Meliorism

Rescued

And here is the love that stings.

We broke up two weeks ago, and we haven’t talked since. I see Nathan every day at school, of course. But every time I do, he veers off onto another direction and I’ll be frozen in spot, annoyed that I wasn’t able to explain my side and relieved he didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to, either; I just really needed to.

After all, I was the one who broke up with him.

I never got the chance to explain why. Exactly two weeks ago today, I ran after him. It was a Friday; we had to come out of the school late because of extra-curricular. I touched his shoulders and he turned around, looking at me with those steel-grey eyes and his hair swept over his forehead. He gave me a hug—it felt painful—and then I just outright said I was breaking up with him. He grabbed me by my left arm, where the bracelet he’d given me—which was too big—still hung limp. He hurt me for two seconds, but then he realized he was hurting me, so he stopped and walked away. I walked away from him too, feeling like the perpetrator.

Now it’s Friday night and I’m with my best friend. We’re sitting inside a coffee shop, which was packed with people from my school and the adults from the office-buildings surrounding it. Our school is smacked right in the middle of the business district.

“So are we still waiting for Nathan?” asks Jamie, taking a sip from his cup of coffee.

I glance outside. It’s raining. It’s been stormy for about three days now, but I never did mind. I love the rain. It gives me time to think, time to be alone, time to listen.

I sit upright. “Yeah, we are,” I reply with conviction. “You can leave if you want to, but I can’t last another night without getting to explain why.” I grab my own cup of coffee from the round table.

I stare at Jamie. He’s staring right back at me and says, “It’s all right. I’ll stay.”

“Okay,” I say.

Jamie’s been my friend since the sixth grade. Since then, we’ve stood by each other—through every single one of my boyfriends and flings and through every family problem he’s had. It’s still quite unclear to me what his sexual orientation is, and he’s never been bothered to tell me, which is weird, considering how open I am about my bisexuality.

After a few seconds, I look back at him. He’s playing with his phone, clearly bored. I’d tell him to go home, but he has a shipwreck of a family. Most nights, he’s at my house or wandering the streets of our town. The only true homes he has are himself and his poetry.

“Let’s just get out of here, man.” I stand up.

He turned his phone off, put it into his pocket, and stood up. “I was waiting for you to say that. There’s no chance we’ll find him in a coffee shop, anyway.”

I laugh. “Hey, he likes his coffee, too!”

“Yeah, if it’s topped with dumbassery and sexual deviation,” he says, deadpan.

I shake my head, still laughing. I push the doors open and immediately the cold night air touches my skin. “Dumbassery?” I turn around and ask Jamie.

“Yeah.” He nods casually. “That should be your ex-boy’s second name.”

We walk into the mall. The coffee shop’s located right outside of this big-ass mall, where I’m always at after school and where most heartbreaks over the years have occurred. The place is awfully significant to my development as a teenager—development that has, ironically, set me a few steps down the maturity ladder.

But maybe that’s why Nathan’s so different. My eyes light up every time I see him, and the love I have for him is not the puppy kind. It’s genuine. I know how to determine whether or not something’s genuine, and Nathan’s presence screams palpable.