No Objections

|c.3|

Marisol hadn’t left Nayeli’s spare room in three days.

She’d let her body rot beneath the same oversized hoodie she’d borrowed from her friend. She hadn’t washed her hair. Hadn’t eaten anything more than half a banana and some crackers Nayeli shoved in her direction. The scent of lavender from the diffuser mixed with stale sweat and dried tears, turning the large spare bedroom into a prison of numbness.

The blinds were drawn, keeping out the world. Her phone was facedown on the nightstand, buzzing occasionally with missed calls she had no intention of returning. Not from her parents. Not from work. And especially not from Elliot.

She stared at the white ceiling above her, the paint cracked in one corner like her heart, wondering how long a person could feel like they were dying without actually dying.

He had children.

And not with her.

She and Elliot had spent years tracking ovulation, taking supplements, timing s*x like soldiers on deployment, enduring uncomfortable tests and cruel doctor’s visits. She’d cried in the shower when each negative pregnancy test felt like a punch to the gut. Elliot had held her through all of that.

Or so she thought.

But now?

Now she couldn’t shake the sickening question that had lodged itself deep inside her brain:

Was he ever really trying at all?

Was he secretly laughing behind her back every time she swallowed those prenatal vitamins? Every time she checked her temperature first thing in the morning? Every single time she cried in his arms?

Her stomach clenched again, twisting into knots that refused to unravel.

She buried her head under the blanket when she heard voices—louder ones this time—muffled through the bedroom door.

Nayeli.

Her mother.

Her father.

She didn’t catch every word, but fragments filtered in through the silence.

“She’s safe… yes, she’s here.”

“No, Tio Arturo, she just needs time.”

“I promise I’ll tell her to call you both. She just… needs to breathe.”

There was a pause, then the unmistakable sound of her mother’s voice, warm and heavy with emotion.

“She’s my daughter. I know when she’s hurt. Let her rest. But tell her—we’re waiting.”

Then silence again.

Hours passed. Maybe days. Time had lost all structure.

Then came the banging on the door.

Heavy. Familiar. Male.

And then his voice. That voice she used to love.

“Nayeli, open the damn door!”

Marisol froze.

Elliot.

Her heart didn’t race. It didn’t clench. It just… stopped. Quietly. The pain didn’t come this time.

Only heat.

“Where the hell is she?! Why hasn’t she answered her phone?” Elliot barked, anger spitting from his mouth like venom. “I know she’s in there!”

Nayeli blocked the elevator doors, her arms stretched wide and her voice tight but composed. “Elliot, you need to calm down.”

“I will not calm down! She’s my wife! What the hell is going on? Why are you even involved in this? Where’s Marisol?!”

“She needs time,” Nayeli replied evenly, though Marisol could hear the edge in her voice. “That’s all I’m saying to you. Back the hell up.”

“Don’t give me that crap! She’s acting like a child—ignoring me, hiding out in your house like a coward—”

“Say that again and I will punch you in the throat,” Nayeli snapped. “You really wanna go down that road right now?”

“Mari!” he shouted past her, loud enough to make the walls vibrate. “You gonna keep hiding in there like a goddamn teenager?! You think running away’s going to fix things?!”

And that was it.

The switch flipped.

Something inside Marisol—something soft and grieving—turned hard and cold, like steel forged in fire. Her grief dissolved like mist in the sun. In its place was a singular thought:

He’s going to regret this.

He would regret everything. Her. The affair. The children.

Naomi.

Naomi would never work another white-collar job again. Marisol would see to that personally.

She slid off the bed with a strange sort of calm. Her movements were deliberate now—no longer sluggish, but fluid and precise. She walked barefoot across the wooden floors, her oversized hoodie brushing her thighs, her face expressionless.

The door creaked open.

Neither Elliot nor Nayeli noticed her at first, too busy snapping at one another in the entryway of Nayeli’s apartment. The hallway light spilled across their faces—Elliot’s red with fury, Nayeli’s sharp with restraint.

“Elliot,” Marisol said.

It wasn’t loud. But it didn’t have to be.

The sound of her voice silenced the room.

Nayeli turned first. Her eyes scanned Marisol's face and her brows creased immediately. “Mari? Are you… are you okay?”

There was no recognition in her tone. Only concern. Marisol imagined she must look like a ghost.

But she wasn’t.

She was the explosion that came after the wreckage.

“I’m okay,” Marisol said evenly. Her voice was deadpan, hollow, terrifying in its serenity.

Nayeli blinked and stepped aside, uneasy.

Marisol looked at her best friend and offered the smallest nod. One that said:

You’ll get it later. Just trust me now.

“Can you give us a minute, Ley?” she asked.

Nayeli hesitated. “I don’t like this.”

“I know. But I need this.”

A beat. Then a nod. “One minute. I’ll be right down the hall.” She said pointedly, looking at Elliot with a death glare that could kill flowers.

Nayeli walked down the hallway and disappeared into the kitchen.

Now it was just Marisol and Elliot.

“What the hell is going on, Marisol?” Elliot demanded the second Nayeli's bedroom door clicked shut behind her. His eyes were wild, pacing over her face like he didn’t recognize the woman standing there barefoot in her friend’s apartment, pale and eerily calm.

“Why haven’t you answered my calls? You’ve had me going insane—disappearing like that, not saying anything, not even a damn text—what the hell is this?”

He took a step closer, towering over her in his neatly pressed navy suit and loafers that hadn’t even scuffed from the sidewalk. His hair, dark and always meticulously styled, had just a slight ruffle to it, like he’d run his hands through it one too many times. The scent of his cologne—Tom Ford, Noir Extreme, expensive and sharp—wrapped around her like a ghost of the man she thought she’d married.

She let him talk.

She watched him unravel with a quiet detachment, like she was observing him from behind glass. Her hands stayed loose at her sides. Her face unreadable. Her mind working like clockwork behind tired eyes.

When he finally paused for breath, chest heaving with self-righteous anger, Marisol calmly raised her hand and said—

“Are you finished?”

Her voice cut clean through the tension. Sharper than glass. Sharper than the truth he had buried beneath years of lies.

Elliot blinked. Visibly recoiled from her tone. For a beat, he looked like he didn’t know whether to shout again or apologize.

Then, narrowing his eyes, he muttered, “Yeah… okay. I’m waiting. What’s your excuse?”

Marisol tilted her head slightly. Let her lip tremble—not too much, just enough to seem real. The warmth in her eyes returned, but this time it was manufactured.

“I had a miscarriage.”

The words slipped out like silk. Smooth. Untouched by guilt.

Elliot froze.

The color drained from his face so quickly, it was almost theatrical. His mouth parted, eyes wide and searching hers for something—truth, maybe, or a hole in the story. She gave him neither.

“I—I…” he stammered, but the words jammed in his throat.

“I was twelve weeks along,” she continued, softening her voice. “I found out just a few days before everything… happened. I was going to surprise you.”

She let her eyes water, forcing her chin to tremble. Took a slow, shaky breath. She was an actress in her own life now, and she was damn good at it.

Elliot stepped forward automatically, like it was instinct to gather her into his arms, to be the doting husband who held his grieving wife.

He wrapped her up tight.

She resisted the urge to stiffen.

Instead, she collapsed into him like she needed his touch to hold herself together. She buried her face into his shoulder, inhaled the betrayal on his skin, and let out a small sob. Fake, but practiced.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” she murmured.

Elliot’s grip tightened around her. She felt the way his heart jumped beneath his ribs.

“Are you sure?” he asked in a voice so hollow it might’ve been echoing. “I mean… are you sure you were pregnant?”

Marisol pulled back just enough to meet his eyes. The betrayal she wore wasn’t for the lie she was telling—it was for his.

“I have the ultrasound photo,” she said softly. “I can send it to you if you want.”

And there it was.

The flicker.

The flinch.

“No,” Elliot said too quickly. He shook his head, swallowing hard. “No—I don’t… I don’t think I could handle seeing that right now. Not after…”

He trailed off, pretending to be lost in grief.

Marisol almost laughed.

He was so good at lying it was disgusting.

She nodded slowly, giving him space to wallow in his fake sadness, the imaginary death of a child that never existed.

“I just needed some time to process it,” she whispered. “I broke down here. I didn’t want to be home. I didn’t want to… bring that sadness into our space.”

Elliot took a deep breath and nodded with exaggerated sympathy. His thumb brushed over her cheekbone like he still had a right to touch her.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “For yelling earlier. I didn’t know. I was just… scared. I thought maybe you found out about—”

He caught himself.

Marisol’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

“About what?” she asked.

He forced a sad smile. “Nothing. Just… scared I lost you.”

She didn’t respond.

She didn’t have to.

The silence said more than any words.

“I’ll give you space,” Elliot finally said, backing up toward the door. “Take a few days. Rest. I’ll have meals delivered here so you don’t have to worry about cooking or anything, okay? Just try to… cheer yourself up.”

“Okay,” she said softly, like a good little wife. “Thank you.”

Elliot leaned down and kissed her forehead. She closed her eyes and let him do it, let him touch her with the same lips that had probably kissed Naomi in secret.

She would remember that kiss when she ended him.

He gave her one last look—soft, guilt-laced, and so full of lies it almost made her gag—then turned and walked down the hallway toward the elevator. When the doors opened, he waved once more before disappearing behind them.

Gone.

The moment the elevator doors closed, Marisol exhaled.

It wasn’t relief.

It was war breathing.

From the hallway, Nayeli emerged, arms crossed and eyes burning with confusion and fury.

“What the hell was that?” she demanded.

Marisol turned slowly, the last of her tears drying on her cheeks. Her shoulders rolled back, posture straightening. She walked past Nayeli into the kitchen, snatched a paper towel, and wiped the tears away.

Then she looked her best friend dead in the eye.

“That,” she said with eerie calm, “was the first play.”

Nayeli’s mouth dropped open. “You lied to him?”

“I told him what he needed to hear,” Marisol replied smoothly. “And now… now I’m going to make him regret everything.”

Nayeli stared at her like she didn’t recognize the woman in front of her anymore.

And maybe she didn’t.

Marisol was still broken and hurt.

But more importantly, she was seething for revenge.