Chapter 444: A Fetus Boom Shakalaked in The Trash Can

In the bakery, there was total silence. Not a sound. Sarra stood frozen there, the teapot in her hand, as if someone had stopped her mid-motion. Amara set her cup down. Lina opened her mouth.

Zayela, for her part, stared at Saya’s gray face. She was finally putting it all together. The more irritated attitude these past few days, the little moments when she talked to herself, and especially why she had looked like a corpse when she walked in, and why she had insisted on coming today.

Zayela placed her hand on Saya’s.

"Okay," she said.

It wasn’t a "bravo," and it wasn’t a reproach either. It was just a word, tossed out like that, to show her she had understood.

Saya looked at her, completely surprised. Then her face collapsed all at once. It was as if that little word had broken the last thing holding her upright. She started crying, letting out full-throated sobs, mouth wide open, shoulders shaking in every direction. She made a sound so strange that the other girls had never heard it come from her.

"I’m a dirty whore," she managed to get out between two sobs. "He hadn’t done anything. He hadn’t asked for anything. And me... I’m the one who accepted, I’m the one who accepted their fucking conditions, and now I’m here crying like I’m some kind of victim."

She wiped her face with the back of her hand, hard enough to leave a red streak on her cheek.

"Stop. Stop crying, fuck. You don’t have the right." Her voice cracked. "Look at me. What do I look like? A poor girl who comes looking for pity. I hate that! I hate the girls who do that! And I’m doing it in front of you."

No one answered. Sarra clutched the teapot against her like a shield. Amara looked elsewhere, jaw tight, and Lina’s fingers turned around her plate without touching it.

"Even yesterday, I was telling myself it was the solution. That it was the only one." Saya laughed, gaze empty. "And now that it’s done, it’s nothing but a hole. You understand? He would have loved me, him. No matter what I was, no matter what I did. Something that came from me, that asked for nothing, that would have loved me without conditions. The only one in the world, maybe... And I killed him. Now I’m alone. Really alone."

She gripped the tablecloth between her fingers.

"And on top of that, I’m crying like I have the right... Shit... Why do I ruin everything?"

Zayela waited until she was finished. Then she tightened her hand on hers, hard enough that she would feel the pressure.

"Look at me, Saya."

Saya didn’t lift her eyes.

"Look at me."

She finally obeyed.

"You’re not alone. I’m telling you once, and you’re listening. I see what you’ve been doing for weeks. Every effort you make, everything you’ve done to help the girls at the Jardins de Jade. We don’t say it enough, but for me, if we have this life today, if everyone is going to be free over there... well, it’s still because you managed to beat the other bitch when it mattered. Everyone saw it. Nash sees it. Victoria sees it. These three idiots see it too, even if they don’t know where to put their hands."

"Yo," Lina protested, weakly.

"And I owe you an apology," Zayela continued. Her voice dropped a tone. "I should have been more attentive, more present. When you found out about the baby, when you had to decide, you were alone and no one helped you. I took too long to think about it. We all knew, but we abandoned you. So I’m sorry I arrived late."

Saya stared at her, mouth half-open, as if she had never heard that sentence directed at her.

Around the table, it was awkward. Sarra rubbed her eyes under her glasses. Amara tapped the table with her fingertips before deciding.

"I’m not going to tell you I know what to think about this," she said, roughly. "There are people who will judge you, there always will be. But not us. And the ones who judge you will never be the ones who helped you get back up."

"I don’t know what to say either," Sarra admitted in a small voice. "I’m bad at this. But I’m here. We’re here."

Lina said nothing. She simply shifted on her chair until she was pressed against Saya’s shoulder, and stayed there, without moving.

Saya said nothing for a long moment. She looked at Zayela’s hand on hers, then at the three others around the table, one by one, as if she was trying to understand what they wanted from her.

No one was asking anything of her. She wasn’t used to that.

Little by little, something loosened in her face. Her shoulders dropped a notch. The look she gave Sarra, who was still fidgeting with her teapot, was no longer that of a girl defending herself, but of someone starting to understand that no one was going to attack her.

A tear slid down her cheek, then another. She didn’t try to wipe them this time. She let them fall, throat tight.

Then her lips trembled, and what came out of them looked like a laugh. An ugly thing, that almost sounded like a cough.

"You guys are really annoying, you know?" she said, voice broken. "You’re terrible at comforting people. I came to apologize, not to get cuddled. I don’t want to be consoled."

She sniffled.

"What I want is for someone to make the ones who did this pay. For my kid to be avenged by his coward of a mother... The rest, your cups, your shortbreads, that doesn’t help me sleep."

"That’s not on the menu," Lina said, nose in her coat. "But the macarons are. They’re dry, though."

Amara pushed the box toward the middle of the table, then leaned back against her chair, arms crossed.

"I’ll tell you something," she began. "You don’t have to worry about what other people think. No girl from the Underground is going to blame you for that. Because what you went through, honestly, it’s nothing special. It’s routine. You got passed around, you got pregnant, you handled the problem. That happens to half the girls in the neighborhood before they’re twenty. You don’t deserve to be pitied for that." She raised a finger. "On the other hand, what’s really worth pitying is that you lost Nash. That is an actual tragedy."

Saya’s smile died all at once. She said nothing. Her head lowered slowly, and her hair fell in front of her face.

Three pairs of eyes turned toward Amara at the same time.

"I... Well." Amara cleared her throat and straightened in her chair. "But that’s in the past, right. What I mean is that if Nash wants, you’re welcome in the family. There. That’s what I wanted to say. You’re a pretty girl, you’ve got ambition and... uh... well, Nash has a big heart, you know."

Lina rolled her eyes. Sarra hid her face in her hand. Zayela pinched the bridge of her nose.

Saya sighed. She lifted her head, and to everyone’s surprise, she had found a small half-smile again.

"Thanks, Amara. That’s nice of you. Really." She shrugged. "But I doubt he’ll give me another chance. Not me."

And she started laughing.

A laugh a little too long, a little too low, that came from nowhere. The others looked at each other, very uncomfortable, not knowing whether to let her laugh or stop her. None of them found a good answer.

What was happening in the bakery was really a mess, a tragic moment. But as Amara had said, the world didn’t care and wouldn’t stop for a single person.

The earth kept turning, the screens lit up, and while Saya sat there crying her big tears, the excitement for Blacklist’s victory against Colossus was skyrocketing. Throughout the entire Underground, that was all anyone was talking about.

The score, 93-117, was looping everywhere. On every screen, in the bars, in the lines... and even in the public bathrooms, where some guy had already scribbled the score in marker on the door.

The bettors who had put money on Colossus were devastated, and as for Seth Vane, the Emperor who had never lost, the guy stayed silent, no statement.

But the real subject was Blacklist. Nash couldn’t help smiling when he saw it. No one was saying anymore that it was just a girls’ team carried by a monster. Now everyone saw that it was a well-oiled team, where every girl knew exactly what to do.

Miko had become the favorite. Posters of the little four-eyed girl were selling better than those of any star, and her name came up in every conversation. Kai was also blowing up the numbers, with videos of her throw dunks looping on social media. And then there were the others, the ones nobody used to pay attention to: Nia, Alicia, Chio, Rumi, Hina. The underdogs, the ones who did all the dirty work in the shadows. Today, the people who knew admitted that they were the ones holding the whole structure together.

In the stands, in the dirty alleys, on the markets, everyone had the same impression: the best was still to come. And that "best" had a name, which had just appeared on every screen in the city at the same time.

For everyone who lived for the sport, it was like a romantic date. The date of the year, the one you wait months for, that you prepare for like a first kiss, and that, for two nights, makes the heart of the entire Underground beat to the same rhythm. Even the driest guys, the ones who had never offered a flower in their lives, dreamed of it. It was the most awaited of all lovers for people in love with the Finals.

The All-Star GAME.