Truths

Part Two

Immediately the soccer team, swaggering until a moment before, run boisterously toward the door and vanish into the evening darkness lit by streetlights.

The boy mutters something through his teeth but continues to smile; he then approaches the counter where Dalia has remained motionless, her eyes still wide, observing the scene.

"Do you have something cold on you, by any chance?" he asks, his hand around his nose in a bad attempt to stop the dripping blood, now less copious. Dalia shakes her head.

"I'm sorry," she says. "Are you okay?"

"I've been better. I've never taken a headbutt to meet a girl."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Marco," he says. With his free hand, he tosses the badge on the counter. "Oh, the things you can find on Amazon for a few bucks..."

Dalia looks, stunned, at the fake badge. To a closer look, it's obvious that it's a fake, but she doubts that in the disarray of a few moments earlier her "colleagues" noticed it. She also wonders, absentmindedly, if it is illegal to claim to be a state official, but the thought loses intensity and dies when she brings her gaze back to the boy - Marco.

"I see you in university all the time," he says rummaging through his jacket pockets. He pulls out a packet of tissues and pulls one out, wiping the blood from his face, badly. "I've always wanted to talk to you, but ... let's just say you don't seem to see further than your nose. Am I wrong?"

"No," Dalia says shyly. "I'm not very good with people."

She is not even sure why she is opening so much to a stranger, and this scares her. People don't like her, and she doesn't like most people - but there is something in Marco's eyes that makes her heart race.

"I'll leave you alone if you like," he offers with an almost apologetic look, and Dalia hastens to shake her head.

"No, no," she says. "I'm Dalia."

"I'd shake your hand, but I wouldn't want to get blood on you."

Dalia is about to say something - she doesn't quite know what either, but she feels a great urge to respond, to continue that conversation - when the counter boy re-enters the room and walks through them to head toward his colleague.

"Your pizzas are ready," he says a few moments later. He hands Dalia two boxes and a bag full of cold beer cans. "And your beers, too. That'll be thirty."

"Sorry," Dalia mutters to Marco. She turns to pay, takes her order and receipt, and politely greets the staff. When she turns around again, Marco is still there; he looks at her with a half-smile on his lips, and his blue eyes seem to sparkle.

"See you at the university, then," he tells her, and she nods awkwardly.

"See you soon."

Dalia quickly exits the pizzeria, her head down and her gaze dreamy. She feels strange, it's almost as if her whole skin is pervaded by a warm tingling sensation, and her heart skips a beat when she thinks of the meeting of just moments earlier.

Marco is a beautiful guy, someone she never thought would even want to talk to her. Instead, he has gone out of his way to get to know her, with his big blue eyes and that hair the colour of corn, and that smile that reminds her of Nick Carter, her all-time teenage crush.

Dalia, absorbed as she is in her thoughts, is hardly aware of the road she travels, the crosswalks she crosses, the green and red lights in the bustling city night. She reaches Amelia's house in less than ten minutes, without even noticing; in no time the tall grey building pointed out to her, old and weather-stained, appears before her eyes.