Maya
Zeke stayed next to me during my stay in the hospital. In three days, he hadn’t left me alone except for the therapy sessions I had with the hospital therapist. During the days, we hadn’t talk if it’s wasn' necessary, we were two strangers in the same hospital room. At night, as I was in and out of sleep because of the exhaustion my body was dealing with, I felt his hand wrapped around mine or caressing my cheek from time to time. His touch was warm, comforting, familiar and trying to pull the emotions out of me, but I chose emptiness over the feelings.
The doctor came to check up on me once more before letting me out of the hospital. Zeke didn’t try to talk to me or make me talk, and I didn’t ask him where we were headed as he helped me into his car and took off down the road.
Looking out the window I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of my situation as we passed the million-dollar places in a blur. My kind of world was dead, monochrome, and suffering, but his world was alive, multi-colored, and vibrating with joy. I turned to look at Zeke’s profile, he was the epitome of tall, dark, and dangerous, but he always wore the dangerous bad boy look so well, people were always ready to eat from his hand. Only I knew his soft, caring side.
I let my eyes roam over his sharp features. He looked posh just like the mansions we passed by. He was dressed in a tailored suit, but there was the familiar roughness in the way he held himself, the raw power that only a tough upbringing could have given a person was radiating from him with every step he took. In my world, people looked weak with the stench the rough life left on us, but he embraced that stench, wore it like an armor between the world and himself; he used that weakness to his advantage and made himself rise above the others. As I looked at him, it was hard to imagine him somewhere different from all this wealth. No one would have believed he was the same guy, who slept hungry just because we didn’t have enough food for both of us, the same guy who did street fights to put something in our stomach, the same guy who worked in every kind of job even if it left him sleepless just to look after a girl.
“What are you doing?” Zeke came to my room with a plate in his hand.
Pushing the Math textbook away, I huffed, “Trying to understand what all these numbers mean.”
He chuckled. “Any success?”
“No. I hate Math. I don’t understand why people try to mix letters with numbers. Basic operations were easy, but I lost all understanding when they’ve added x and y to the calculation.”
He placed my dinner on my table, before saying, “How about you take a break and eat your dinner first? We can study together later.”
Nodding, I pulled my bowl closer to me. It was cereal.
“I totally forgot I had to do some shopping today. We only have cereal. Do you want me to go and buy you something else?” he said apologetically.
I shook my head. “No, cereal is my favorite,” I tried to reassure him and started eating. When I saw he didn’t have his own bowl, I asked, “Why don’t you eat?”
“I’ve already eaten,” he said, laying in my bed.
Nodding, I kept eating. By the time I was done, he’d already fallen asleep. He looked so peaceful. I looked at my textbook but closed it. He’d been so tired lately, I didn’t want to wake him up. Instead, I finished my other assignments and let him sleep.
When I was finally done, I got into the bed next to him. His arms circled around me and pulled me closer even in his unconscious state.
I heard his stomach growl, and he moaned.
“Zeke? Are you hungry?” I whispered.
“Sleep, Maya,” he murmured sleepily, hugging me to his chest tightly.
“You didn’t eat, did you? You gave all of the cereal to me?” I whispered, pushing back the tears that burned my eyes.
“I spared some for your breakfast.”
I moved to get out of the bed to prepare whatever was left for him, but he didn’t let me go. “I just want to sleep, Maya. Please. I’m tired. Sleep,” he said. His voice broke me, I settled back into his arms. Stifling my sobs, I turned to kiss his cheek.
He smiled softly and placed his head in the crook of my neck as he slept.
The car stopped outside of a high building, there was no filth, no moss, no flaw in this place. I looked at the marble floor that led us to the lobby of the building, even the floor was spotless. I didn’t like this building. Everything was leather, steel, glass, and marble in here, it was soulless, I preferred the aching soul of South Park. I knew it was ridiculous to even compare the two, but I felt like an intruder as Zeke led me to the elevator. Here, in this too perfect building, I was the moss people hated – foreign, wild, and unwanted.
The elevator moved to the top floor. I wanted to laugh as I looked at the P sign on the elevator panel. The elevator door opened to a foyer that was as flawless and sickly perfect as the rest of the place. My palms were sweaty with every step I took into the living room area. His loft was big enough to fit my house in South Park in it five times, if not more. I felt Zeke’s eyes on me, but I couldn’t look into his eyes; I felt like vomiting.
Zeke had never liked the big spaces, he used to think those places were soulless, alien. He always told me the familiarity and closeness would be found in the small places, but he was living in this place, cold and guarded. I was wrong when I first saw him. He must have changed after all. As I stayed in the middle of the loft he called home I felt like I didn’t know the guy I thought I knew with every fiber of my being. The floor to wall windows were haunting me with the view of everything under us. With all the flawless furniture around me, this place was a castle and a prison at the same time. Castle because in this place I felt above all the other human beings, powerful, but I also felt like a prisoner, so cheap and worthless in this luxury and uncomfortable like my existence was the only flaw in this cold perfection.
“Your room is this way,” Zeke said.
I turned to look at him. “Your place is… nice,” I said curtly. Nice wasn’t the word I would describe this place, not even close, but it seemed like the right one.
He snorted and extended his arm to the hallway that was probably leading us to my room. “I know you don’t like the place. No need to pretend,” he told me as we walked side by side.
His height and proximity would have overwhelmed my senses in another time, but the numbness inside me drew it into nothingness. He didn’t want me to pretend? Then I wouldn’t even bother. I shrugged.
My room as he called it was white. The walls, the wardrobe, the bed, the rug… everything in the room was white; a hole of nothingness in a fake white world. The only color in that room was the view from the window.
I would have hated the room, and that was why I loved it.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the white wall in front of me. There was no excitement, no comfort in me as I watched the blank space.
“We’ll decorate it the way you wanted to, Maya,” Zeke said.
I shook my head. I didn’t want to feel comfortable here. This room has shown me what I shouldn’t forget: I didn’t belong here. He didn’t belong with me. Maybe we were both black in this world, but he was the night sky while I was a self-built cage of darkness. And our resemblance ended with our roots. We could’ve never been together. He’d left me once and would leave me again.