The Teacher's Admirer

2

Iris still remembered how that day went very clearly. She had just gotten her hair done and was currently making plans to visit Korea with her friends. She had been texting her boyfriend of 3 years, Jacob who later told her that he wanted to call and tell her something really important.

She had been sort of anxious, Jacob never really called you like to tell her things face to face he never you never saw the point in calling someone when he could just easily speak to them, even his texts were one worded replies. It wasn't up to a minute later that he called and said the words that literally ruined her for a really long time.

“Let's break up.” Jacob said with his usual nonchalant tone.

“...” Iris gripped her phone hard so it wouldn't slip from her grasp. Phones were expensive, she thought, unable to focus on the main issue at hand, he still thought that he was cracking a joke. Jacob and Iris had dated for 3 years, Iris was 19 when she met him, she was struggling living in a family that expected way too much from her and Jacob despite how her parents didn't like him loved him so deeply he never expected perfection from her and had settled for her and imperfections instead. It wasn't long until Irish made one of the biggest decisions in her life. She  left her parents house and went to live with Jacob because of that her parents made sure to cut her off completely. She has sacrificed so much for the relationship at such a young age so that's why it was a shock when Jacob, all of a sudden asked for them to break up.

“W–what?” She stuttered, “what do you mean? Break up? Why?”

Jacob was silent on the phone for quite a while making Iris yell. “Jacob! This is a joke, right? This better not be a prank, I swear!”

“It's not a prank, Iris.” Jacob said. “I really do want us to break up.”

“But why? What did I do wrong? Is it because I'm too clingy? If that's it, I'll stop please–”

“It's not you.” Jacob cut her off. “This has nothing to do with you, it's me–”

“Don't give me that bullshit!” Iris couldn't care much about the people who were looking at her and in their point of view. A woman was yelling at someone on her phone in public, they didn't know that she was a woman at the verge of heartbreak. “Why are you leaving me?”

“I'm sorry, the past few months I've been seeing someone else and I no longer feel the things I felt for you. I just thought I ofshould let you know before…before…” Jacob trailed off not knowing what else to say, no matter what he said nothing would make Iris feel better about it he knew how much she loved him and doing this was the biggest betrayal he'd ever made.

“Before what? Before I caught you in the act? Tell me who is she? Do I know her?” Iris went into an alleyway to stop the people from looking at her weird. “And calling me to tell me all this on the phone, how dare you?”

“It doesn't matter who she is–”

“God damn it, tell me the truth! Who is she?”

“You don't know her, she's from work, and I couldn't tell you this face to face because I'm not in California right now.”

“Jacob? Where are you? Are you with her?”

“...Yes. We are currently on a trip together in the Bahamas. ” Jacob sighed, “I'm sorry.”

A tear slipped for her eyes, “ How could you do this to me, Jacob? After all we've been through, after all I've sacrificed for you? I haven't been speaking to my family in years because of you and you just leave me like that for someone else you just met. You really don't love me anymore, do you?”

“I'm sorry, Iris.”

“For how long now?”

“Since the past year.”

“Why didn't you tell me then? Why did you have to fool around with someone else before telling me?” she sobbed. “I've always known that there was something different in our relationship, you should have just told me before cheating on me.”

“I didn't want to hurt you.” Jacob defended desperately. “I don't have feelings for you anymore, yes, but I still care for you. I didn't want to see you get hurt because of me.”

“Will you hurt me, Jacob. You still hurt me, there was no point in hiding it,  you're nothing but a coward running away and calling me from the other side of the world to tell me this. Go and have fun with your new girlfriend and don't you ever call me again.”

“Iris, I–”

Iris hung up the phone before she burst into tears. Jacob was her everything, how could he just leave her like that. Was she really that replaceable? So when he told her he had work to do, went to hang out with his friends or just wanted a walk he was with her he had been lying to Iris. This was further proved that Iris meant nothing to anyone not her parents, not even her boyfriend, she was nothing. Just a tool the use and discard when useless.

Iris was truly alone, now.

It was now 2 weeks later and Iris is in a bar with three of her friends in Korea drinking and partying,  her friends knew of her breakup and tried the best they could to make Iris feel better, they even tried to set up with a few guys they can across  and signed her up in a dating app. Iris was not interested in a relationship but that didn't mean her friends wouldn't try to help her out. Iris was drunk…too drunk and so were her friends that they didn't even notice when Iris got up and went up to the roof of the building, she wanted some fresh air and to her drunken mind, the rooftop…a place that overlooked the city under the night sky and was very high from the ground felt like the perfect place to clear her mind so she stumbled up without realizing that a what she was about to do was going to be risky. She went up there and the first thing  saw when she came up to the rooftop was a boy about to take his own life. He was standing right there at the edge and was about to jump when she screamed and dove at him, knocking him off the edge and landed on the safe ground of the rooftop. She landed on top of him and knocked the wind out of his lungs.

“Are you crazy?!” she slurred. “Do you want to die?!”

The boy blinked in confusion, then struggled. “Get off me! Please! I want it all to end, please.”

“No!” Iris fought back, she was sitting on his stomach, her thighs on either side of him. She succeeded in pinning his lean arms above his head with her hands. Despite how druck she was, she was still strong. “I won't let you kill yourself!”

The boy after a while, stopped struggling when she noticed he wasn't going to escape. And scanned her features for the first time. She was dark skinned, yet had gray eyes and wore her hair in braids, she had full pink lips and eyes filled with anger, Xavier had frankly never seen someone like her. He had never seen someone so beautiful.