MORTAL ✰ ISAAC LAHEY

[CHAPTER 2]

THEIR FIRST ENCOUNTER

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SKYLAR MCCALL WAS DESPERATELY wiping her warm and clammy hands on her skinny jeans. She was a nervous wreck: her hands were shaking uncontrollably, her heart was thundering in her chest, her stomach was fluttering uncomfortably, and her breath caught in her throat as she glanced around the room. She was utterly and completely struck with her nerves as she thought of the their first encounter; she wanted perfection, but the world is not a wish granting factory. She tried to calm herself, but her thoughts always returned to him, and her heartbeat would be sent into palpitations once more.

It was supposed to go as planned―in her head, she had imagined their first encounter so many times, and she had an unrealistic approach to it. She was a romantic, and all she wanted was to be noticed and to be loved. She was human after all.

One of her closest friends, Lydia Martin, had told her that everything would be fine. The strawberry blonde girl had found time in her busy schedule to secretly scout out her friend's crush's routine and easily found out his schedule because her favorite hobby was playing matchmaker; the problem was that she never truly considered whether it was a match made in heaven or a match made in hell. She only thought about how he made her friend's cheeks glow as she hid smiles and stared lovingly at him—even if he had no idea who she was, even if he didn't know that he had torn her heart into two long before he got the chance to do so in person.

The two friends never realized how much it would hurt if their expectations were incredibly far from the reality; they were young and they believed they could hold the world between their fingertips—that's the everlasting fragility of youth. They never realized that sometimes things didn't just fall into place immediately or at all. They just relied on the hope in their hearts and forgot the rest.

If anything, Skye realized her fault as she saw him walk into the room, hands in his pockets and eyes determined to remain gazing at the ground. His backpack was lazily perched over his shoulder and his hair shielded eyes from her and from the world.

He wanted to be invisible—to fade away with each breath he took, to be forgotten with every step he took—but he could never be invisible to her.

She was so busy staring at him that she didn't notice he was about to bump right into her. She didn't realize in that moment, they would run into each other and that two worlds would collide for the first time. She, like everyone else, had no control as moments spiraled into the rest of her life.

Two universes were on the verge of collision, but neither of them were aware of the casualties of their encounter. Their convergence was fate, but it set into motion a series of events that would further entangle them in tragedy.

As their bodies collided, his head quickly rose and their eyes met; he was simply a deer caught in the headlights, completely vulnerable and perishable. His icy blue eyes were full of surprise as he caught his backpack before it hit the girl in front of him, but underneath the surprise, they held a sadness that Skylar wasn't used to seeing. His eyes were almost dark and alluring, but as one eye was surrounded by darkened skin―a black eye that shouldn't have been bruising his fragile skin—everything was different.

Almost immediately, his eyes darted towards the ground, and he clenched his jaw, muttering a quiet "sorry," while his heart raced; if numbered, this sorry was breaching into the thousands; if uttered any louder, he could already feel his father's steel glare tarnishing his being. He didn't want anyone to see him now— he didn't want to brandish the injury he had gotten from his own father's quick fists. He tried to hide it, all of it, and the only way to hide it was to hide himself.

He had to be invisible; Isaac Lahey had to remain invisible for the time being.

So almost as quickly as she fell for him, he backed away, ruffling his hair in frustration, and walking away with fervor. It merely left Skye's mind to rush to conclusions, whether they were the wrong ones or not.

Perhaps Isaac Lahey would never like her.

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[EDITED] APRIL 9, 2017
[EDITED AGAIN] AUGUST 30, 2017
i'm slowly adding more and more description to this story. it still feels incomplete, even if i've written and revised it so many times. maybe it's the lack of inspiration or just a hint of hatred, but i kind of can't bare rereading this story to edit it.