Delicious Ambiguity | the rainbow named trust

Chapter 27 {Perfidious}

N O T E

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Life is the reason we are here and love is the reason we stay.

Dedicated to Taylor;

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Penelope

Honest feelings and bad timings make the most painful combination. For twenty plus years (give or take) I've lived in a journey of heartaches and healing. Surely, I can't be the only one who feels like my life, up until now, has been nothing but a montage of fucked up moments. Like snapshots in time that, when looked back at, could tell what led to my inevitable transformation into a seriously deranged super villain.

"The version of you, someone else has created in their mind is not your responsibility," Connor had said to me after my life turned upside down all those years ago. Connor Hunter, Logan's bandmate from Southern Contagion has been my A1 since day 1. Growing up just a lawn apart from one another, we knew each other. We trusted one another. We stuck with each other and the women in the streets would give examples of our friendship to their kids. And at times, I used to feel that he knew me better than Zaahid ever could. "You've been brave and resilient Penelope. Even if you don't believe that yourself."

"I had this hope..." tears had choked me, "despite being together we were so alone, but I believed we'd make it. Didn't we for so long?" Christmas was close and the whole city was dressed up like a bride. The café's lights had flickered with the inconsistent power.

"I know it hurts but time will heal all wounds. You're here and it counts for something." Connor had tried to hold in the tears in the café we sought refuge in. With his flat white coffee and my pumpkin spice latte between us, he was an expert panel of one.

"I don't even know anymore. My faith, my friendship all have been so brutally shattered." Zaahid and I had come a long way together from sharing music classes to participating in the same show to lovers. We enjoyed each other's company. We could talk for hours. We were special as all loves in the world are. What we had wasn't perfect but it was enough. We were simply like any other ordinary couple—we would go out for coffee dates, for dinners, we would make birthdays of each other an extravagant affair and he would surprise me from lavish gifts time to time and our Instagram's soon became our relationship blog.

In time, we met each other's parents and got involved—too involved—in the other's family. I could sense that our bond would become stronger with each passing month and soon—almost a year in courting—we named it 'love.' But it wasn't love. We purely mastered the skill of make-believe. The problem was, as it is so hard to pin down the definition of 'love', even if we write ceaselessly about it, over time I started assuming what it meant. But with each passing year, as I grew older, I grew wiser too and finally identified that people don't like 'love,' they like that flitter flirty feeling.

"Right now, is not the time to be preachy but," Connor had pulled in his coat tighter as the café door opened and a gush of cold air greeted us, "I warned you so many times. Zaahid and you? You both weren't a match; you were a convenience."

Snow fell outside and I thought about how that night was going to change everything—change me. "I knew we wouldn't last. We didn't even have any substance together." A dry laugh had slipped from me, "sometimes we'd go too silent to be comforting that he'd call in Maira to keep things in control."