Clementine had become a wild child. Born in America but raised abroad, she now had little regard for the expectations of high society. But her reckless ways eventually catch up with her when she is kicked out of college in New York City and forced t...
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Clementine was lying on her bed alone now, staring at the ceiling fan feel hypnotized by it. She tried to mediate, clear her mind, when all of a sudden a memory came up to her.
It was all of them in a pool. They were at a local pool, huge and in a beautiful, old area of town. The walls surrounding them painted in archaic pictures.
They were all hanging out, the loud music blasting as usual, the bar was in the water and they were drinking in the water.
She was chatting up one of his friends, mostly because the friend wouldn't let her go, and she did't mind because she was till feeling a little awkward around all of them trying to figure out her place n all of this
She always tried her best to act nonchalant whenever Zico spoke to all the other girls, his nature being one of flirty activity. At first, she wondered if she should be concerned or 'worried' or 'jealous' but she calmed down once she saw the amount of girls that Zico approached, understanding that it all meant nothing because it could not possible mean anything when they are all talking to him. And anyway, it was always her that he would find at the end of the night.
But she as largely amazed to see, how Zico would look over his shoulder casually glancing at Clementine and his friend, in a way that was almost protective. He does care, she remembered thinking. Perhaps she ought to do more of that, she thought.
Initially she thought she as being good and right by avoiding the others, but she realize that this was all part of the game and she better start playing. So she tried to look even more engaged than she was or was not in the conversations.
Then all of a sudden, Zico was there, wading over to them and there it was again that gravity pull between her and him, like the moon and the waves that he would surd from time to time. He should know all about gravity pulls, she thought. He's here.
"What about you?" She asked Zico, smoothly adding him into the conversation. "What's the worst injury you've ever had?"
"Hmm, lets see..." Zico's brown eyes were rimmed by a green that didn't make them seem brown at all but an olive colour, one that amazed her the first time she saw them up close, and did't cease to amaze her over time. "Surfing, I guess. 10 stitches on my arm." He lifted up his arm so we can see the back of it and indeed there was a scar there."
"Bro, I remember that!" The friend exclaimed, as if it was some sort of achievement, actually.
"Oh my God, that's terrible," Clementine said sincerely.
"I didn't mind it, actually. It made me feel kinda good, alive." Zico smiled at her. "What do they call that?" He asked the friend.
"Masochism, I think."
"Well I guess we all have our..." Clementine was looking for the right word, considering kinks but realized that would mark both of them loo bad since people knew they were sleeping together.
"Yeah, well," Zico looked out into the distance unforgivingly, "we all have out baggage." He completed the sentence for her, looked back in her eyes, and then had to leave as someone else Calle his name.
Thinking about it now, Clementine wondered how many other times he tried to tell her his truth but she wouldn't't let him. Unknowingly, she pushed him away, naively sticking to her own version of how things could be.
It was a torture, this posthumous analysis of their relationship, looking at all the places she went wrong. If only she let him tell her in his own way, maybe she could live with it all.
Maybe...
It would also describe his own demons, how he maybe knew she was going to leave him at the end. He wanted to save her form all this, but she saw it as him rejecting her form him which she wouldn't have because she needed him. She wanted him , and she got what she wanted.
Maybe she didn't need him, but something he had. She could feel it, but she couldn't' quite articulate it.
Instead of beating herself up any longer she somehow found the strength to get up and go to the dance studio, where she mechanically repeated the same barre exercises until her feel blistered.
