Like the Red Rose blooms in the Oxford Garden

Chapter 7: My heart, my body, my love. There isn't a part of me you didn't touch

"I don't know, I honestly do not know anymore. Sometimes I can just feel it, when he looks at me, he feels the same. I can see it from his eyes... but then other times I am convinced that it's not the case." A tear rolled down from Nina's eye as she was talking to Luna. "I can't bear this anymore. I love him, and that hasn't changed. It won't change, no matter what I do."

"Nina, I don't like to see you like this." Luna smiled at her sympathetically "What makes you think he doesn't?"

"I told you, he pulled away." Nina sighed, "I know him, he would have made a move by now. He hasn't..."

"What if he's just scared?"

"Scared?"

"What if he is just afraid to admit that he still likes you," Luna shrugged, "That was the case with me and Matteo at least twice. Maybe you should make the first move?"

"You know I am not good at that," Nina shook her head, "I hid behind a screen for a year because I was so afraid to put myself out there and get rejected, even when everything I ever wanted was right before my reach."

"You won't know if you don't try," Luna smirked, "And to me it is kind of hard to believe that Gastón has gone through all the trouble to help you with that physics, or whatever it is that you are doing, if there is nothing there anymore."

"I don't know," Nina shook her head again. It was so hard to let herself hope, everything would just end up hurting twice as worse. "I don't want to lose him... but I can't keep going like this either..."

"Luna!" Someone was yelling for Luna behind the computer screen.

"Ambar's calling me," Luna turned around, "I'm sorry but I need to go. I miss you amiga."

"I miss you too. Talk to you tomorrow?"

Nina fell down on her bed. Maybe Luna was right... and all of this was just in her head, and she should just take a risk...

Another tear rolled down her cheek. What was she supposed to do? Call him right now and plead her heart out to him, only to get rejected and ending up looking desperate. Would they just spend rest of their time at Oxford avoiding each other? She wouldn't be able to bear that.

On the other hand, would she be able to bear to watch him live his life from the sidelines as his friend? Watching him fall in love and build that life, she had always wished to have with him, with someone else while knowing that she had thrown away her second shot when she had had it.

Did she even have a shot?

The thoughts started to swirl in her head with such a force, Nina had to close her eyes. She couldn't keep thinking about this anymore.

Nina grabbed her phone and started scrolling on it pretty aimlessly, with no particular goal. She just needed some distraction.

She wasn't sure how she had ended up there, but after little time had passed, she found herself browsing the audio files she had saved on her phone.

Why did she have so many unnamed files? Nina decided that as she had nothing better to do, she might as well start deleting them.

But what if some of them had something important? She honestly did not remember what those even were for...

There was only one way to find out. She picked one file at random and clicked on it.

"...The human voice isn't the only way to communicate. But unlike gestures and signs, speech generates a lot more meaning when it comes to communicating ideas and feeling..."

Nina realized too late what this recording was... it was this.

"...The human voice has a perfect smile..."