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JAKE ──────────── ' a new development '
—JAKE was nervous. Scratch that, he was terrified.
Talking with Saya rarely ended (or started) on a positive note. One of their voices would raise too high or a slip of their tongue would push them all the way back to the starting line.
He searched for a dimension where Saya asking to meet up wasn't going to trip into that same territory, but his scavenging was futile. He truly could not see this ending well.
Yet, Jake still found himself walking through the park near his school, scanning the flattened greenery for her familiar frame. At the end of the day, it was Saya, and no matter what, Jake would always find himself flocking back to her.
He spotted her a second later, sitting on a bench by the edge of the complimentary pond.
Jake didn't announce his presence as he sat down beside her.
It was silent for a while. Saya stared out at the water, throwing a pebble into the blue abyss every now and then. Jake's eyes followed her hands every time they'd reached down to pick up a stone.
The sun was out, but it was oddly chilly. Birds decorated the faint cerulean sky and the wind created ripples in the water and their hair.
Jake thought it was a beautiful day, especially considering the tranquil girl beside him.
"Thank you for coming." Jake had almost forgotten how delicate Saya's voice could be. Her inflections and cadences used to wrap him in a blanket of bliss, one that he had been extremely cold without when she had ripped it off of him. Hearing her breath coat her words in sugar was enough to make his heart turn to syrup.
"You know I wasn't going to say no," Jake half-whispered, almost mumbling the words, so quiet only Saya could hear. There was so much he wanted to say, both things he only ever wanted to reach her ears and even more he wanted to scream from the rooftops.
Saya turned to face him. Either what he had said strung a melodic cord she hadn't heard in a while, or the tune she wanted to play was far from the one Jake had started to strum.
"I know." It was the prior.
Jake found his body swaying to the beat of the song Saya had continued. He hoped he liked the lyrics just as much. The rhythm seemed promising, so he started the first verse. "What did you want to talk about?"
Obviously, Saya knew how the song was supposed to go if she was the one who had written it, but she didn't say anything. Her sight fell back onto the pond and the instrumentals started to drag on for too long.
After an intro too agonizing for a radio hit, she cleared her throat. "I wanted to apologize."
