Breakup Helpline [#2 of the Helpline Trilogy]

epilogue

Theo checks his watch, trying to contain his excitement in thinly disguised coolness. 

Sure, it's been two months since they've last seen each other and they talk during any time they get on Skype but it's nothing compared to feeling her hand in his or the chance to kiss her again. 

The airport is crowded, dense and thick with congregates of travellers surrounding the space. Families are holding banners by the arrival station, waiting for loved ones, or dragging their screaming children and too-big luggage towards the check-in counters. Tired college students are sipping on espressos, tucked in a chair, waiting or sleeping with earphones plugged in. Businessmen are yelling in phones, checking their watches anxiously as they rush to their desired places. The world is like one big mess, waiting to be untangled and unravelled. 

He pulls the collar at his jacket and walks over to the railings, which has been put up as a blockade for families to stand behind and wait for their loved ones to come striding out of the arrival gates. 

He taps impatiently on the lower metallic railing, intertwining and disconnecting his fingers over and over again like an excited child when someone taps his on the shoulder. 

Surprise prickles all over him during the time it takes for his head to crane and catch sight of a girl- a girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. He doesn't recognize her- at first- until he squints and shock renders him inarticulate. 

"Tiffany?" 

It's his girlfriend from a year and a half ago- the same girlfriend who cheated on him, the same girlfriend who caused him to find Serena. 

She smiles and nods in confirmation, tucking a blonde strand of hair behind her right ear like she used to. She looks different now. He can tell she has put on a little bit of weight- not in a bad way; it makes her more fuller with a larger chest and a curvier frame- and her hair is now streaked with dark highlights instead of her old platinum blonde ones. She has cut her hair and it hangs just right below her shoulders. 

"Yeah," she confirms,  slightly nervously. "It's me...I, uh, saw you around here and I thought I should...say hi." 

"Oh," he says, kind of passively. The rage that once burns at the pit of his stomach has now quelled into an empty nothingness- there is nothing but apathy he feels for her. "Okay."

She rubs her hands together and folds them, "So...um, I broke up with Richard."

It takes a while for him to remember who Richard is. Theo has cut them both out and as time flows in like it usually does, his memory on both of them remains what it is: a memory. "Oh, really? Oh, wow. Okay."

"Yeah, I've been single for a while now but that's me." The tension is stifling and Theo's privately wishing she would leave soon. "What about you? Are you seeing anyone at the moment?"

Anyone who has half a brain can make the assumption that she's trying to find out whether he has a girlfriend- and if he says no, she would try to ask him out. It's funny how a year and a half ago he would've been so grateful for such an opportunity- to get back in a relationship with her but now...

"Actually, yes. I am seeing someone at the moment."

Disappointment fills her eyes- and her shoulder droops. "Oh, okay. Do I know her?"

A voice from behind the both of them shatters the moment, answering for him:"No, you don't and believe me, she doesn't want to know you too." 

Theo knows only one person with so much sass could ever predeposit herself into a conversation so rudely without any guilt.

Serena. 

"Excuse me?" Tiffany chokes out, narrowing her eyes at Serena, who looks just like he remembers her. Blonde, tucked into a ponytail, freckles, green eyes and the bitchiest expression ever. "Who are you?"

Serena straightens up and smiles at Tiffany, almost poisonously. "I'm the girlfriend of the boy you're trying to hit on and soon, I'll be the girl who humiliated you on pure sass."

"Are you usually this much of a bitch?"

Theo coughs and puts his hands around Serena's waist, "Usually, it's more."

Tiffany scoffs, purses her lips and marches away, hair flying in the air. When she's gone, Theo looks critically at Serena, "You didn't have to be so mean."

"Why not? She cheated on you."

"It was, like, a century ago."

"Okay, fine. But I wouldn't be me if I wasn't mean."

He sighs and pecks her on the lip. "True."

Serena blushes but the scowl is still a permanent fixture on her face. "Stop it, people are staring."

"I thought you didn't care what people think."

"Oh shut up."

"God, I miss you."

"Oh fuck off, you know I don't do sappy."

"Oh please, you cried during Tarzan!"

"HE FUCKING DIED. COULD YOU BLAME MY REASONABLE REACTION?"

"People are seriously staring now. Keep your voice down and behave, Serena."

"For twenty bucks, I will."

"No."

"BUT-"

"Fine! Here's fifty- give me back the change." 

"Oh, let's be real here, Franklin. You're never getting back the change. If this is to be continued, your ass will become mine."

"If? Do you doubt that we'll last?"

"Are we seriously having this conversation at the airport?"

"You brought it up!"

"As a joke. Seriously, by now, you should know."

And that's how the rest of Theo's day went: arguing with Serena, and hopefully for the rest of his life, it would be continued.

and it did.

[finite incantatem]