Tommy POV
After a few weeks of not seeing Raquel, I finally found her on the beach late at night. She was sitting in the same spot that I met her. This time was different though, her beautiful, long hair flowed freely in the night's breeze. The closer I got to her, the more I noticed tears rolling down her face.
"Hey, long time no see." I sat beside her and put my arm around her. Although I clearly saw her face, she quickly wiped her tears away.
"Thomas, hi. You sure do like sneaking up on people, don't you?"
"I didn't sneak up on you. You had to be in deep thought since you didn't hear me walking behind you. What's wrong?"
"Noth..."
I already knew she was going to try and avoid her tears. She must be the type that hates to cry in front of people. I completely understand that. Crying is so liberating, but it also shows vulnerability. Some people respect you enough to not throw in your face what upsets you, but there are plenty of assholes that use stuff like that against you. I'm not that type of person. At least I try not to be.
"Come on now, how can you have tears on your face but not have anything wrong with you?"
"There's a such thing as tears of joy."
"Yeah but, come on Quelzie, you can talk to me about anything. I mean, we don't know each other well, but I'd like to get to know you."
She looked reluctant to say anything else, but she decided to speak anyway.
"How do you face fears when it seems like you can't?"
There are so many different answers I can give to that question. Me personally, I never did face my biggest fear of them all. He was murdered. After what he did to me, I wanted him dead anyway. I regret not dealing with him though, because even though he is dead, I have to live with thoughts of him for the rest of my life. The thoughts may not haunt me so bad had I got counseling like Nova begged me to.
"I mean, I guess it depends on what it is. My sister, Nov... she was in a horrid car wreak some years back. One of her worse fears was to drive and to walk again. Well, she was worried that she wasn't going to be able to walk again. In order to get over those fears, she had to work towards doing them both. At times you have to do what you fear in order to try and get over it. That sounds crazy, but it makes sense when you think about it."
"But... what if your fear isn't something... what if it's someone?"
Her saying that caused me to curiously raise my eyebrows. That's ironic because now I'm thinking back to the last night I saw her. I finally built up the courage to ask her out, but she was about to reject me... but I remember she was cut off by some man.
She suddenly started sobbing, which made me hold her closer. I softly kissed her on her forehead, which made her wince in pain. She had a bobby pin in her hair, so when I moved it, I was able to see bruising around her right eye. She didn't make it easy for me to move her hair and now I see why.
"What the fuck?! Who the fuck did this to you?"
She couldn't say anything, she simply put her hands over her face and continued to cry. There's no way I could leave her out here by herself, so I picked her up bridal style and carried her to the hotel.
By the time I got up to the floor that Nov and I stay on, I noticed Asia standing next to our door. Nov and I changed suites because we didn't want to be on the same floor as everyone else. I assume Asia must have either followed one of us up here or she asked the receptionist where we were.
"Who's this?" She asked with her nose scrunched up for some reason.
"My friend. Why are you standing by my door at one in the morning?"
