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I’ve been living with Cole and his family for quite some time now. Things had gotten better for me now that I wasn’t alone; my energy and appetite were starting to return, and the headache was gone. But the reality without Lena still hurt me whenever the world went quiet.

As for work... I hadn’t been taking any lately. Not because I didn’t have any, but because I’d become more picky with what I wanted to work on. I was trying to find myself a spot amongst the top stars, so I wanted to work on the show or series that had a larger scale. The reason for this change was because I wanted a goal to work towards, another way to take my mind off my own misery.

As a manager, Cole had always believed that I had the potential to become one of the top stars, but because I wasn’t ambitious with my acting career, I was known only in the UK region. But now that I was trying to become one, he was busy trying to find work that aided me in my goal.

I closed the door behind me and took off my shoes, then headed straight to the living room of my house.

While I was living at Cole’s place, there weren't many things I missed from this place aside from my little guppies. I missed watching them swim around doing their things, and my time with them has now been limited to only a few minutes every week.

Twisting the drum shut after I refilled it with fish pellets, the feeder made a noise, confirming that it closed properly, and so I observed the fish.

Four, five, six... Where was the seventh one? I looked all over the tank and saw it lying still on the pale white sand, in front of a pile of decorative rocks, behind the row of aquatic plants.

“No, no.” I reached my hand into the tank and scooped it up to see what was wrong.

No struggle, no movement, horrid smell. It was dead.

Tears welled in my eyes, but I stopped them from spilling out by taking a deep breath to calm myself down and blocking my eyes with my unwet sleeve, in case any spilled out so that they wouldn’t ruin my makeup.

“Please... stop taking things away from me...”

After I let out a long sigh, I headed to my back garden. Finding a suitable spot, I got on my knees, dug a hole with my bare hand and placed the guppy there. I stared at its lifeless body, placed atop the blanket of dirt with bits of gravel sprinkled here and there.

Why did loss always come so suddenly? A blink of an eye was all it took for it to arrive, leaving a wound that took years of effort to heal. How long would it take to turn this death into a scar? I went to the kitchen and washed my hands.

I opened the front door. There was a person standing there, their hand that was reaching for the doorbell, stopped midway once they realized that the door was open.

“Rachel–”

I shut the door.

It was Lena. She was here all dressed up with a bouquet of flowers in her embrace.

“Please open up,” she said, her muffled voice occasionally interrupted by her knocking.

“Why...” I asked. “Why did you come back?”

I slumped down onto the floor. I popped my knees up and rested my head on them. Seeing her face after a while broke the lock on my suppressed feelings. The tidal wave of longing flooded my tear duct and clogged my throat, forcing me to endure so that I wouldn’t embarrass myself like the last time.

“Why did you come back after you left me? Losing you twice was already hard enough for me... Please don’t come back to give me false hope.”

“Please, Rachel! Listen to me!” She yelled.

I stayed still and didn’t answer.

“I’m sorry that I pushed you away. I was scared... scared of all the attention I would get from being with you. I was scared of what people might think when they know about us. That’s why I avoided you... without realizing that it might hurt you...”

I took a breath and didn’t answer.

“But now, I’m more scared that we won’t see each other ever again. So please, come back, Rachel. I’m sorry for hurting you. I want to be with you.”

My lips cramped tight. I didn’t know what to think. One half of me wanted to believe her because I wanted to get back with her, another half convinced that it was a lie; a lie that I wanted to indulge because I didn’t want to break the status quo.

I used to hear it all the time; at first it was “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again”, and then it was “sure, I’m sorry,” after that it was “whatever, I’m sorry.” Until I stopped calling out on it because I knew that it didn’t matter.

But this was Lena, not them. She’d always been kind to me, unlike my old friends, even before we grew close. But knowing that would make any difference? Should I be a fool and fall for a trap again? Should I trust her just this once?

I stood up and reached for the doorknob, let out a shaky gasp and twisted it to open the door.

“You say that you want to be with me, right?” I looked at Lena’s face as her lips slowly curled into a light smile.

“Prove it.”

Hearing what I told her to do, Lena looked down with knitted brows. Her eyes moved left to right as she contemplated a way to convince me before she nodded and stepped over the door frame and into my entrance hall, wrapped her arms around my neck, stood on her tiptoes and pressed her lips against mine. Her stance was unstable, but she still hung on as she kissed me.

She pulled back and gauged my reaction.

“I don’t know how to prove to you, but this is all I can think of. But I’ll do whatever you say as long as it means I can gain your trust.”

That was enough for her to convince me. Because I’ve already given her my heart, so her words and actions could pull me back with little to no resistance.

I wrapped my arms around her, and with my body leaned against her, I rested my head on her shoulder. I didn’t have to hold myself up anymore.

“I’ve been so lonely without you...”

“Me too.”

After hugging for a while, we pulled back. We looked at each other awkwardly now that that dramatic moment had gone by.

“So, uh... here.”

Lena pushed the bouquet towards me. It had hyacinths, peonies and bluebells, all arranged in a symmetrical manner, wrapped in white paper, fastened with a blue ribbon, which tied up into a bow.

She handed it to me with a shy face. Even after such a passionate kiss, she was still shy about giving this to me. I liked that side of hers.

“What’s this for?” I asked even though I knew what it was for.

“It’s um... my apology gift.”

“Giving me flowers as an apology is so corny...” I stared at the bouquet, tracing my finger along the leaves. “I like it. Thanks, Lena.”

“By the way...” Lena pointed. “Why is your sleeve wet?”

“Oh, this?” I raised my wetted sleeve. “My fish died, so I scooped it out of the water.”

She stared at me as if to ask me for more detail, so with an awkward smile, I added:

“I was pretty shocked to see it died, so I dunked my hand in to scoop it up.”

“I’m sorry for your loss...”

“It’s fine, I only lost one.”

I put the bouquet on the table, headed inside to get a vase.

“You wanna stay over for a bit?” I asked as I put down the water-filled vase next to the bouquet.

“No. I don’t want to impose when you’re going out.”

“Why do you think that?” I asked before I realized what I was wearing.

“Ah... I was coming here from my uncle’s place.”

“Why were you there?”

I dismantled the bouquet and put the flowers into the vase.

“I was... too depressed to take care of myself after ‘that’ happened.”

“Oh...”

I didn’t want the conversation to steer into a depressing topic, so as I rearranged the flowers, I decided to change the subject.

“When you said that you want to stay with me... Can I take that as a confession?”

“Confession?” Lena repeated before she realized what I meant. And as a result of her realization, her face flushed red all the way to her ears.

“S-Sure...”

I nodded in content both at her answer and her attempt to hide her fluster.

Now that I was done dealing with the flowers, what should I do next? Perhaps hanging out with Lena for a while should be fine. But she never gave me an answer, didn’t she... No, before that, there was another question I had to ask...

“What about your work?”

Right now, it was nine o’clock on a Wednesday morning after all.

“I asked for a sick leave.”

“And they gave it to you?”

She nodded with an embarrassed smile.

“Probably because I looked horrible before I came here. I drank a lot last night.”

“Really? Why?”

“I was depressed... because ‘that’ happened,” she said while hiding a light grin.

“Shut up, you did not steal my excuse so you can drink!” I gave her a playful bump as I chuckled to myself.

Knowing that she regretted our fight deepened my trust in her. Hurting me out of mistake was far better than doing so because they couldn’t care less. The fact that she noticed it and regretted it assured me that she would not hurt me the same way, or at the very least, tried not to.

“Ah, right. I didn’t bury it, didn’t I...”

“Your fish?”

I nodded.

We headed to my back garden. Back then, I didn’t bury my guppy because once I did, it would mean that I’d accepted its death, which I wasn’t able to do at the time.

When I returned, the lifeless guppy was being swarmed by black ants. I was a bit mad that my beloved guppy was being disrespected, but this too was a part of nature’s process, so I didn’t do anything about it.

I crouched down and pushed the pile of dirt I’d put to the side into the hole, completely burying it. I patted my hands and my knee as I stood up without taking my eyes off the discolored patch of dirt.

One chapter closed, and another was about to begin. But this time I had Lena by my side. And that was more than enough.