividing it with someone else.”
I share a bitter smile, “will you? Give it all up for me?” already knowing the answer.
“We both know it’s impossible,” I say, speaking for her. Wanda hugs her body closer, unable to look me in the eye. “I love you,” she says so quietly it’s as if it was never uttered.
The rest of my happiness never mattered if Wanda wasn't involved. If it isn’t Wanda, what else is there to live for?
“I was supposed to give you a good night,” she sniffles and wipes the snot clogging her nose.
“It’s okay. Just let me love you, please. Let me be here.”
Please don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me.
“I called you,” Wanda begins quietly, “I called you,” repeating it in a loud tone, wavering. “You didn’t pick up, I thought-“
“You tried?”
“I tried,” she wept, reaching for my hand. “I’m sorry.”
What makes that sorry different from all your other sorry’s before, my love?
I chuckle, shaking my head. “You called me three hours after they got a hold of your pregnancy leak. You called me to apologize.”
“I-“ Acid tears leak out of her green eyes, a pool of never ending guilt and sadness. Wanda whimpers, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” reeling off her favorite words. What else could she say to this?
She’s paralyzed, “I’m sorry,” fading into the abyss. Whimpering, I get up and pace in the living room. “You didn’t mean it?” I call, fighting the urge to weep again. “Right? You didn’t?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she keens, shifting slightly, her gaze planted in me. “I love you.”
“It’s okay…” I mumble, going back to Wanda, kneeling down so I can meet her starry eyes. “…it’s alright. I get it. Hey,” I pause, grounding her, rubbing my thumb over her knuckles, “I get it. I understand. It’s okay, it’s— I’ll be fine,” running my fingertips over her crown when she bowed, “don’t you worry.”
“Are we okay?” Wanda croaks, nuzzling her cheek on my palm, whispering the very same words. “We’re okay,” I smile bitterly, “we’ll be fine,” uttering the words we both want to hear, until it runs out of meaning. I hope to God it never will.