CH. 39

"Maryam!"

"Hmm?" With blurry eyes and slowly-fading, pleasant dreams of the men of The Vampire Diaries, Maryam yawned and tucked her cell phone under her ear. "Hello?" The end of the word was lost as she yawned again, still blinking the sleep away from her eyes. Curled up in bed, warm and snuggly, was the perfect way to spend a morning, especially when she didn't have anything pressing on her schedule for the day.

"Are you awake?" Without waiting for an answer, Cyn declared, "I'm coming over!"

That sent Maryam straight upright in bed. "What?" she said, all sleepiness gone in a tizzy. "What?" she repeated again, this time with more irritation. She'd been looking forward to a day spent catching up on all the shows she'd missed and ordering take-out.

She sent a glance around her bedroom. Clothes on the floor. An open bottle of wine on her nightstand. That half-dried foundation stain that she'd found on her carpet before going to bed that she still hadn't cleaned. "You can't!" Maryam blurted out. "I'm still asleep! I mean, erm, I'm still in bed."

"It's important."

Maryam gritted her teeth. She could hear the pout in Cyn's voice and where before she may have just given in, she felt the rising urge to fight. It was a strange feeling. It rolled around in her stomach like food that didn't settle well and it made her heart pound. "I'm not free right now."

"You're not fr—" Cyn's voice rose. "But I'm already in my car!"

"So just turn off the engine," said Maryam, "and go back inside."

There was a silence at the other end that made Maryam sigh. "You're almost here, aren't you?"

Still, silence.

"Whatever. Bring me food and I might open the door," groused Maryam, still feeling cranky. The only thing that would alleviate her bad temper was the scent of fresh coffee beans and a sweet, sticky donut dripping in calories.

"Done!" Cyn chirped and a second later, hung up without saying goodbye.

If it was a movie, Maryam would have screamed into her pillow. But since she had under ten minutes to get up, get dressed, and get herself and her house presentable for visitors, she didn't even have the one minute it would take to screech her anger. With Olympic-fast movements, she scrambled to find stain remover, using one hand to scrub the carpet and the other to brush her teeth. By the time the stain had smeared around in an orange blob and began to crust around the edges, it was time to spit. She jogged for the bathroom, spent five minutes inside, and when she emerged, she was fresh faced, hair in a high ponytail, and dressed in terry shorts and a faded tank top.

When the doorbell rang, she'd just swept all the accumulated crap on her living room couch and coffee table into an Amazon delivery box that had been lying around in her dining room for weeks and shoved it into her hall closet.

"Morning!" Cyn said in a bright tone the moment Maryam swung the door open. Without preamble, she slipped through the doorway, wafting the scent of donuts and coffee behind her as she went.

"That smells amazing," Maryam said with a moan, eying the donut. She closed the door behind her and joined Cyn at her dining table, where Cyn removed two cups of coffee from the recycled paper-mache coffee cup holder and presented one to Maryam with a flourish.

"Mhm," Cyn began to agree, then she paused, sniffing. "What's that smell?"

"What smell?" Maryam asked, already sinking her teeth into one of the Krispee Kreme donuts Cyn had brought.

"Chemically smell," said Cyn, wrinkling her nose. "Were you cleaning?"

"Oh, um," Maryam floundered, smiling guiltily around her donut, "yeah, I just wanted to spruce up the bathroom a little bit."

"Ah." Cyn took a delicate little sip of her coffee. "I wondered."

Maryam chewed. "About the smell?"

Cyn rolled her eyes. "No," she said in a slow, don't-be-dense voice. "Your outfit."

Maryam blinked, staring down at her thrown-together clothing. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" she asked, fighting to keep the antagonistic bite from her voice. Venting internally, she chewed her donut even harder.

"Oh, nothing." Cyn gave her a guileless smile and slid out one of the dining chairs, plopping herself on it with a nimble grace that only a Size Two possessed.

Maryam felt heat crawling across her cheeks. Feeling a little mortified, she sank into the seat perpendicular to Cyn.

Her friend, as usual, was well-dressed in skinny jeans and a crop top, a perky headband calming the riot of blond, curling-iron mermaid curls, and pointy-toed wedges. Full makeup, too, Maryam noticed, watching as faint cracks appeared in Cyn's lipstick when she smiled, the Oscar's-worthy red tint coming off on the white paper cup when Cyn drank.

"So what was so urgent?" she asked, when it became clear that Cyn wasn't going to bring it up.

"This," her friend said with a grand gesture, pulling an envelope out of her back pocket so fast that it almost felt like a magician's trick.

"A bill?" Maryam stared at it. Was Cyn behind on her payments? I hope she's not going to ask me to loan her any money, Maryam thought with frantic worry.

Cyn gave her a weird look, her face scrunching up and crinkling her eyes in a way that made the foundation she'd caked on her eye bags painfully visible. "No," she said. "Look at the return address."

Maryam peered at it, her eyes going wide. "It's from Willa!"

That was a surprise. Not only that it was from Willa and addressed to Cyn, which was shocking in itself, but that Willa had chosen snail mail as her mode of communication. Maryam couldn't remember the last time she'd received a personal letter, unless it was when she'd just graduated college and every single credit card company on the planet had sent her incredibly personalized letters telling her she'd been pre-approved for lines of credit.

"What does it say?" she asked, flicking her gaze to Cyn's scornful eyes.

"Oh, you know, I'm so sorry, blah blah blah, please forgive me."

"She really said that?"

Cyn laughed. "No. I'm paraphrasing." She tossed the letter on the table between the two girls. "I haven't opened it."

"Shouldn't you?" Maryam swallowed, the sweetness of the donut going dry and bitter in her mouth.

"No. This is typical Willa, you know." Cyn rolled her eyes, flipping her hair over her shoulder. "I mean, a letter? Come on. That's so pathetic! Like, she couldn't have just called me? I think, after everything she's done, a letter is pretty much the most cowardly option of apologizing to someone."

Maryam bristled. Willa had made it plain they weren't friends anymore, but it still galled her that Cyn was behaving like Willa was their enemy. "You don't know that she's apologizing." She took a sip of her coffee, hoping it would scorch the bad taste from her mouth. It didn't, it only scalded her tongue.

"What else could it be?"

"I think you should open it." Maryam looked at the innocent envelope, wondering if she could be the one to reach out and read it, but then, in one swift motion, Cyn snagged it between her Malibu-pink nails.

She gave Maryam a stern, knowing look, like she'd read the direction of her thoughts, and Maryam shifted on her seat uncomfortably under Cyn's stare.

Without saying a word, Cyn ripped the envelope into two. Then four. Then, when Maryam gasped in shock, Cyn methodically began shredding each of the fourths into even smaller pieces, until the dining table was littered with a confetti of white paper.

"Why did you do that?" Maryam demanded.

Cyn didn't respond right away, just continued shredding, and then, slid them all off the table, caught them in the palm of her hand, and stalked to the kitchen, where she threw the shreds into Maryam's sink.

"No!" Maryam shrieked. "Not the waste disposal!"

It was too late - Cyn turned on the switch and the guttural crunching sounds of the disposal began to emerge. It ate the paper in horrible rattling sounds and Maryam gaped in horror. "My plumbing!" she said angrily. "What the fuck, Cyn? You couldn't use the trash?"

The calm look on Cyn's face made her want to slap the blond to kingdom come. In a flash, it came to Maryam. Why Cyn had chosen to destroy the paper in such a dramatic fashion. It was a message. A message to me, she realized. Don't pick the wrong friend, Maryam. Don't make me do to you what I did to her and her stupid letter.

"You didn't have to do that," she said in a low voice, unable to meet Cyn's eyes.

"Yeah," said Cyn, "I did." She brushed past Maryam and returned to the table, like she thought they could just continue breakfast together.

Maryam, still standing in the kitchen, felt more hollow than ever before. I'm so sorry, she thought to herself, I'm so sorry, Willa.

Pausing her coffee halfway to her lips, Cyn scrutinized Maryam. "I hope it wasn't like, my share of the royalties," she mumbled.

Maryam felt a cold flush spread over her limbs. Instead of immobilizing her, it made her angry. "If it was," she said in a cold tone, "maybe you could have used it to buy yourself a clue. Some self-awareness, maybe. Decency."

Cyn's eyes flared. "Excuse me?" she demanded, looking scandalized. "What just happened?"

Indeed, Maryam thought, scowling at her former friend. Something had just happened.

And it felt great.

Author's Note: Yay, Maryam! What did you guys think of her backbone in this chapter? I hope you liked it! :D Please don't forget to vote and comment! This story is getting pretty close to wrapped up and I'm really eager to see what you guys think of the chapters leading up to the conclusion. Thank you all for being such wonderful readers! xo, Salonika