Dedicated to Meagz56 for being amazing.

QOTD: "Who is the messiest person you know?"

Aesthetic by mush2004

"It just hurts that the person you so willingly give your heart to, may also be the one to whom you lose pieces of your heart, one by one."

I haven't prayed since Mom's accident. I couldn't believe in a God after I saw such a vision of a woman taken out of this world. But I prayed for one thing this morning—that this was a sweet lie, not a forbidden truth.

Lies, I could deal with.

But finding a truth and digging that vein until it gushed out? I wasn't up for that challenge. Maybe I would have been up for it before, but now...  

Staring at the ceiling in my office is obviously not helping me feel any less restless about yesterday's bizarre events, but this seems to have become my permanent residence. Staring at the endless white stark roof with useless thoughts running through my brain. So I get up and decide to go for a walk.

As I enter the parking lot, I see Blyton hug another girl. She must be about nineteen and seems like she has come here from college, bag and all. I don't press him about her identity or his relationship with her but he flashes me a big smile when I pass them. Aw, look at my assistant, all happy smiles. His giddy reactions remind me of days spent in the sun, when me and- I put the thought away before it can mess with my brain.

I have had enough of mind boggling yesterday.

Naomi is leaning against my car when I reach it. "Hi." Her greeting is normal at best, but it still makes me uncomfortable, yesterday events still not resting well with me.

"Everything alright?" Of course, my mind goes to the worst scenarios, but I try to reason and think of things that are not bad. She wouldn't just come to me when something is wrong, right?

"Can everyone just stop treating me like something is always wrong around me? You can just reply with a simple 'Hi'. Like me." The frustration in her words makes me quack a small 'Hi'. She laughs, but it quickly dies down and her face goes serious. "So, I have to tell you something."

"Go ahead." I motion to my car and we both get in.

Once we're seated, she turns to me from the passenger seat. "And..."

"And?" I swear my heart beat is faster than the first time I kissed Nate. I quickly shake out that memory.

"I was wondering about the things you all said yesterday...And, God this is hard to say." She tales a deep breath. "So just, looking at this in a technical way. I was just wondering that... there won't be a problem if there was no baby, right?" She smiles at me. She seriously dares to smile at me.

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" She looks at me as if she's confused. How dare she! "Please tell me you're not considering an abortion right now."

"I actually was-"

"Are you serious right now? You're choosing him over a baby?"

"Of course, I am. I heard Claire yesterday. If this baby can't fix him, what's the point of having one?"

"I cannot believe you! You're about to become a mother, Nan! How can you possibly think that? How can you want that for an innocent baby?" I am almost crying, her words cutting deeper than she realizes.

"No, I just think-"

"Please don't right now. You're just like her." I rest my head on the steering wheel as a single tear escapes, unpleasant memories from when I was just a child flooding my eyes as tears.

"Like who?"

"You seriously don't know who I am talking about? Don't you remember Nan? Someone who never attended a single ballet competition. Someone who never gave Ian and you the time of her day. Someone who said to your face sge wished you weren't born."

"Zara, please-" She chokes, but I don't care, I am on a roll now. She needs to hear these words.

"Actually, I think the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. At least you are not gonna put the baby through the pain that you endured. You're just gonna kill him."

"Zara, that-"

"Leave. I don't want to talk to you."

"But-" I cut off her anguished voice.

"Please, Nan." I turn up from the steering wheel, my mascara covered eyes causing her to gasp. Honestly, I have never shown this much emotion to anyone that I have in the last two days. Except Nate. And it makes my heart hurt. "If you love Kai so much, do whatever you want. But let me tell you, its honestly better than letting the poor baby live in a world where she'll hate both her parents. One for hurting her physically and one for letting it happen." With that I lean over and open the door for her. I nod to the door and wait till she leaves. Then I lay my head on the steering wheel and continue crying, knowing I stepped a little too far with this one.

**** 

Driving around town during work is an offensive action, but I just can't take the things the world throws at me anymore. Ever since I saw Nate yesterday, I can't stop thinking about him. Everything is reminding me of him. I thought I had gotten rid of everything, but that's not right. Everything in this town has Nate written all over it like a Sharpie stain that refuses to wash itself off of my clothes.

Sidewalks, white cars, starlit skies.

Auriga and Cassiopeia make me want to curl up in a corner and cry now.

I barely used to look at his toothbrush in my washroom. Then I threw it away to not see it at all. And now? Even Starbucks has something that reminds me of him.

Bad. Bad. Day.

My mind and heart are aching now. Literally. I feel like I need a calming balm.

That is how I ended up waiting at the hospital for two hours. Ian is in surgery and I was told to wait if I want to talk to him.

As soon as I had entered the hospital, I regretted it. 'Cause I knew I should have called him first. But I wasn't in the mindset to do so. I am only happy that the receptionist didn't tell me to get an appointment. Because that would have been embarrassing. One movie and 10 YouTube videos later, I'm bored. Even Gloria from Modern Family can't cheer me up. My desolate mood is only a reminder that today's happenings have drained me of mye motional quota.

My hands involuntarily open my gallery and as I surf through my pictures all I see is Nate. This definitely isn't helping. Anyone said about emotional quota drained? Lie. Irritated, I shut it off.

From the seat I'm at, I look around the hospital. A mixture of sorrow and happiness grips this place and I can't help but feel inferior. People face such important problems in their life like Cancer and child birth and I am worried sick over a potential boyfriend.

My eyes finally land on a person who begs your attention when he enters a room. His hazel eyes look worried as he makes his way out of the emergency ward. I get up to greet him, but Areebah beats me to it. She puts her hand on his shoulder and my heart almost drops. Almost.

Ian isn't an important aspect of my life. He's just the brother of the friend I hurt hours ago and a possible friend, so of course my heart doesn't hurt that he's here with someone else.

She smiles widely as she chats up with him, her back to me. His eyes leave the worry they held a while ago and this time when my heart really, really drops. Traitorous heart.

He likes her. Or else how would her presence make him smile again? Like his presence makes me smile. Does that make me like him? Of course, it does, I just admitted that to myself some days ago.

I walk out of the same sliding doors I entered this building from, not bothering to say goodbye. I don't think I can suppress the jealousy I'm feeling when I talk to him.

I stare at the moonlit sky once I'm outside, asking the One above why it has to be me He throws all the shitty situations of the world at.  

"Shitty day?" And naturally the cause of my conundrum would come walking in just as I ask God why he can't like me.

"Maybe." I murmur.

"Mine too." He replies and takes out a cigarette.

"Didn't look so earlier." The way his eyebrows raise totally contradict the way he smirks like he knows what I mean.

"Well, having the strain of being a future uncle and falling for an exasperating woman is shitty enough." He takes out a cigarette from his pocket and lights it.

I scoff. "Liar." I say, but all I can think about is Lucky Areebah.

"Why do you say that?" He raises yet another eyebrow. If only he were mine, then I'd-"Zara?"

"Yea, right. What I meant was, the pressure of being an uncle can't possibly so crappy that you have to have a cancer stick." I scrunch up my nose, but I don't have the heart to tell him Naomi's earlier confession which could lead to him not being an uncle.

"You look adorable when you do that." I look at him with wide eyes when he say that and I swear I feel warm air envelope me. We stare unabashedly at each other, some unspoken words swimming in-between us that we both are far too stubborn to acknowledge. He clears his throat, breaking the spell. "You're right. I'm not feeling bad because of that. This job is tough, sometimes it tends to take its toll on you." He brings the epitome of the one thing I despise the most. The end of everything-death.

I scrunch up my nose again and look in the other direction, frowning.

"You really don't like smoking, do you?" I shake my head. "Well, pardon me. A patient died and I really need something to make me feel better. I just had to tell his parents-never mind."

"That must have been hard." I slowly utter after a while.

"It was. Thank the Lord that I only smoke though. The way things have been going lately, I'm surprised I haven't switched to drugs instead."

I turn to him sharply with a deep frown that causes Ian to start laughi, sending heaps of smoke in my face. I start coughing and he pats my back, stubbing the cigarette under his foot..

"Sorry, that was just funny. And before you ask, no, I didn't have any patients with dildos up their butts."

At another time, I would have looked at him incredulously but I just can't stop laughing at the inside joke. I guess so can't he, since we both turn a mountain of laughter, with both his arms still around my back. When the giddiness finally dies down, I feel a spark eliciting from my shoulder blades, the same time Ian sucks in a breath. It seems like he couldn't break the earlier after all, as again my bronze orbs fall on his amber ones and I'm the one who has a breath stuck in their throat.

His fingers leave my shoulders and slowly, agonizingly travel to my neck. Electricity sparks under my skin as if I'm a light bulb and he is the switch that ignites me. The intensity of what we're sharing so much that it causes me to bit my lip. His eyes fall to my place where my front teeth are tugging my bottom lip and he removes his hand from my neck. The veins inside my body scream in protest.

His sudden touch to my lip causes me to gasp. When my bottom lip is free of my teeth, his thumb brushes across it once. Just once, that causes my skin to sing in delight. Without warning, his lips crash down on mine. He doesn't kiss me until he has my back pressed against a wall gently and my eyes roll back in my head when his tongue slides across mine.

Our chests remain pressed together as we kiss almost savagely, as if our lives depend on it.

He kisses my face with urgency and a feverish tingle, I have never seen in him before.

My eyes fly open and I push Ian away almost instinctively. The memory that just flashed in front of my eyes of Nate with me has startled the daylights out of me. This feels wrong, too wrong. I shouldn't be doing this, kissing another guy-especially Ian- when Nate is just around the block, probably in a therapy center. For me.

I want to shout and scream, indecision tugging at my heart strings. So I do. At Ian. "What's wrong with you?" I say loudly enough that even Neil Armstrong can hear me in the moon.

"What do you mean? What happened?" Ian approaches me and just like yesterday with Claire, I move away, only this time I head directly for my car. "Zara!" Ian rushes behind me and I try my best to escape.

But to my dismay, he clasps my arm before I can enter my car.

"What are you doing Zara?" I want to cry at the anguish in his tone that I caused but I can't seem to think straight at the moment.

"No, what are you doing? Kissing me when I have a boyfriend and telling me just moments ago that you love another woman?"

"When did I ever tell you that that I am in love with someone else?" After I just told him I have a boyfriend, he'll naturally pick the part that has nothing to do with Nate.

"Oh right. You didn't say that. You said you're 'falling in love with an exasperating woman'. Well, good luck with that. Now let me go."

"Who said you aren't exasperating?" Five simple words. That's all it took for my heart to fall and break. As my vibration of my pulse increases in speed, Ian slowly walks backwards, a hint of a smirk on his face. "I'm going to leave you to it now." With that he's gone, with my heart nowhere in sight.

I stand there, confusion and surprise clouding till my mind till I can't think straight. I get inside the car, letting it take me where ever I should be at the moment. 

****

A/N: Honestly, i wrote this A LONG ass time ago. But i wanted to add more and this just didn't feel like it. But maybe being impulsive is good because im just gonna publish it. 

anyways, ITS HONESTLY ALMOST BEEN AROUND A MONTH SINCE I updated! but here i am!

just wanted to say tht i hv a few stuff for the next chapter written and i think ur gonna be really angry or really sad with tht one. keep ur tissues or a lamp to break near.

thoughts on this chapter? any clues abt next chapter?

I am ur resident late update queen and this is LSH.

Have a nice day ahead and stay safe coz tht whts imp. rn!

--Zareen🥀.

p.s. I have been watching a lot of SNL between class when im bored so this sounded like a weekend update on SNL, so ignore, lmao. Before i change my mind, lemme press publish.

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