C1 Chapter One: Silent Marriage

In two minutes, the fully dressed and cleaned-up husband would kiss her before shutting the door.

Maeve has always had trouble saying the word husband. She did not want to keep herself and Cade in such an intimate, suffocating relationship.

Sometimes a marriage ends the moment it is declared to be valid.

Everything has changed.

He seemed to have never noticed.

Her hair had been carefully combed and she was spraying a white peach-flavored spray into her brushed mouth at that moment.

She was very sensitive to smells.

Assuming that Maeve had forgotten their "thing", Cade smiled and reached out his hand to her, bringing her back from her lonely contemplation.

Maeve slowly moved to the door, so Cade came forward and imprinted a swift kiss.

"I'm going to work, gonna work my ass off today." He said, using Maeve's last night's complaint as a joke that only the two of them seemed to understand but made her feel even more alienated.

"...okay." She said.

"Click..."

The door closed, all the noise from the outside world and the others forcibly crowding into their lives disappeared.

Maeve looked around in disgust at everything around her.

Wasn't this the life she and Cade had both wanted before their marriage? How come she was so deep in doubt by now?

Maeve's mind had been flooded with hundreds of absurd thoughts trying to break the status quo which was more ridiculous than fantasy.

The precise order was more desperate than the unbearable chaos for her.

But her first twenty-five years of life had been spent in a delighted and fulfilling way, between orderly and systematic.

How could it be that at the moment when everything seemed to be falling into place perfectly, like a lame actor coming off the stage, she suddenly became chaotic and messed up?

Maeve subconsciously pinched her arm. Her nails were well-manicured, leaving no inch of extra nails. She had to pinch hard enough to produce pain.

Maeve's fingers were slender and clean. Cade liked to lick and kiss her fingers during sex.

She then remembered how hard and passionate Cade had been in bed, mouthing words that seemed to have rolled silently over the edge of his tongue so many times that he finally found a moment of weakness in his sanity to get them out.

Recalling the flesh-sticking touch, Maeve chilled and waved away the unpleasant memory.

She probably developed some sort of emotional disorder.

She couldn't feel the unwavering vision of "happiness" that she had once had, which had supposedly come true and begun to take effect.

Maeve felt a slack of fatigue. She needed to find something to do.

Seeing her face reflected on the 13-inch screen, she didn't look like herself anymore.

She incidentally opened the mailbox and glanced at urgent emails that needed to be replied to asap.

No new messages.

After finishing translating and organizing information that did not require inspiration, Maeve suddenly fell into an inexplicable quiet, empty state.

She felt the hotness of her skin, offsetting the slightly chilly air.

The unsatisfactory sex reminds her of her teenage sexual awakening.

-That was a summer weekend.-

She was wearing a short sky blue blouse and a white skirt. The driver would stare at everyone till they put two coins in the box if the bus' air conditioning was on, but not that day. The driver seemed to have a headache, so he didn't turn on the air conditioning. It was muggy in the bus.

The skin between Maeve's breasts under the thin bralette was crawling with slowly dripping sweat.

Her inner thighs were tightly pressed together under the white skirt, uncomfortably steamy.

Maeve opened the window and exhaled a breath of hot air from her lungs, and the wind seemed to wrap itself in hot sand and run through her forehead hair.

The heat of the summer days was like the sound of the cicadas, never reaching the end, only occasionally taking a break.

The Indoor Swimming Stadium station arrived. A few teenagers came up with water on the tips of their eyebrows and hair as if they did not want to dry up to keep the heat away.

A fair-skinned, tall teenager took a good look at Maeve as he walked past. Wearily, Maeve rested her head on the tin armrest, looking dazed by the heat.

The teenager shouted to the bus driver: "Sir, turn on the air conditioner please, it's more than 30 degrees out there, and it's noon now!" Maeve turned her head to see if anything would happen after this.

The air conditioner overhead was slowly blowing cold air, and Maeve wiped the sweat that stuck to her forehead and neck. The bus was almost at her station.

Two of those energetic teenagers sat in the back row, two stood near the back door, and Maeve stood there looking at them before she got out of the car.

Sharp braking, Maeve fell forward with inertia probably would hit the poles. She did not care.

Someone was looking forward to this accident.

Maeve did not hit anything but crashed into a cool arm.

Her eyes widened.

The black hair on the forehead of the teenager who spoke earlier was still dripping with water. Now it almost fell on her face because the teenager's face was just an inch above hers. His dark eyes were looking at her sullenly, with a smile.

Her hot arm caught under his arms and reflexively grabbed a corner of his shirt. They were like embracing affectionately.

"...sorry." After Maeve looked away, the teenager took the initiative to apologize.

"What should I say? Thank you, or It's okay?" She thought about it for just a moment and then missed the opportunity to react.

Her station arrived.

A rush of hot air immediately surrounded her, and Maeve turned around, the teenager in the restarting bus door was still looking at her, grabbing the baseball cap in his hand and waving at her, a kind of meet and greet, but also a farewell.

She could not recall this scene very clearly afterward, only the messy mood and feelings left at that time.

Maeve at that time could not be very clear to explain what she actually felt. Maybe nothing, maybe everything is included in "nothing".

Anyway, it depends on if anything else happens afterward.

In Maeve's opinion, perhaps it was only she who kept a little water-mark memory of the story, thinking of it from time to time, but was pushed away by the flood of life when she tried to remember any details.

She doesn't often remember this ancient and distant past, so she wouldn't have thought anyone would have hidden and remembered it for so many years.

Maeve closed her laptop, considered for a few minutes, and dialed a number she never intended to reach out to.

The beep sounded for a while, and only when Maeve was about to hang up was the phone picked up: "Hello?" The person who answered the phone had a hoarse voice as if it took years of silence to spit out this one word.

"This is Maeve."

"...I know."

"..."

"What are you calling for? Don't tell me it took you this long to ask me if I've changed my number."

"I want to tell you something." Maeve had always been calm and had always declared the event's seriousness.

The mocking tone on the other side was quiet for a few seconds before taking the initiative to propose: "Come to the Blue Mountain Café on Eastern Lake Street. I'll wait for you, starting now."

"Got it."

Maeve hung up on the phone and dressed in a fitting, pleated, chemise frock without jewelry. She wore her wedding ring only at the wedding party.

The woman in the mirror was calm and elegant, and her curly hair slipped meticulously over her shoulders. Her beauty was always motionless. It seemed no one dared to disturb, only to admire from afar.

Maeve suddenly wondered what she looked like when she had sex with Cade.