No Regrets

Chapter Forty-Six - One Of These Days

DOMINICK'S POV

"Are you alright?" Aria asks again after sitting against the wall beside me. There's a foot of space between us, she leans her head against the wall. "I'm experiencing a bit of whiplash." She says.

"Oh." I say. "That sucks."

   Aria lets out a deep sigh, "Yeah, it does... It really does." She quickly glances at me from the corner of her eye. She seems to be exhausted in a way that is beyond physical. She doesn't ask if I'm alright again, I have a feeling she knows the answer. She doesn't apologize or attempt to justify anything or offer comfort. Instead, she just sits quietly and stares up at the blue sky.

  Having her sitting beside me, I realize something I never realized before. She and I are alike. I should have seen the similarities in her before. How could I not notice how she never spoke much or how she always seemed to have everything together. She, like me, processes things internally and ,I suspect, alone. In this moment, I also realize something I never said but should have long ago. Perhaps I never thought to because Aria has always seemed together. My mind must have overlooked the possibility she could be falling apart inside. I stare up at the sky and say, with all sincerity, "I'm sorry for your loss."

   Aria stiffens up a bit and she exhales a breath slowly. "Did you love her?" She asks. Her voice is strong and firm, I don't see any signs of her about to cry. No doubt, she's had this question on her mind for a while. She's looking at me with these eyes full of questions. I take a deep breath and give her the only answer I have, "Very much."

  Aria looks way from me and stares at her hands. She starts picking off her navy-blue nail polish. "I'm sorry for your loss as well." She says quietly.

  The words "your loss" hit me hard. I'd received condolences before; and some of those hit me pretty hard. But, I don't know is anything has hit me harder than the words "your loss".

   Memories of Nikki seem to play in my mind like a mini-movie. The memory of when I first met her in junior high. I had seen her a few times in middle school, but we never had actually met. Junior high was the time before Nikki began dye her hair and before she started acting like a cold b*tch most of the time. We had two classes together and in one of them, history, her desk was two rows beside mine.

   I had gotten bored and "accidentally" launched my eraser off my desk. It ended up landing nearby Nikki's desk. She picked my eraser up and kept it. At first, I thought she was going to give it back to me after class; but when the dismissal bell rang she picked up her backpack and left. I ran through the hallway to catch up with her, I didn't really give a sh*t about the one-dollar eraser but something about her just taking it got my attention.

   When I got up to her I grabbed her shoulder and said something along the lines of, "Why did you steal my eraser?"

   She turned around, eraser in her fist, and replied with a simple shrug of the shoulders. She removed my hand from her should and placed the eraser into my empty palm. "Sorry, you were throwing it around. I just assumed you didn't care about it and it wouldn't hurt if I had an extra eraser. Again, sorry." She replied. She wasn't annoyed or trying to be cheeky, she was just acting like... Well, like Nikki.

   Two weeks later, I "accidentally" launched my eraser across the classroom again. This time I'd taped a piece of notebook paper on the back, both to send my message and to make the eraser a cape. Just as planned, it landed by Nikki's desk. She picked it up, looked at the piece of paper, and that's how we started sitting next to each other. Obviously, we couldn't be throwing an eraser back and forth in class when we wanted to talk; which we ending up doing a lot.