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Chapter 3 Stay

After a long day at her cleaning job, raindrops on the bus window blurred the city's buildings into a haze of dreary grey. Yellow street lamps bled through the bleakness like stage lights. Maria fought tears as her stomach twisted into knots. The only texts were check-ins from her family and apologies from Kelsey. Maria's nails dug into her rubber phone case as she reread one.

Kelsey: Ria, please talk to me! I've never been so conflicted in my life! You two are my closest friends, and when I saw him hurting like that I needed to help... he told me you didn't love him anymore and that he was falling apart, and I believed it... I'm so lost and so sorry!! Please say something. I can't lose you.

As the bus raced down the street, tears tumbled from Maria's eyes. Had she convinced Adrian she'd fallen out of love with him? Life without him was unimaginable.

When her notification light flashed, her fingers rushed to illuminate the screen.

Gather your ingredients and show us what you've got! Gourmet Adventures Competition starts today. Ready, set, chop!

With a sigh, she swiped away the e-mail and tucked her phone in her pocket. The social media cooking competition Adrian suggested was best left to foodies whose lives weren't such a mess. They could keep up with daily posts about their creative culinary endeavours. She pulled the cord as the bus neared her brick apartment building.

While shivering, Maria scurried over the cracked sidewalk. The day they'd moved into this apartment, they'd invited their friends over for drinks where Adrian had seldom left her side. Later, they'd cooked vegetable curry with his mom, who'd guided Maria through so many frustrated rants about her future, education, and family. Without him in the picture, most of Maria's friends would vanish. With the demands of working and attending school almost full time for four years, most of her high school friendships had disintegrated as she'd dedicated her limited free time to Adrian.

She cursed, her words masked by rain splattering on the pavement. Her cousin, Sunshine, was the only one left in her life who understood Maria's predicament, but she was half-a-world away teaching in Thailand.

Maria's fists clenched as she ran, raindrops pelting onto her exposed arms. It was easy to villainize cheaters in the movies, but Adrian's love and adoration made her an island salvation in a dark, unforgiving ocean. He found the apartment to escape her judgmental parents and pulled her up on stage to serenade at her every opportunity. If he knew how important he was to her, he wouldn't hurt her like that again. He'd told her yesterday afternoon that he loved her after they got through their last fight. They could fix this.

By the time she ran past the old, beaten-up houses to the apartment stoop, water permeated every inch of her. She dumped a puddle out of her flats and wrung out her hair. Her shoes squeaked up the stairs.

She hesitated when she arrived at their dented front door. With a shaky hand, she unlocked the door and stepped inside.

His new guitar stood in its stand, and music sheets covered their coffee table. The three pictures of her and Adrian at a waterfall, at his cousin's wedding, and the day they moved into together hung behind the couch. Her heart warmed like the surrounding air; he hadn't abandoned her for Kelsey.

"Adrian," Maria called out.

He emerged from the kitchen with a bottle of expensive, gluten-free beer, his long hair, damp from a shower. The hemp smell of his soap triggered intimate memories: his arms wrapping around her as she towelled off, his wet hair dripping on her shoulders and brushing against her neck as he leaned in to ask what her plans were as if he hadn't inspired dozens with his light kisses between each word. After untangling themselves from the sheets, they'd spend the day together, walking hand in hand to the coffee shop, skating on the river, or lying on the grass in each other's embraces as the spring sun warmed them. His love radiated through every touch, laugh and smile. He'd tried to set up one of those days in July, but she'd worked an extra cleaning shift to clear their rent check. Despite her promise to make it up, a month passed, and she forgot.

"Look at you, home before sunset." While his tone was neutral, his words trapped her. "For once, I'm more important than your job."

Her shoulders slumped. How had supporting them hurt him so deeply? He plopped down on the grey couch and extended his legs over the cushions.

"Can we talk after I change?" Maria asked.

"I'm not sure what else to say."

As she proceeded down the hall to give her time to respond, her hands trembled. They couldn't throw away three nearly perfect years of their lives. The love was supposed to be life-long. Her feet marred the faux-wood floors with moist footprints, reminders it was her apartment too and she belonged here. After drying off with a towel from the bathroom, she changed into a comfy outfit in the bedroom. Adrian had moved little of his stuff. Either he'd keep staying here on his own, or part of him wanted to resolve things.

When she entered the living room, he watched her but picked up his music sheets when their eyes met.

She settled into an old floral armchair, a gift from her aunt. "Working on new songs?"

"Yeah, 'Wilted Flowers'. For months, the owner forgets to water her garden, then a beautiful young woman comes by, struck by the suffering flora, and gives them a second life." His smile taunted Maria as if turning their relationship into a stupid story was a joke.

She dug her nails into her palms. A normal couple would discuss this instead of immortalizing everything in lyrics. "After months, those flowers would be dead."

Adrian narrowed his eyes. "It's a metaphor."

As Maria's shoulders shook, she gripped the armrests of the chair. Fuck his metaphors! Kelsey hadn't saved him, she'd only seduced him. Any stupid groupie or backstabbing bitch could do that.

"Flowers need attention, Maria. Without it, they die." Adrian's harsh glare tore through her.

She bowed her head and swallowed hard. If he was that close to the edge, why hadn't he said a word? He had in the past, creating the longest hours of her life, but getting him through it was worth it. Perhaps, he tried something or turned to Kelsey, the woman Maria approached with all her relationship problems, who'd been waiting after each fight to console him, using what had Maria told her to her advantage.

Maria pictured him last year, dangling a leg over the edge of their third-floor balcony as he'd sat on the rail, blue eyes boring holes into Maria's soul.

"You don't love me," he said. "You're my only reason to stay in this world."

Her sobs muffled her initial words, and she stared into those hurt eyes. "Adrian, please, I love you more than anything. Please get down." Her trembling hand reached out to him, yet he ignored it.

"I don't believe you." He shifted farther from the apartment.

Her insides screamed. Images of a bloody corpse, limbs splayed at awkward angles flashed through her mind. Shock rooted her to the spot, despite her continuous stream of tears and the hammer driving into her chest.

Adrian grimaced as if someone had driven a nail through his palm. "The way you look at him, the way he makes you laugh. You'll leave me for him."

"Who are you talking about? I love you, only you; I don't get what's going through your head."

"You love him."

Maria stepped closer, and Adrian inched toward the edge.

Her heartbeat competed with the sound barrier, and her throat choked up with phlegm. "Help me understand. Who do you mean?"

"Stop pretending! You flirted with him at the restaurant!"

Maria frowned, her chest growing tighter as her comprehension of his fears grew less clear.

"Adrian, I didn't flirt with anyone but you."

"Liar! I saw you and Felipe. Making plans, laughing, touching each other." Adrian leaned closer to the edge and gazed at the ground.

As her vision blurred, Maria shrunk away. Had she been flirting with Felipe? Had she betrayed Adrian without realizing it?

"You won't even admit it," he said.

"If I do, will you come down?"

After he inched toward the apartment, her breathing slowed.

"I'm sorry for what I did with Felipe. I never meant hurt you." She thought they were just talking and planning an event for the restaurant. She didn't recall acting any differently around him than she would her sister.

Adrian swung his leg back over the ledge to face Maria. "How can I trust you?"

Maria dared to step closer and take his hand, his fingertips as icy as a corpse. "At the next show, bring me on stage, and I'll tell everyone how you're my true love, the man I want to wake up to every morning even when we're both old and grey."

As he smiled and hopped down, she wrapped her shaking arms around his cool body and dragged him inside.

"Thank you, Ria. That's all I needed to hear." He kissed her on the lips like he hadn't just threatened to end his life.

As her memory faded, she looked up at Adrian, whose gaze softened.

He shifted to a sitting position on the couch and set down his beer. "Do you think I wanted this fate for us? I tried to tell you for months how awful things were getting. Last week, I thought you understood, and there was hope."

The way he'd said 'we' backstage made her doubt his honesty.

"While hooking up with Kelsey?"

"I need to be with someone who supports my music and believes in me. You bailed on my shows. You'd think I'd learn not to fall for your empty promises, but your actions cut deeper every time." He bowed his head and readjusted the bracelets on his wrists.

Maria flinched. "I didn't mean to break my promise, but we were short-staffed and—"

"And you couldn't leave Felipe's side. Just like the night you wore that fancy gold dress to meet him for 'work'. Out until all hours. I'm not stupid enough to fall for your lies."

She narrowed her eyes. Was he going to accuse her of cheating after his actions? She took a deep breath and focused on the picture of the two of them at the waterfall last summer. Anger would only drive them farther apart and confirm Adrian's fears that she didn't care for him. He had always had trust issues, and work had kept her too busy to assuage them.

"That was a wedding Felipe catered and let me bartend. It went past two a.m. because I cleaned up and hauled dishes back to the restaurant. I did it for us, to have a little more since you were having trouble with the rent. You didn't have a show that night."

Adrian crossed his legs on the coffee table. "You don't get it. I needed you, not the money."

Her face grew hot, and her hands flew to her hips. "My money bought your guitar, your beer, your half of the rent! If I didn't work, we'd be on the streets."

Adrian sunk deeper into the couch cushions. "Not after one late month."

"This is our second late month. And they would evict us; it happened when I was a kid. I won't live through that again."

Her parents' yelling, the sad gazes and piles of boxes after her seventh birthday still haunted her. For the next four years, they'd shared her uncle's home, which could scarcely accommodate two families. At first, she'd loved it, since Sunshine was more fun to play with than newborn Tina, but the adults argued and slammed more doors than she liked.

Adrian didn't understand that kind of living as his family had moved from one nice suburban home to a larger one without batting an eye.

"We would have made it work," he said. "My parents would have helped us until the band was more profitable."

Maria sighed. "We're two grown, capable adults above needing handouts."

"They want to help. If you learned to accept people's generosity, we could relax and spend those evenings together like an actual couple. But, you'd rather play house and saviour with Felipe. I couldn't take the uncertainty of your love."

She swallowed the uncomfortable lump in her throat. Even though he'd wanted to ask his parents for help last month, her pride dismissed the suggestion. Her fingers dug into the shallow divots in the armchair. She didn't siphon money from others. Her hard work and determination earned her everything.

"It's too late for this conversation," he said.

An icy chill swept over her damp skin, and she wiped her brow. "Wh-what's that's supposed to mean?"

"It means I know exactly what I will get when I come home to you. But with Kelsey, there's hope for something different, something better."

It felt like the glass floor beneath her shattered, and she was plummeting toward jagged rocks. He couldn't end things for good. This relationship was everything she knew. Without Adrian, what was she struggling for?

"But you just—"

"I didn't do this; you did. You always chose your job and your life over our relationship."

Her eyes filled with tears, and she had no nasty reply to suppress. The walls closed in on her, every section of the apartment reminding her of their fights. She was a terrible girlfriend. Her body trembled.

Weeks had passed since this place was home, and she was sick of arguing over how to afford it. If they weren't together now, why waste her money on their rent? Adrian could 'make it work' and understand her struggle, then she would pay her student loans while they figured out their relationship.

She stood on wobbly legs. "I'll go."

He recoiled and pressed his palms into the couch. "I'm not kicking you out."

Hadn't he told her he wanted her gone? Living alone in this neighbourhood and throwing away all her money on rent held no appeal if she had to do it solo. "You're the only reason I'd stay."

She searched his cold eyes for any plea. For a moment, a glimmer appeared, but his unmoving lips grew fuzzier beneath her tears until she ran to the closet to grab two suitcases.

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