Trip

Prologue

I just couldn’t expect a good thing to linger in my life. There was never a good thing that actually stayed for quite a long time. And no, I wasn’t being pessimistic. I was pretty sure of it… just talking real.

                And he was not an exception.

                In his first message that he had sent me, he had mentioned about his and his friends’ trip in our town. But the supposed excursion that was due a week after its announcement was rescinded and moved to the nearest chance. But the next due date was not met, and chance seemed elusive from then on that it was postponed again and again and again until the plan just died a natural death.   

                And as for whatever Claire was fighting for before… after days, weeks, and months of constant no communication with him, fate had given me the right to tell my best friend in her face that she had been wrong about the ‘promising’ crap she was pushing me into. As to how it went down that path, he had become too occupied—too occupied to punch in his stories. And on my part, I was not so crazy about long-distance nonsense.   

                But the ‘end’ was not so sudden at all. Sure the first few messages were long and thorough, and our line of communication seemed strong and conquering. But as the stack of messages towered, real life intercepted. Words lessened; thoughts narrowed; and what was once strong and conquering became breakable. The line just snapped off.  That was it.

                Or so I thought. 

                Because just when you think that things are already at the extreme of all the worse that could happen, life will show you another way to make it even worse.

 

 

 

Sitting in my not-so-comfortable chair in my room and reading a novel was me in my busy mode, and on my eventful time, Claire barged into my room without the notice of a knock. The book slipped right out of my hands at the loud sound of the slammed door that startled me. I gave her a disgusted look.

                “Sorry about that,” she apologized as she walked toward me and sat on the edge of my bed. 

                “What’s with the rush, Claire?” I asked as I picked the book up off the floor.

                Uneasiness was all over her pale face; I surmised she went here without the convenience of dolling up. She was indeed in a rush. So not her. She could always find a way for that. She was distractedly pulling at my bed sheet spread under her. “I just came to tell you something,” she answered.

                “Shoot,” I uttered as I flipped through the pages, finding what I was reading before I dropped it.

                She breathed deeply. “Steff… you remember Steff, right?

                I nodded, still busily rummaging through the pages.

                “Well, she emailed me. She… she said that… that she and… Luke—” she whispered the name guiltily as if she had committed a crime, and it was time for her to confess. Despite of myself, I stared up at her—“that she and Luke are…” She paused, scrambling for gentle words in her head.

                I waited a couple of seconds. The silence was becoming pretty awkward so I decided to fill it in. “In a relationship,” I finished her sentence for her. I knew she was talking about that.