Before Me, Him

Chapter 30

     I shove her straight away from my arm and glared at her. If looks could kill, she would be dead by now.

     - Emily, I'm sorry I can't stay here with you, have to research some things. – I state while looking at her with a kind smile. Polly on the other end just smirked and walked away as she understood that I wouldn't tell her anything, even if she begged for it.

     - Is it something about Robert? – Emily questions. She is very intelligent and her womanly sense is definitely something else. Her gut was absolutely right.

     - Yeah, it's to help one of his animals. – I say while starting to turn away to the stairs.

     - If you need help let us know! – Emily smiles and changes the television channel.

     As if I would ask Polly for help. I don't understand her she is most definitely a Pandora's Box. I don't know what she thinks or even understand how she acts. I wonder how she turned out like this, she has to have some kind of dark past of something.

     Before burying myself in random theories from Polly's past I open the books from the library. "At least, like this, my time will be worth something" I thought to myself.

     It's the next day and yesterday I managed to finish one of the books as well as starting a new one. Currently, it is around two in the afternoon, we all have had our lunch and I had already spent my morning with Robert. Today there was a new development though, Autumn almost ate the hay with the medicine, he looked at me for a long time and then smelled it. This was huge progress. Maybe tomorrow he will be able to eat it, I truly hope he will.

     Today however won't be a day filled with that much fun. Emily has to go to Vella's most populated area, which is twenty minutes by car more or less, in order to do her university inscription. She delayed it for a long while and now she is on the clock. She needs to do it this week otherwise she might not be able to enter this year.

     As we enter the car I hear my phone buzzing, warning me I had just received a message. I open it and look to the extremely light screen to see the following: "Hey June, I was thinking we could hang out today! Do you want to go grab some smoothies or something?" It was from Luke. He has been sending me messages and calling me almost every day in order for us to go out. To be honest, I really didn't want to.

     Once again, I had already explained to him that we wouldn't be anything again but he keeps on telling me that he will conquer me back. "How can he re-conquer something that was never fully his?" I question myself. Sadly he doesn't understand so he keeps fighting with all his might. I wish things were easier and that we could just split for good but he keeps on insisting on a lost cause.

     After a twenty-five-minute car ride, we arrive at "Vella: Creative Institute", Emily's first University choice. It was a really big area with several different buildings made of cement and painted in different colors like a light orange and a light blue. There were several light brown benches and tables around the area. It smelled like grass and trees since there were a lot of them within the perimeters and the path where we would walk was made of big rocks, all evenly polished so there would not be any unevenness. The area was peaceful, you could hear the birds sing and the sun light up the whole area.

     Even though Vella was a big area being already considered a city due to the number of people it had, the area hadn't lost its essence. It is still very gentle and calm, almost soothing to the soul. Vella was so different from Hollum, people were kind and good while in my city they were just mean and rude. People here were a lot happier and they were connected while in Hollum they were just vessels waiting to be taken to another place.

     After a five-minute walk, we reach the secretary of the university and, after a fifteen-minute wait Emily is called. Before she enters I told her I would look around a little bit and would return in thirty minutes in the hope she would be done by then. As Emily goes inside the big room I leave the building where I was in and go a little bit outside.

     I sit on one of the benches and feel the wind playing with my hair. I close my eyes and place my head back sunbathing my face with the rays from an awakening sun. It was a warm day so I had brought my typical denim shorts alongside a purple tight t-shirt that embraced my body figure.

     Some minutes passed and, suddenly, I feel the sun disappearing.  I open my eyes to understand what was going on and see a male figure looking down on me. Up close he was a rather cute guy with eyes extremely light almost as if they were grey and his medium-sized chocolate hair would reach his shoulder in several curls that hid his jawline while his extremely messy fringe would almost hide his eyes. He was wearing an extremely dorky outfit, almost as if his mother had picked it up for him. I sit straight and look back.

     - I don't know you. – he states while fixing up the black glasses that surrounded his eyes, almost clouding them. – Are you new?

     - I'm not from this university. – I answer his question while his eyes focused on mine.

     - Hmm... I see. – he nods his head and started to leave but, in the meantime, his mind changed and he came back, continuing the conversation. – What are you doing here then?

     - Why should I answer that? – I question him while frowning my eyebrows. I mean, he is having too many questions for a stranger, I don't like it.

     - The university campus is not a place to join just to "hang out" so every intruder should leave. – I notice he was grabbing the several books in his hands a lot more tightly.

     - My cousin is going to be a student here. She's treating that matter as we speak so don't worry, I'll leave once she is done. – I smile coldly just to pass a good image.

     He nods and leaves without asking anything else. What a weird guy.

     After thirty minutes pass, I go back to the secretary to see Emily in her cute little pink dress and white sneakers with her light blue denim jacket leaving the secretary. As we reached outside I noticed her curly blonde hair would sparkle more and more with the sunlight. Even though her hair was naturally wavy she would curl it a lot, it made her look a lot cuter.

     We go back to John's car and someone calls Emily. Some minutes pass by and she hangs up the phone, looking at me extremely excited.

    - They are going to a bowling place! Do you want to join us, June? – she asks me innocently. – Pretty please!

     - Alright. – I sigh.

     In the end, I do need to research the books I borrowed but most of the information there is useless so I end up only reading certain chapters like "how to approach a horse" or "typical known horse diseases and their cures". I think in a couple of days I would be done with it and hopefully, I would find an explanation for Autumn's strange behaviour.