Gossip
My heart breaks.
Not figuratively. At least it doesn’t feel like that. It feels physical. Like my heart is actually cracked open, filling me with blood.
Not poetic, like how people describe it in movies.
It’s loud in my head. It shatters, devastating and brutal. I can feel it tear open in my chest, like something vital inside me just split apart. Like I’m losing a part of myself all over again.
Losing my family was one thing, they were ripped from, taken from me. I couldn’t fight for them, I couldn’t see them.
But Zaid?
He’s standing right in front of me and still slipping through my fingers.
“No,” I whisper, my voice broken, my knees shaking.
I stumble back a step, vision blurring. The world around me bends, spinning slightly as the reality of it crashes down on me.
Zaid’s still looking at me with all that love in his eyes, but he’s letting me go. Tears spill down my cheeks, hot and endless. My throat clenches so tightly it hurts to breathe. The ache in my chest blooms into agony and I can’t stop it; I break.
My knees buckle.
Zaid catches me before I hit the floor.
He sinks with me, arms wrapping around me as I collapse against him, gasping like I’m drowning. Because that’s what it feels like. Like the oxygen has been ripped out of the world and I can’t find any to pull into my lungs.
“Breathe,” he whispers, holding my cheeks. “Alina, breathe, my love, please.”
I clutch at his shirt, fisting the fabric like it’s the only thing tethering me to this world. My sobs are violent, shaking through my entire body.
“Please…” I gasp. “Please don’t do this. I’ll change…I’ll get better. I swear, I’ll try harder. Just stay. Please, Zaid. Don’t go. Don’t let go of me.”
His jaw tightens as he looks down at me, eyes filled with more pain than I can stand to see. “We’ll find our way back to each other. We will. I love you, Alina. I love you so much.”
He swallows, brushing his thumb under my eye as another tear falls. “But if I need to step away for you to find yourself again, then I’ll do that.”
“I can’t find myself without you,” I whisper.
He smiles softly, sadly, cupping my face with both hands. His thumbs sweep over my cheeks like he’s trying to memorize me. “I don’t want that for you.”
Oh god, I can’t breathe.
“I don’t want to be your crutch. I see you, Alina. I see your value, your strength, your brilliance. But if you can’t see it, then I need to step back so you can find it on your own.”
I lean forward, desperate, searching his face for something to hold on to. I press my lips to his, needing the connection, needing the hope that maybe he’s still mine.
But he stops me.
“No, Alina” he whispers, his voice breaking. He shakes his head and pulls back, barely.
The way he says my name shatters me all over again.
“I’ll be here for you, as a friend. Only as a friend.”
I crumble again. My face buries into his neck as I calm my breathing, my arms tightening around him like I can somehow fuse us together, keep him here.
“I feel like nothing will make sense without you,” I whisper.
He holds me through it. He doesn’t speak. Just rocks me gently, fingers in my hair, lips pressed to my temple.
And eventually, when the tears take everything from me, when exhaustion makes my body heavy and numb, I fall asleep in his arms.
I don’t know how long he holds me, but when I wake up the next morning, I’m in my room. Alone.
The bed is too cold. The air is too still. The house is too quiet.
And as the memories of everything come crashing back into me, I curl into myself and sob, knowing I can’t find comfort in Zaid’s arms.
And nothing hurts more than that.
I don’t know how long I stay like that. My body aches from staying in the same position all day. I’ve cried so much that my eyes burn and my head pounds.
I wipe at my face with the same sleeve I’ve been using all day. It’s damp, crusted with tears. My hair is a tangled mess on my pillow, and my chest feels like it’s caved in. My heart doesn’t beat right anymore. It just kind of stutters.
A high-pitched voice, loud and unmistakably dramatic, cuts through the thick silence of the house. My brows draw together.
“I’m fucking seeing her, Zaid!”
I sit up slowly, blinking in disbelief.
“Nikki?” I whisper to myself, heart pounding in my chest.
The voice gets closer and before I can even fully register what’s happening, the door to my room whips open. Nikki steps inside in all her chaotic glory. She’s carrying a small tray filled with food and a tumbler.
She rolls her eyes. “Zaid was heading up here with this, but I told him I would give it to you.”
My breath catches, and I detonate all over again.
A sob tears out of my throat as my entire body folds forward, and Nikki’s already rushing to me, setting the tray down and climbing onto my bed and pulling me into her arms like she knew all along I was seconds from completely falling apart.
Eventually, the storm inside me quiets just enough.
I lean back, face blotchy and sore, my voice barely a whisper. “Why are you here?”
She lifts an eyebrow and pulls out her phone. “Have you even looked online in the last twelve hours?”
I blink at her. “No.”
“Probably for the best. People are fucking insane.”
My stomach twists.
"But I’m telling you, anyway. Because you should know.”
She opens something and starts scrolling. “People are talking about everything, Alina. Your name’s all over the place, all over gossip accounts,everywhere.”
My chest tightens. “What do you mean, everything?”
“The Mr. Admas story blew up,” she says, eyes narrowing. “Which would be good, right? Man’s a pervert. Except people suck. They’re saying you made it up. That you seduced him, then turned on him when he wouldn’t play house with you.”
Nausea creeps up my throat.
“That’s not even the worst of it. Someone leaked everything about you and Jake, Aiden, and Zaid. Some sick online ‘tea page’ got ahold of it and twisted the whole thing. People are calling you manipulative, saying you were sleeping with all of them to get your way. Who even said anything?”
I stare at her, heart crawling into my throat. “Probably my mother.”
Her jaw drops open. “Okay, what the fuck?”
“Yeah.” I catch my breath for a moment and tell her the shitshow that happened yesterday.
She says nothing, just watches me with her mouth wide open. You know it’s bad when she has nothing to say.
“I’m sorry,” Nikki says quickly after too much silence.
Tears brim again, but this time they don’t come out in gasps. They just fall. Soft, steady, hopeless.
“I didn’t ask for any of this,” I whisper.
“I know, it’s so fucked up,” Nikki says, reaching for my hand.
I pull away, curling in on myself. “Zaid broke up with me.”
The silence that follows is heavy. Nikki stares at me, jaw clenched, and slowly reaches out again, pulling me into her chest. “Oh, Alina.”
I tell her everything, everything he said and how we left things.
And not when I whisper that I’m scared no one will ever see me for anything other than the mess the world turned me into; she just holds me tighter.
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