Jenna Tong had just returned home after the commute from King’s Cross Station, her regular girl’s night out with colleagues had thinned her purse marginally in exchange for two cocktails and a meal at Simmons’s cocktail Club. She sighed silently while feeling for her phone, thinking of what Cay did that day.
She sent a message to him, the content polite enough yet not too unfamiliar. As she progressed from the front door of her flats’ to the living room. The emptiness suddenly overwhelmed her, the presence of Tom, her tenant living in the guest bedroom, was no where to be seen. Probably gone to see his girlfriend, she guessed.
The rest of her flat consisted of a conjoint kitchen and living room with wooden floor inlays, two bathrooms (one of them in the guest bedroom), and a small storeroom at the end of the walkway normally saw in horror movies. Her room was filled with art projects, mainly canvases with graphical prints back from university in one of the corners and a bookshelf storing fragrant candles and small soft toys Cay bought her a year ago.
She was a bit tipsy after the drinks and from the forty-minute train commute, the yellow lights in the living room was switched on in hope of distracting herself from the effect of alcohol. Her job as a graphics designer for a small advertisement firm kept her busy most of the time but not busy enough to enjoy night-outs. She usually ended up with a lot of disposable time after work and she was in a sentimental mood.
“He’s probably enjoying himself, I shouldn’t bother him.”, she told herself and laid her Michael Kors handbag gently on the sofa facing the wall television.
She still had not got used to the silent transition from central London’s bustling sounds to the still quietness of her flat; She still has not familiarized herself from being constantly filled with attention to being uncomfortably alone. The Sound of Silence, she remembered Cay mentioning the book one day last summer, the name author whom she could not recall correctly but it was his or her tittle of the work that she remembered the most.
She met several men after parting from Cay, mostly ones from bars and clubs and left her front door before work started. She despised the way they treated her, only for sexual intercourse, but she did not reject the pleasure that came at night. It was the best option she had to not brave another lonely night, which she thought was worse.
That was one of her nights, to be alone and to stare at the loud silence of her ceiling, she usually had the light in her room turned on. The consuming darkness would have not been something she wished for, the feeling of a warm and rough hand on her back at night had only been a remnant of how she used to enjoy quiet nights.
She made frequent calls back home, particularly her grandparents, who were eager to pick up their wired-phone and kept it near the kitchen wall. She imagined the intimacy between old couples could be beneficial, their constant closeness would not likely spark any heated arguments between each other. Maybe she would call them tomorrow after work, she thought.
As she sat on the sofa and fiddled with her phone, the ringtone sounded, and the vibration startled her, dropping her phone in the process. She picked it up and saw a message had been received.
*
Like any students, local or international, their future after graduation, especially job security and where they would end up one day.
With ignorant pride, Cay had been confident about his rate of acceptance to a sustainable job in the United Kingdom. He did not care where his future career would place him at as long as he received his work permit from the government. However, Jenna feared for hers’ despite owning grades significantly higher than her boyfriends’.
“You should work harder, that way it will be easier to land yourself a job here.” Was her mantra to him every two weeks of seeing him.
“I know, honey. I’m working hard as well.”, he was aware of his grades even if they were not his result. “Just focus on yours and I’ll be on mine.
“But what about your grades?”, she would ask him, half teasing.
She always had known where to strike him at his weakest parts.
However annoying constant inquisition were to force him to achieve better academic results, Cay kept his intimate responsibility by giving her a full-body massage. Jenna had a special effect on him that would always make him diligent about most things. But was that not every caring partner’s intrinsic duty to keep his or her partner in check?
As the final exams and assignment deadlines closed in, Cay could see the strain on Jenna’s face: darker eye bags, a slower reaction to her surroundings, and a lost of appetite. She was still as beautiful as the day he met her, which was undeniable fact in how he saw her. Jenna cared about Cay’s grades, while he worried about her health.
She was diagnosed with thalassemia after her grandfather started having painful stomach pains that rendered him almost unconscious, she had the General Practitioner ran three checks on her before assuming the hereditary disease. It had laid dormant inside of her mother was why her family were not conscious about their off-springs’ health much, or they have forgotten about the potentially fatal disease passing down from one generation to another.
She mentioned that it would be a challenge to give birth with an elevated risk of dying, it worried Cay but not as much that he would in the future when they decide to have a child. For then, he would only have to be aware of her anemic side-effect. She would sometimes feel queasy and her face would turn paler than usual, it had a sort of fatal beauty in the latter in which was another irresistible delicate charm she had on her.
“Wouldn’t it be ok if we just adopt a child? Think of this, there’re many children that are either abandoned by their parents in the world.”
“Yeah.”, he was caught with surprised by the comment but tried to remain tentative.
“It’s a chance to avoid high-risk birth and we’re doing a good deed.”
“Adopted children is the same as having your own flesh and blood.”
“Exactly.”, as she sipped through her cold glass of milky cappuccino.
They were on one of the tables of Velo Lounge away from the city centre, avoiding the pouring rain and from all the troubles that were yet to come.
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