Rosa can only splutter as her aunt laughs like an owl's shriek, shrill and with no sense of shame, tying a robe around her waist to give some modicum of decency.
“You’re as modest as your mother, I see,” she says and moves to plop herself down on the chair across from hers. She picks up the wine glass of water and offers it to her. “Go on, have some aspirin for your auntie.”
The entire situation is so bizarre she wants to laugh. She feels the sunlight bright on the side of face as she stammers.
“Is this a dream?”
The words leave her throat dry and sore. She coughs and finds herself blindly reaching for the wine glass to drain it in one gulp. Her Aunt -bless her- already is refilling it with a jug from the floor.
“I’m dreaming, right?” Rosa stammers at last. “Right, Auntie?”
There’s a pause and she watches something pass by her Aunt’s eyes like a shadow. The wrinkles around her eyes tighten and pucker and lips pull up sadly.
“Afraid not, dear,” Aunt Clara says and reaches forward and grabs her hand. “Aspirin.”
Pills are taken, and Rosa feels the cool water splash her gut with no contents, sloshing around like the bottom of a rubbish bin left out too long.
“Thank you,” she croaks, fighting the urge to hurl. “Where are my-?”
“Your things are downstairs in the kitchen-drying” Aunt Clara interrupts. Her face is concerned but she cracks into a knowing grin. “You made yourself a bit of a mess last night.”
Rosa winces.
“Ah.”
“...Do you really not remember?” her aunt asks, watches her carefully.
“Not really,” Rosa mumbles in reply. “The last I remember I was at work and…”
-
“Ms. Canina. Can I see you in my office for a moment?”
-
She freezes and feels the water in her gut bubble.
“...and…”
-
“We’re letting you go.”
It was the end of the work day, just before closing when they chose to tell her. The box was in her hands with all her materials and she was on the train home before things truly registered -before she felt her eyes prickle with tears.
Business had been bad, they had said, they couldn’t afford to keep her.
(Yet they could afford to keep her male colleagues and the interns, funny that.)
As she reached for her phone to call her fiance, she found her battery dead. So she rode the train numb, no outlet, no sense holding it all in. All of it. She was very good at holding things back. It was a trait she’d been praised for. Her cool head.
Time passed and she was in front of her door in her warm familiar condo and she felt herself beginning to crack just a little; the heat rushing to her face when she realised that she didn’t have her key. She doesn't know why. Maybe she left it behind. Maybe it fell out of her pocket on the train.
All she knew was that when she knocked, she felt the dam ready to burst. If she could make it into the arms of her Peter everything would be alright.
-
There’s a quiet and sad sigh as her auntie reaches out and grasps her little niece’s palm.
“Oh Rosa…”
-
Except it’s not her Peter at the door.
The woman had a soft beauty about her, she looked just as confused as Rosa did to see her there. She’s in a plain warm woolen sweater. She looks comfortable and ladylike and very much the person Rosa has never been her entire life.
“Hello,” the woman said in a kind voice and Rosa allowed herself a moment to swallow the heart that had leapt through to her throat. “May I help you?”
“Honey? Is it the pizza-”
There was Peter.
His cold-grey blue eyes, the ones she had fallen for in university, froze over like winter, and hers, the deep caramel brown he had praised her for once, drifted down to his hands and-and-
-he’s not wearing the ring they picked out together.
“Oh.”
The voice leaves her mouth and the tears begin to prickle at the edge of her.
“R-Rosa? What are you-”
That was...actually infuriating.
She didn’t hear him. She was too busy dropping the box at her feet and just running.
“Rosa!”
She dashes out of the condo and into the first cab she sees and blasts her way into the backseat holding everything in. She’s going to scream any second but she holds it back because she will keep her cool. She will keep it down.
It’s. What. She’s. Good. At.
But the man driving the cab is kind but not kind enough and while he doesn’t comfort he asks her where to go and then-
Then there’s a bar and alcohol and then a man that thinks she’s easy and maybe she is tonight but she’s not- not really- and then she’s running out of a cab to a place she recognises but doesn’t actually know and then-
WHACK
She smacks into a man at some point who shouts at her and then she falls because her stupid heels and- WHY THE HELL is this what they consider professional? And she’s taking them off and shouting something and then throwing them at the man because he’s trying to grab her and then there’s a noise and she running and-
-and-
-
There’s a hand on her cheek, heat in her face, and soft fur rubbing up upon her legs.
She’s so numb.
“Oh my sweet darling niece,” her Aunt Clara croons as she wipes the tears forming in her eyes again- again? That’s right.
Rosa remembers why she’s here and nowhere else.
“Yesterday was the day that finally broke you. Wasn’t it?”
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