Breaking Friend Zone

Chapter 33: Past Catching Up.

You need not fear it, but you must always bear in mind 

that the past is never quite as finished with you as you think you are with it.

— Kathryn Kennish

THIRD PERSON POV

In the dim lit room of the small barely standing house, 22 years old Maria collected the empty dishes on the small square dining table, tired of listening to her father and brother's heated argument almost every night. After his dad lost his good paying job, he lost interest of living too. The responsible father who raised them alone was now gone. 

"Go to sleep, Martha." Maria said to her younger sister and she just nodded her head and turned to leave. 

Maria glanced at her father who was again drinking and didn't touched his food. She felt her chest becoming heavy again at the thought of his father slowly killing himself. As she deposited the dirty dishes on the small single sink, her shoulders slumped. Her hands resting on the edges of the dark fake marble countertop with her head tilted downward, she let the tears flow silently. His father and brother's voices passing her ears in a distant though they are close to where she's stood rooted on the concrete floor. 

"It's not the end of the world, Dad. Why don't you try another company? Another workplace?!" Francisco snapped losing his patience already. He's almost 20 years old and going to be in his last year of University. 

He's angry because the first semester of his last year in the University is coming up and his father had drained whatever left in his pocket. He used the money for his drinks, and travelling back and forth to the Valiente's shipyard trying to get back his job. It's been five days, and he never gave up. The money that was left off from what he got from the company, he paid it for her sister's medical bills and medicine. 

"Just leave me alone, Francisco!" 

The tension thickening, and her tears keep on pouring like the heavy rain pelting on their roof, seemingly sympathetic of their misfortune.

She graduated a year ago yet she couldn't find a good job. She's still working at the cafe for almost seven years now and she gave up looking for a job that is related to her profession, Fine Arts. Her father worked hard so they can all get a good degree yet still, it's impossible to get a good paying job.

"Then what, Dad? Just watch you destroy yourself?" Francisco gritted out.

Maria heard the chair being dragged away and then a loud banging causing her to wipe her eyes briskly and spun on them to witness her father on his feet, hands resting on the table with his body bended forward, rigidly. His face as dark as the night. 

She slowly approached them, her eyes never leaving her father's gloomy face that's starting to get rigid. Rage lit in those brown orbs and hatred.

"He destroyed my life! I will not stop until I get that job back that I deserve! I live my life with it...." Tears fell one at a time, then another, like a competition, each one trying to catch the other racing down his slightly wrinkly tired honey coloured cheeks. "I built my life in that place, I poured all what I have!" his bony body slumped forward, head down. His shoulder started to shake as he tried to hold back the tears but the more he did, the more the tears flows.

Maria's hands curled into a tight fist. Anger bottled up in her chest. 

Furious.

Hatred.

Hatred to the man who stole his father's life. His happiness. His reason to live. She felt bitter though that his father love his career more than them, but she had witness it how he enjoyed and brought smiles to his face his when he talk about his work.