ch-2

Kanishaa shut the apartment door gently, like the day might shatter if she let it slam. The house was quiet — Somchai had driven Dante Vescari home and retreated to give them space. Dante’s door was closed. He hadn't said a word since the restaurant.

On the coffee table sat a tin of old photos. She hadn't opened it in years. Tonight, she did.

The first photo on top was sun-faded — two girls on a wooden porch, feet swinging, hair messy, smiles too big for their faces. Kanishaa and Maya, sometime in the late 80s, absolutely…sure that life would listen to them.

Back then, they were inseparable.

Market runs, movie matinees they weren’t supposed to watch, sneaking iced milks on the walk home, talking about everything. Kanishaa was the practical one — lists and plans and “let’s be realistic.” Maya was the dreamer — soft eyes, soft laugh, soft hope. When they were together, the world felt easy.

Life moved fast. Kanishaa married her longtime boyfriend, Somchai — steady, warm, the kind of man who kept everyone fed and safe. He was Maya’s friend too; he’d been part of their little circle for years. A year later, Dante Vescari arrived, red-faced and loud and perfect. Maya was at the hospital before sunrise, bouncing on her heels until they let her in"Look at him," she'd breathed, cradling Dante Vescari’s tiny fingers. "Already handsome like his father. Don't worry, Kanishaa... my baby will marry him someday."

Kanishaa had laughed until her stitches hurt. "Your baby isn't even born yet, Maya!"

But Maya only rocked the newborn like she knew something no one else did.

Two years later, Maya's wedding came—and it wasn't the fairy tale she deserved. Her parents had picked a man with money and manners: Chaiwat. He looked right, spoke right, checked every box parents checked. But on the wedding night, truth walked in without knocking. He loved someone else. He'd married because his parents pushed him, and—he resented the cost.

The resentment turned mean. First in small ways—cold shoulders, colder words. Then in ways that left Maya hiding behind long sleeves and long silences. She kept it from everyone, even Kanishaa. Pride, hope, fear—whatever it was, it kept her quiet. By the time Kanishaa figured it out—the slips in Maya's smile, the careful way she sat down, the way she flinched at sudden sounds—Maya was already pregnant.

"Come stay with us," Kanishaa had begged. "Please. You don't have to do this there."

Maya had shaken her head, eyes rimmed red. "I'll be fine."

She wasn't.A week before the due date, Maya came over late, carrying nothing but a small bag and the kind of exhaustion that doesn't sleep. They sat under the mango tree behind Kanishaa's building, the night air warm, the city humming in the distance.

"Promise me something," Maya said, fingers twisted in the hem of her dress. "If I'm not here... promise me you'll let my baby marry Dante Vescari. I just—I want him to have a home where love is normal."

Kanishaa had reached across and held her hands. "Don't talk like that."

"Promise me."

"I promise."

The baby came. Enzo Marcelli. Quiet little thing with solemn eyes, as if healready knew too much. And then—because fate doesn't always warn you—Maya didn't make it. The room that should've echoed with two heartbeats went still. Kanishaa remembered the white corridors, the smell of antiseptic, Somchai's hand gripping hers so hard it hurt. She remembered thinking: I promised. So now I have to become two people.

Chaiwat remarried fast, this time to the woman he'd loved all along. The house grew sharper. Enzo Marcelli learned to stay small, to stay out of the way, to avoid attention because attention hurt. He kept his voice low. He learned where to stand to be invisible.

Kanishaa watched from the edges. She sent messages that never got replies, made phone calls that ended clipped. So she did what she could: she went invisible.to Enzo Marcelli’s school. Not once. Many times.

She'd stand just past the gate after the morning bell, pretending to be on an errand, and wait until the line of uniforms filed past. Enzo always walked with his head slightly bowed, backpack too neat, shoes too clean, like he'd learned the cost of scuff marks at home. Kanishaa would feel the old promise burn behind her ribs.

On sports day, she cornered a kind homeroom teacher. "Could you give these to him?" she'd ask, pressing a small packet of sweets into the woman's hand. "Just... tell him it's from the school, or from you."

The teacher, who'd noticed the boy's quiet too, always nodded. Later, Kanishaa would watch from the far endof the field as Enzo unwrapped a candy with careful fingers, surprise softening his face. He'd smile— a quick, private smile— and tuck the rest away as if they were treasure. He thought the teacher was being kind. He never knew it was Maya's friend keeping watch from the shade.

Once, during dismissal, a loud voice snapped his name. Enzo flinched so hard he dropped his books. Kanishaa's nails bit her palm. She didn't step forward. Not then. She wasn't ready to blow everything up with a fight she couldn't win. But the promise in her chest grew teeth.

Years folded like paper. Dante became a whirlwind— charm and laughter and late nights, a flirt who loved being loved and hated being told what to do. Enzo stayed on theother side of the city, carving out tiny places of safety—library corners, empty stairwells, pages of textbooks he could disappear into. Two boys growing up under the same sky, one burning bright, one burning quietly, both drifted by a sentence tossed in sunshine under a mango tree.

Kanishaa blinked back to the present. The photo tin lay open; her phone buzzed with a new message she didn't check. Tonight at the restaurant, when she had hugged Enzo, she had felt the truth of all those years pressed into that one stiff, startled boy. He'd leaned in, just a little. It had been enough to break her heart and mend it at the same time.

From down the hall, water started in the bathroom—Dante's shower. He was angry; she could feel it throughthe walls. She didn't blame him.

Twenty-one, full of forward motion, suddenly told to stop, to turn, to marry a stranger—no, worse, to marry a boy when he'd only ever looked at girls. It wasn't fair. None of this was fair.

But promises don't measure fairness. They measure love.

Kanishaa closed the tin and set it back on the shelf. She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand and squared her shoulders. The wedding was in a month. She would take care of everything. She always had.

She would make sure Dante Vescari wasn't swallowed by resentment, and she would make sure Enzo Marcelli wasn't swallowed by the life he'd been surviving.

Outside, the city kept humming.

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