Unwitting

Prologue

Shane knocked on the window glass of the back door, her eyebrows knitted in exhaustion, her touch rushed.

Jenny looked up from her laptop and gave her a glance. Shane had her head cocked to a side, and the black t-shirt she was wearing looked as torn as everything else in her attitude. Jenny frowned, slightly, catching the impatience in Shane’s apparent stillness.

She stood up and turned the doorknob slowly.

“Can you please let me in?”, Shane muttered, “Thank you”.

Jenny was speechless. She stepped aside as Shane walked in and paced the apartment rapidly, directed to her bedroom. She grabbed a hold-all and threw it on the bed, then started opening the drawers, tossing shirt after shirt in the empty, wide open mouth of the bag. Then, she went to the bathroom, took her toothbrush and put it into her mouth. Her eyebrows were still furrowed, every one of her movements rapid, tense, almost mechanic.

“Is that it?”, Jenny uttered from the hallway, her arms folded.

Shane glanced at her as she went out of the bathroom.

“Is that it?”, Jenny repeated, disappointment clear in her voice, “Done trying?”.

“I don’t know what’s the point of all this anymore”, Shane mumbled, shrugging. Her voice came out muffled because of the toothbrush she was holding in her mouth.

Back in the bedroom, she kept on throwing everything that was hers into her old and worn hold-all. Item after item.

It was so over. She was so fucking tired, and there was absolutely nothing she could do.

Then Jenny’s voice reached her from the hallway. It was plain and slightly – just slightly – cracking.

“Do you know it was you, right?”, Jenny said, unsurely. Shane’s movements slowed down a little.

“…When I said ‘you’ve broken my heart’… you know it was you…”, Jenny continued in an unsure murmur, “…Shane…You were the one I was referring to, when I said that my heart was… was broken…”.

Shane’s frowning deepened and she stopped moving, dumbfounded and caught completely off guard. No, she didn’t know. She hadn’t realized it. And now she was speechless.

She removed the toothbrush from her mouth and let it fall into the bag. Then, she reached for the hallway. Her steps were faltering.