VALERIE

Chapter 26.8: Strike Four

Guilty, I follow her with my gaze calling her name but she doesn’t look back and she heads to the direction of our room. She doesn’t know how to cook but she tried only for me. How can I be so stupid?

Her attempt of cooking breakfast for me takes me over the edge. I am elated and remorseful at the same damn time because she doesn’t know how to cook and she ended up cutting her finger because of that. I clean up the mess Valerie left in the kitchen before taking the initiative to finish what she started. I’m going to cook us breakfast. The image of her cut and her sorrowed eyes hunt me as I wipe the red fluid from the counter table and mop it from the floor. I wish I have been softer towards her.

Seriously though, I really don’t mean to be this tight towards her. I don’t know what’s gotten into me in the past few days that every time she worries me, I just snap. The guilt is already eating me up alive so I make sure that she will love the breakfast I will prepare for us. I presume she wanted to make an omelette so I’m making that.

The smell of the hot and fresh omelette engulfs the whole kitchen as I set it on the table. I place two plates, each with a small knife and a fork. I also squeezed orange juice in the juicer and generously pour them in two glasses. I take out a loaf of bread from the little pantry of the kitchen, arranging it on a rectangular plate before setting it up along with everything in the dining table.

Once I make sure that everything is set, I walk out of the kitchen to fetch Valerie from our bedroom. I stop in my tracks when I see her closing the door behind her. I widen my eyes when I see her dressed in a dark blue romper which accentuates her curves finely, brown ankle boots and armoured with a tote bag that she heaves further in her shoulder as she proceeds towards my path. She wears round sunglasses and her dark hair elegantly bounces to the level of her chest with every step she takes. She’s indeed beautiful but where is she going?

“Where are you going? I made breakfast.” I tell her.

“I’m going out.” She says emotionlessly, not acknowledging the fact that I made breakfast.

“What? Who with?”

She chuckles dismissively, “I can go by myself, Harry. I’m not ten.” I am a bit off-guard with her answer. Few minutes earlier, she was this soft and tameable lamb, and now she’s this stern. Is there a mood-changing machine in our room? On a second thought, this is the real Valerie after all—stubborn chick that does whatever she pleases. I’m guessing I will not win this even if I try.

But I’ll try.

“Let me go with you. Give me a sec and I’ll change.” I suggest and take a step further to walk towards our room but she stops me by putting her hand in between us.

“No. I’m going out alone, Harry.” Her tone is firm and decisive.

“Are you crazy? No, I’m going with you.” I refute and walk past her but she pulls my arm hastily. I am surprised by the strength she exerted to stop me from my tracks, my eyes dart to her hand clasped around my arm. The veins protrude on her wrist as her grasp tightens.

“Don’t you get it, Harry? I don’t want you to go with me!” She raises her tone, letting go of my arm and she pulls her shades up to her head so I can see her fuming brown eyes. “In fact, I don’t need you! In case you’ve forgotten, Harry, we are not dating!” She yells as she throws her hands to her side and I shake my head trying to make sense if I heard her correctly, loud and clear. “We are just pretending, Harry. We are just pretending!”

Her words resonate in my head for a couple of times before I can process to agree that indeed, we are just pretending. But along with this epiphany comes hurt banging in the walls of my heart. I stay still in my spot allowing for the memories from the beginning to the latest of this whole pretend to flash before my eyes—even the happiest ones, the ones that made me feel that we weren’t pretending at all, the ones that made me wish that it were all real—and it all comes down to one thing, we are just pretending. This was all a play.