MISTAKES

~~MISTAKES~~

~~ALICIA~~

I honestly don’t know how long this understanding with Xavier is going to last, [don’t get me wrong, I know what you guys must be thinking, “he hasn’t done anything wrong, why is this girl thinking so much”], because it takes a second to mess things that are already planned and currently I have trust issues that makes me question any and everything. I am on my way to work since all my classes for today have been cancelled, apparently one of our lecturer’s lost one of his family members, so all the lecturer’s in my faculty decided to pay his family a visit to pay their condolences. I clock in and greet Mrs Pat who was currently stacking books on the shelves, she smiles showing the age behind her pretty face with the wrinkles that line her eyes and blows me a kiss, I do a little display of catching the kiss and put it in my pockets, making both of us laugh. I head to the staff room and pick up my tag, drop my bag on the shelf and say a little prayer before I socialise with people for the day.

“Phew”, today was busy as hell, it seems everybody in my faculty wanted to use their day to read, because tell me why more than a hundred people who I attended to where from my faculty, that is, Faculty of Social Sciences. My shoulders are so sore; I just want to go home, drink hot chamomile tea in my favourite mug and rest. I lock up the library and skip happily on my way home while listening to my most played playlist on Spotify.

I step into the house exhausted, just wanting to soak up the warmth from my sheets while sipping my tea. I go straight to the cupboard and see all the other mugs in this house but that one; my favourite chipped mug, with a faint crack along the handle. I close it and open it again like its magically going to appear. Panic flares up inside me, I can’t lose that mug, it’s among one of the things I use to always remember the little moments I spent with my Dad. Annoyance starts to creep in slowly; I step out from the room to ask Xavier, only to find him sipping something from the said mug.

~~XAVIER~~

I heard a weird sound of shock from the kitchen’s doorway; I looked up to see her looking at me like I was using her favourite mug or something, I quickly scan the mug and see it, the faint crack and the obvious use of the mug. “Oh shit”, why didn’t I notice this before, it literally looks like I used it while knowing its importance to her, time to put on my nonchalant act to avoid dealing with this situation . “That’s mine”, she said flatly. I look down, and then back up, “You have a lot of mugs”. “That one is not for communal use”, she says raising an eyebrow. I let her know she didn’t specify about the mugs to use and the one not to. The next reaction was not one I could have predicted, because to put it simply, she exploded.

Her face is red with rage as she rants about how I cannot respect basic rules or pay attention to her talks on boundaries, a list of grievances spills out on respect. She doesn’t speak loudly but rather sharply, with precision. I fire back at her defensively, “How was I supposed to know you had an emotional attachment to a freaking mug? Sorry I didn’t call you to ask for your permission before I used the mug, I don’t know how you want us to co-exist when you keep treating the room like a museum, everything must be done and kept your way or not at all. This is supposed to be a shared space but you took matters into your hands and made me live with it”, by the time I was done, I was already heaving angrily. I expected her to say something else but she just turned away from me, went to the bathroom, came out some minutes after and hopped into bed, with her back facing me.