CHAPTER ONE: TRAPPED BEHIND GLASS
song of the chapter: right where you left me, taylor swift
Athena Grant is going to need a new couch.
A foreign body has merged itself onto her furniture, denting it to their shape and melting into the fabric, not to move for days. They shed hair all over her expensive couch, and it's littered with snotty tissues and half-full water bottles. There's an empty bottle of rosé on her dining table, right next to the glass filled with tears and self pity.
This has gone too far.
"Get the hell up, Indiana. You know damn well that your mother didn't raise you this way."
The words fall on deaf ears, Indiana still in her blanket cocoon and blissfully unaware of her surroundings. The bachelor plays quietly in the background, and she watches sadly as Kayla walks away without a rose and says her goodbyes.
Athena crosses the room in a few short strides, planting herself directly in Indiana's eye-line, blocking the television. Indiana lets out a whine of protest, barely raising her head to meet Athena's gaze.
"Thena, you're going to make me miss the best part. Danielle is finally going to tell Uma that she's not all that, and I need to see it."
As Indiana tries to move across the couch and enjoy the show from a different angle, but before she gets the chance to settle back down, Athena grabs the remote and shuts down the show completely. Indiana is a grown woman, so she absolutely does not cry out in genuine pain.
Athena grabs Indiana by the ankles and moves them so she can sit on the opposite end of the couch, settling Indiana's feet back on her lap. She runs a gentle hand over the younger woman's calf in soothing motions, bracing herself for the chat that she was finally going to force Indiana to have with her.
When the woman had showed up to her door a few days ago, tear stricken face and barely managing to keep herself upright, Athena had kept her mouth shut and guided her inside. She set Indiana down on the couch, and it is there she has stayed.
Every time Athena attempts to initiate conversation with her, Indiana either bursts into tears or changes the subject entirely. Athena is sure that she could gather a general idea of what had happened, but the assumptions aren't hers to make. She wants to hear this from Indiana.
"Indiana," Athena breathes out through a shaky exhale, trying her best to start off the conversation on a good note. "Why are you living on my couch in three day old clothes?"
Bracing the subject lightly was out of the window, then. But then again, it never really was an option- subtlety isn't exactly Athena's specialty.
Indiana avoids her cousins watchful eye, trying her best to come up with a believable cover story, "We have, uh, rats?"
Athena raises an eyebrow in question, "You, Little Miss Clean Freak, have rats? I find that hard to believe."
The truth is, Indiana isn't entirely sure why she's living on Athena's couch. The deed to the house is in her name, and the only claim Hugo actually has to it is the TV in the living room. He can keep it for all she cares. Still, it doesn't explain why when Indiana discovered that Hugo had betrayed her she had fled her own home.
A sane person would have told Hugo to pack his bags and leave. The house belonged to her, she was the one who worked herself down to the bone so she could have this. Hugo was probably living it up large now that Indiana had fled- eating her food, sleeping in her bed.
Indiana worries on her bottom lip, pulling it into her mouth. "I just want you to know that I don't need your pity, Athena. I really don't need it."
The thing about Athena and Indiana is, despite the near thirty year age difference between them, they've always been more like sisters than cousins. Some might even compare their relationship to one between a mother and a daughter, and Indiana might agree if it didn't put her own mother out of place.
So it's no wonder that Athena gets it without Indiana having to say the words. She wonders if it's the tears gathering in her eyes, or maybe her shaking hands that give it away. Or maybe it's just Athena's maternal instinct, the one she used on Indiana well before May was even a thought in her mind.
"Oh, sweetheart," Athena's words feel like a punch to the gut, and Indiana feels the sob leave her throat before she can stop it. The floodgates are open, now, and it's all she can do to bury her face in Athena's shoulder and weep. "Baby girl, you are worth so much more than this. So much."
Indiana knows. Deep down, she knows that she didn't do anything wrong. She had been nothing if not perfect during the entirety of their relationship, and she logical part of her knows that the reason this happened was because Hugo allowed it to. He is the one who stepped out of line.
Annabelle is not blameless, and trust Indiana when she says that that wretched woman will get her day, but Annabelle never had any loyalty to her beyond their blood relation. They've never been close, always the type to see each other at weddings and family events and exchange polite greetings, but Indiana thought that they could have at least afforded each other some semblance of respect.
Like, don't fuck your cousins boyfriend, you know? It's common courtesy.
Still, in her emotional state, logic and rationality are out of the window. Curled up into her cousins side like a small child, her throat raw from the heaving, Indiana wonders why she wasn't enough.
It begs the question, and Indiana can only wonder if she will ever be.
.・゜゜・ ・゜゜・．
Indiana's favourite time of the year is Autumn.
She rejoices in the fallen leaves and pumpkin spice lattes, and the breeze in the air makes her feel two inches taller. She bundles in her woolly jacket and doc martens, and the pink flush she gets to her cheeks is better than any blush she can buy from the drugstore.
Fall is her season, undoubtedly, and nothing will ever be able to take that from her.
Not even the envelope that just came through her letterbox.
Indiana has spent the better part of two years rebuilding her life. She eventually got herself in order after Hugo pulled the curtains back on their life together, even if it two months of ignored messages and Athena turning up to her house with her badge in hand demanding that Hugo needed to evacuate the premises before he was arrested for squatting was what it took.
The last time Indiana saw Hugo, it was on the day she returned home. She had spent a solid hour sitting in her car before she could work up the courage to go back into the house she felt crumble around her a few short weeks ago.
Athena was parked outside in her own personal vehicle, and Indiana was under instruction to just say the word if she needed help. But she had it handled.
The thing about regret is that once your decision on the matter is made, there is no going back from it. So maybe an older, weaker version of Indiana would have given in the minute she laid eyes on Hugo, spread out on her couch like he belonged there.
He had, once. But not anymore.
Her decision had been made from the minute she lay eyes on Bella's body spread across her boyfriends screen. She knew that the minute she admitted to Athena that Hugo had stepped out of their relationship that there was no going back from it.
It's been two years since Hugo and Indiana had a screaming match in her living room about loyalty and basic human decency that ended in Hugo fleeing the house with nothing but the clothes on his back while Indiana followed him, shouting profanities and promises.
I promise you'll regret it, she had told him. Every day that you wake up without me, you'll regret it.
Not even in the sense that Indiana would find someone better and rub it in his face. No, it's because she knows that karma will work her magic and every dog gets it's day, so she sleeps easily and continues on like she had before, but with a new lease on life.
But for the second time, Hugo has gotten the better of her. She swore that she would never let it happen again, but Indiana is opening the envelope before she thinks. She feels dread deep into her skin as her eyes skim across the card, and the bile is creeping up her throat faster than she can stop it.
You are cordially invited to celebrate the union of Hugo Wright and Annabelle Jones.
Suddenly, it feels like Indiana never got over it at all. The sharp pain in her chest feels as fresh as it was the day that it happened, and the past version of Indiana is smashing at the glass box she'd been trapped in from the minute Hugo walked out of the front door for the last time.
The metaphorical glass shatters on her hallway floor, and Indiana can't do anything but stand and watch as her heart bleeds out.