The Sigma Asset 🏳️‍🌈 (bxb)║AMBYS WINNER 2022

57: Rafa

One more Lego brick, and my masterpiece was done. A Lego grand piano. It only had nine keys, but nobody was gonna be playing it. It even had a little lid prop.

"Wow! It's so cute!" Emilia scooped the nano-piano off the floor and turned it in her hands. "Why did you make it black? Dulce isn't black, she's golden-brown." A piano leg came off in Emilia's hand. "Oops."

"It isn't Dulce. It's an American grand piano." I took the piano back from her, dimly aware of the sudden twitching of my heart muscle and the rising urge to sprint down to the seawall, cross three kilometers of beach to Seapoint Avenue, break into Will's house and play his grand piano until my wrists ached.

"He'll be better soon," Emi cooed, patting my head like she'd just read my mind.

"Who?"

"Uncle Will. Papi said he's sick, so you're living with us. Uncle Will's sick a lot, huh?"

"Yeah." I crumpled the Lego piano in my hand. Two more legs fell off, and the lid.

My phone buzzed; Eomma asking again for a videocall. I'd been putting off speaking to Eomma all day, but every minute I delayed made the feeling of dread worse. No time like the present.

"Hi, Eomma. This is Emilia, Will's niece." Emilia waved at Eomma's smiley face on my phone screen. "I'm at Will's sister's house." Emi carried on with the construction of her Lego castle-hospital while I slunk out of her room and hid in the guest room, my new bedroom.

"Did you get your passport?"

"Yeah." I broke into a prickly sweat, my vision pulsating, like I was fully-baked. "How are you, Eomma?"

"I'm fine. Is something wrong?" I wrenched open a window, half-hanging out of it as I talked. There was no breeze outside, just the baking heat of the afternoon.

Get it over with, Zeph.

"I'm...staying here for a few days."

Eomma was instantly terrified. "Why? Is William all right? Is he ill?"

"He...we..." Tears clouded my vision. "Eomma."

Eomma held her phone screen close to her face, as if trying to climb through it to me. "What happened?"

"He lied to me," I sobbed. "He was arrested Friday night. He'd done a job for the gang. I don't want to see him ever again."

I wept on, Eomma watching me silently for long moments. "Is that how he knew how to rescue you from the fire?"

"I think so."

Eomma sat unnervingly still, not a flicker on her face as I sniffed away tears, like she'd been switched off. Then, her eyebrows twisted and she jolted back to life again. "Was he involved in your kidnapping?"

"No. He was arrested for a smuggling job that he did a month before he met me. I'm not allowed to stay with him anymore."

"But you're staying with his sister."

"His sister and brother-in-law work for the police force here. They're protecting me. They don't talk about him."

More stunned silence from Eomma. "Isn't he close to his sister?"

"She didn't tell him I'm staying here. The police aren't happy that I'm here, but I'm friends with his sister. I don't want to be anywhere else until I'm home with you."

"Can you forgive William?"

I shook my head. "No. I can't." I had no duty to forgive anyone for anything. I was going home. I was gonna move on, draw a line under all this shit. Once I stopped dreaming about Will. "He lied about other things too. I can't tell you, Eomma."