The Love Complex (Completed)

-14-

"A flower without a stem, is beauty waiting to die. A heart without love, is a tear waiting to cry." -Octavio Paz

Dylan Ren was seventeen years old when his mother first talked to him about love. The smell of spring was in the air, and the sweetness of her lily garden filled the small front yard. Dylan and Jax had been playing soccer outside, and he had gone to the kitchen to take a sip of water.

"Sit down," said the woman. Her features were defined and serious, and her eyes were glued to her recipe book. The kitchen was her place of work; she often came up with new recipes for the restaurant and oftentimes Jaxon and Dylan were her guinea pigs. Taste this, taste that, she would say.

Dylan sat down at the round table, just right beside her. He thought he had done something wrong, so he was expecting a lecture of some kind.

The woman looked up from her recipe book and placed her pen on the table. She looked at her seventeen-year-old son for a few seconds, scanning him with her mother's radar. "Is there someone who you like lately?" She asked.

Dylan found the question a bit embarrassing, but his mother didn't seem to notice. He gulped and shook his head. It was true. No girl caught his attention enough to approach with romantic intention.

"Well, you do know that one day you will become interested enough and I want you to be prepared." Mrs. Ren did not beat around the bush. She was always direct and went straight to the point. It was a quality that was both admirable and frightening to Dylan. 

"Dylan," she began, " love is more than just physical. Right now you are young and hormones can get the best of you, but what I want you to take into consideration is that women are not puppets that you can control. Humans are not pawns in games and love is not a war. The world wants you to think that love is about one-upping each other. 'Let's see who can get the better hand.' That is not love." 

Her son nodded diligently. "When you meet someone you love, I don't want you to feel like you have to hide it. I want you to experience it the correct way," she said. She pointed toward his heart. "I want you to experience it with your heart...not with your ego. I want you to be sincere, because love is about sincerity. It is not about hurting people. It never involves lies, not even white lies. It's all about honesty, you understand?" 

Dylan nodded.

He had followed her instructions to the T. When he met Valentina he had been sincere through it all. He had never lied, and never did anything to hurt her. He had given up his heart completely and was never ashamed, even when they ridiculed him for it. For Dylan love was sincerity.

It was six thirty in the afternoon, on a Friday. Dylan and Regina sat on the terrace both looking at the starless sky. There wasn't a single star, only a few satellites staring back at them. 

A few minutes before, they had been working on the wedding preparations. Mr. Kendall had been discharged and had taken his wife on a trip to the sea so that he could recuperate. In her absence, Mrs. Kendall had made a long list of things that the pair needed to do before she came back. So far, they had only managed to complete three out of the ten tasks. "We need a break," Regina said after a few minutes of getting very little done. Dylan nodded.

"It takes a lot to prepare a fake wedding," she said, "don't you think?"

Dylan nodded. They had opened a bottle of wine and were quietly drinking it. Regina chuckled.

"I can't believe it," she said.

"What can't you believe?" He asked, turning to her.

Regina turned and looked at him. "We're from the same hometown and we barely found out. Had my sister not shown up, I probably would've found out on the fake wedding day."

She chuckled softly. Dylan smiled and chuckled as well. "It's a small world." He said, before taking another sip of wine.

"By the way, how is your sister taking the whole wedding thing? Does she still think I'm plotting some evil against her?" He asked with a raised eyebrow. 

Regina nodded, "A little, but she'll get over it soon. Tina isn't a bad person. I mean, she's always been a bit self-serving and a little unbearable, you know, like any younger sibling...but deep down she's a good person."

Dylan didn't say anything. It was hard to forgive. While he had learned to forget  the pain she had caused him, and had erased most of the love he previously had for her it was still hard to forgive. He believed he could do it, but it was harder than he thought. It burned his chest every single time her name was mentioned.

"I'm sorry," she said, noticing the painful silence that had followed. Dylan shook his head, "It's alright."

He didn't know how to turn himself back again, to smile and turn toward a lighter subject, so he didn't. Thankfully, Regina stepped in.

She fell back onto the sofa and rested her head comfortably, her gaze falling onto the starless city sky.

"You know," she began, "I had my first crush when I was fifteen. He was a dark-eyed curly haired boy, and he was a year older than me. His dad and my dad were good friends, so he invited us all to his house by the beach. I was instantly smitten by him, but it was obvious that he didn't see me the same way. He had a girlfriend, this really pretty girl who was a senior in high school...I had no idea though, so I naively confessed a day before we came back. He rejected me, told me that he had a girlfriend. I took it like a champ, it was the first time. I nodded and pretended it was fine, but it was not. I cried at night and didn't even say goodbye to him the next day. Despite all that, I thought that it was okay. There had to be someone out there for me,"

She stopped. Dylan looked over at her, and saw that she was fighting back tears. He wanted to reach out and console her, but didn't know how to. Regina took a deep breath and wiped nonexistent tears before they could even come out.

"The second time, I was more careful, but it still hurt. This time, I was seventeen, it was a friend of mine. I was more scared this time, I didn't want to ruin our relationship, but it was not any better. He friend zoned me and told me that there was definitely someone out there for me, it just wasn't him." Regina chuckled.

"They say that people learn, and that third times the charm," she shook her head. "I no longer believe that."

There was a bitterness that had settled itself in Regina Kendall's heart. It was a bitterness left over by a constant pain of rejection. As he saw her pain, Dylan thought about his own. He had only been rejected once. Regina had endured that same pain over and over again.

"I'm sorry," he said. He knew that they were probably not his words to say, but he couldn't help it. He reached out, his thumb fell on a single tear that had escaped her eyes and landed just by her lips. Regina looked at him, the pain was still alive and burning in her eyes. Regina noticed it too. His own pain vibrated from his chest and could be heard in the silence of the night.

That night two heartbroken individuals looked at one another with the same look of pity and empathy for each other. They knew each other's pain. A pain that they could not ignore and had to live with perhaps until they found "someone out there for them".

"I think we should finish up before Lena calls me," she said before getting out of the couch. Her steps were hurried as she made her way back into the house.

Dylan followed her with his gaze before he looked back at the starless sky. His mother's old words came back into his mind, but at the same time a cloud of fear appeared and made it hard to reach out.

"Dylan!!" Regina called out.

"I'm going!" He shouted before standing up and heading back inside.

The rest of the night, they went over the details for the wedding. Dylan would find himself looking over at Regina, but she didn't notice.