Like No Other

SAME DAY

A continuation of the same day...

Sometimes silence could say a world of different things. Silence can answer questions or ask them. It can be the defining factor in a decision or just a comfortable coincidence between friends at a dinner table. Silence has many meanings, many uses, and many translations.

The silence that stretched over Emma's kitchen said a magnitude of things. One was a question. Emma could feel it leaking from the woman standing to the left of her. 'How could I ask a woman a question like did she want her baby?' Another form of the silence was stupor, 'this is the first time all evening I haven't had some shit to say.' Abdul looked completely at a loss of words and that was a first for him this evening. Emma never really got a feel for Salik but she could only imagine his silence was pity as he'd probably seen this sort of thing before. No doubt he knew that there was nothing to be done about her cause.

He would tell her just as her doctor had that there was no way for her to have this baby. She couldn't get a surrogate, she couldn't flush the baby from the tubes to the uterus some sort of way. She couldn't even grow it in a test tube. This was just one L she was going to have to take.

But there was one person she didn't appreciate the silence from. She wanted him to say something, do something to let her know that he was still breathing even as he stood on his feet in her kitchen. He was as still as marble, not an eyelash quivering. His eyebrows weren't furrowed like they'd been when he didn't understand her refusal to bring flesh of his flesh into the world. His faced was not devoid of any emotion though. She couldn't put her finger on the look on Trey's face but if she had to guess at what the call his made up features she would call it... a little shock with a lot of guilt and a splash of disbelief.

And the last of those looks hurt her the most. He thought she was lying, Emma deduced. He had a sick habit of thinking she was lying nowadays. It was probably because she'd spent the duration of whatever they had going on lying or denying her feelings or evading the truth or withholding information. He would only expect what he got, Emma had to remind herself.

But she hated him in that moment nonetheless. She hated him and his whole family. She wanted them out of her house.

They were nice enough people. They'd simply seen her at one of her weakest moments to date and now she wanted all of them to stare into light bulbs until their eyes burned out. Emma wanted all of them to leave and forget they ever saw her as tender and as docile as she looked right then.

But she was mostly embarrassed because Trey saw her like that.

While she was a wanton and she could barely defend herself and she worked underneath him she'd never allowed Trey to see her hurt or sad or frightened. And he'd seen her at all of those extremes that night.

And he ran his big mouth to a woman Emma barely knew and dragged his entire family into her business. It smeared her name in the mud to such a point that his mother offered to take her only future child off her hands. And he hadn't apologized for any of it yet. Not even the reason they were all standing there in the first place. His stupid, callous mistake.

Even as she wiped her fingertips under her eyes again Trey stood there with that stupid look on his face. That look of shock and guilt and disbelief. And the longer they stood there, her fridge humming behind them and the sound of crickets and locusts in the trees all around her home, the more she wished they would just leave.

"Meow," Gypsy said at the door behind Abduls feet. The large man jumped in surprise and the black and gray tabby cat had the attention of everyone in the room as he finally walked with enough bounce to make his collar jingle. He strolled just as cool as can be to Trey, rubbed between his feet with a cool grace. They were old friends at this point. Gypsy looked up at him like he had missed his presence. "Meow," he offered his greeting.