LOST GIRL

Chapter 2

After I walked out of the therapist office, my boyfriend, Brian was outside in the waiting room, waiting for me like the gentleman he was. Honestly, I don't know what I did to deserve such a caring, loving, chocolate man.

I met Brian about 6 months ago. We bonded over our shared trauma. He lost his younger brother, I lost my younger sister. Except, he had the closure of burying his brother. I didn't.

I was a bartender, he walked in looking to drink his sorrows away. He wore a gray Nike tracksuit and smelled of a sweet smelling cologne that I could've melted in. He had a low hair cut, and beautiful pearly white teeth. It was almost as if it was love at first sight. He talked while I kept his rounds of drinks going and proceeded to ask if I was busy after my shift. Of course I wasn't. He stayed around and waited for my shift to end and we proceeded to walk the empty streets of Crestville at 2 AM. The city lights glistened as we strolled the streets like tourists. I hadn't noticed the huge waterfall that sat right in front of the courthouse. There were a lot of new things that I had not noticed over the years since Zalia's disappearance. We talked and walked and knew it had to be fate leading us together. The tragic story of his younger brother's death and the mysterious abduction of my sister bonded us since.

On our first date, he surprised me with a boat ride on the lake. The boat he rented, in my opinion, was not a boat at all but it was a mini yacht. It was to die for. There were LED lights lining the outside of it, changing from red to blue to green to white. In the middle of the boat, there was a table set up with a white table cloth on it, a bouquet of roses in a vase, two plates, two wine glasses, and a bottle of wine in an ice bucket. He had a chef bring us out a plate of dinner, which was grilled salmon on a bed of rice, asparagus and mashed potatoes. He even had dessert which was my favorite, chocolate cake. We talked, laughed, cried and picked each other right back up. By the time evening had come, we stopped in the middle of the lake and looked up at the sky to see the fireworks. It just so happened to be the 4th of July. It was a beautiful night, something you would imagine in a fairytale. That night we had our first kiss and I knew he was the man that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

We recently moved in together. We rented a cute 2 bedroom apartment on the West side of town. I continued to bartend at night and attended schooling during the day and he worked as an interior designer. He made the second bedroom his office space. We even adopted a small chocolate poodle together, because we didn't plan to have any kids anytime soon.

I started to feel as if I was my happy self again. The Zara that I was before my sister disappeared. Zara who had the perfect family, friends and not a tragic story. Zara who wasn't all over the news as the broken older sister. It was all thanks to Brian and Mila. They held me up and pushed me to become myself again.

I've reached out to my parents a few times to see if they would like to meet Brian or even just catch up with me but I barely ever got a response. My dad has sent me a few texts here and there about how he misses me, but I knew my mother was holding him back. I understood their pain of losing their favorite daughter and how much they wished it were me instead.