Beauty Is A Virtue

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

There’s hundreds upon, hundreds, of selfies and pictures. Alice is in almost more than half of them—other friends of yours I don’t know—wait a minute, you just added to your story…?
I clicked on the icon and it was a picture of the park near the gas station.
#Fridaynightshenanigans #Datenight
Date night…? You are saying it’s a date night? Well isn’t that great, you considered this a date night.
I pressed follow, and put my phone back in my pocket. Waiting for Matthew to arrive. Richard saw him arrive, and came up to me.
“Listen, Alan. I’m sending you home for the day, just come back tomorrow!” I felt confused, why would he just send me home? But I was fine with it, more time with you, Lilly.
I watched you, looking beautiful as ever. You were typing on your computer, you looked so graceful, like you didn’t want to press on a key too hard.

12:32PM, two hours, twelve minutes, and four seconds since I left the shop. Now I wanted to do something, I did. But what could I do? I can’t walk in and disturb you, you’d scream and squeal for help. That’s crossed off. I can’t knock on your window, even because it’s on the third floor.
I stepped down from the fire escape. An old lady looked at me with a bit of disgust. “Get the hell out of my way, numbnuts!”
“Well, aren’t you a bouquet of roses.” I will admit, I could’ve been ruder. But it’s an old, shriveled up lady.
She looked even more old with the wrinkles she had as she scrunched up her face. “You men of this generation are always so disrespectful.”
“You were rude first!” I feel like the brains of people back in the day have rotted, mushed and fell out.
Back in high school, my old math teacher was a bitch—and a whore—she never stopped talking about her divorce. I'm serious, Lilly. She almost had a breakdown in front of the whole class. So if I play these cards that I have in front of me, one of them can make this old lady cry.
“And if you had a single brain cell, maybe he would’ve never left.” I said and it backfired so badly.
She started to cry, trying to walk past me. “Get the fuck away from me! You don’t know what I’ve been through!” She was really mad.
I felt stumped, I just ruined this little ladies day. But maybe if she wasn’t a bitch, I wouldn’t have said that. It is a cruel world we live in, but I’ll protect you, Lilly. In any way I can.
I put on my ear buds, put on my playlist—I love Radiohead!—and scrolled through your Instagram, hoping you posted something. Until I actually realized you had a Twitter and a Snapchat. (I’ve never used Snapchat so I had to create another fake.) Your Twitter was pretty casual, little posts here and there about random things. And your friends are always commenting on your posts, no matter what it was:
@Lilly_Serany: Have cows tried to drink their milk? #cows #randomthoughts
Very weird thoughts, Lilly. But you shouldn’t be judged, it’s you after all. And dear old Alice and the rest of your alliance came rushing in to add on.
@AliveAlice: I’m pretty sure they universally know not to do that.
And someone named Hannah added on:
@Goodvibehannah: The farmers don’t allow cows to do that.
Then she replied to her comment:
@Goodvibehannah: I think…
You have some dumb friends, Lilly. They didn't do research, neither did I. But I have a brain.
I went back up the fire escape, and then sent you a friend request on Snapchat. After about a minute, you looked at your phone, and then I got a notification:
@lil_serany accepted your friend request
Then another chimed:
@lil_serany sent a chat
I open the notification, the message said:
Hiii
A very kind message to start, but the one reason why I never used Snapchat, was because it tells too much. Where you are, when you look at the chat logs, when you screenshot, when you screen record, it’s not good for me. I have to do things that tell them what I did. But the location thing is perfect. And lucky for me you didn’t disable it. You want to be seen. To be heard. I replied:
Heyy
The extra letters should give off kindness, not the I-want-to-fuck mentality. But you respond fast so I don’t have to wait long.
Whatcha doing?
Now, I can’t just straight up say ‘I’m outside your window.’ Because why the fuck would I? So I had to come up with something, something you’d believe.
A: Just at my job
L: What do you do for work?
A: Waiter at a restaurant
L: Cool!
And then we ended it there, I didn’t know where to go from there. Where can I go from there? I looked back over at you, continuing to type on your computer, your cat jumped up on your lap. You seemed so content. Until I looked more closely at your computer, a man was on there. He had short hair, just a little above his ears, he didn’t look white, he had glasses, but those little Ithinkimsmart kind of glasses.
Why does so much have to happen on a Wednesday? It’s only 1:14PM. This day just needs to end.
I went back down the fire escape, walking down the street, the wind was cold. But it felt right, it was winter after all.
I couldn’t wait for this date, it was going to be the best. But now you're speaking with this guy? So what the hell is going on, Lilly? Why is this happening to me? I’ve done nothing wrong.
I wish this was all over, this day needed to end. I continued to listen to my music, “Welcome and goodbye” by Dream, Ivory
It’s a good song, I’ve had it on repeat, but not because of something like this. It’s like a low-fi song, rhythms and blues except I can’t tell the difference in music, it’s all the same.