Strange Tides

9.

Alicks - Help Me Out

          

The next day directly after school had ended I rushed off to Henkies. I heard that a lot of people from Morgan hung out there after school and I knew that Emily was as common as her name. I ordered food for both of us, positive that she'd show, that she'd come back to the restaurant, but I felt more and more ridiculous and her peers appeared and she didn't.

I ate both my food and Emily's food. In all honesty, she'd taken the accusation a lot better than I thought she would. I thought things would turn physical, or we'd be thrown into a screaming fest. The fact that she'd left, not too gracefully, had shown some maturity on her part. If she hadn't she probably would've caused some substantial damage to me and the objects around her. I was proud of her for making that move, but it was not my preferred move for her, but I couldn't expect her to complete a 180 degree turn so soon.

I had to think rationally.

To be honest, I half expected her to come back. To rush back and tell me about how she was joking or about how she was having a mood swing or just to give me something, but as the sky began to change in colour I accepted that I was on my own for the evening.

I left a tip and paid the cheque and just walked on the way the bus stop and though I tried to keep a clear mind, thoughts attacked it.

So she had been with Terence.

For some time I'd just pretended that it was all an elaborate part of my imagination. I'd gone through the motions and the feelings, but I still liked to pretend that we were in a perfect world. It was how I kept sane. The world is a cruel, cruel place, and I was still on the patch that had 'greener grasses'.

Another thing that haunted me was her words, her challenging my relationship with Terence. She had no right to poke her business in something that didn't concern her. We had a perfectly healthy relationship, but that didn't mean that I didn't want to have the talk with him.

It occupied my thoughts every day of my life. I wasn't even sure he even remembered such an event. It was so distant and Terence was a man in the moment. He didn't have time for such causalities, but I wasn't awarded such a luxury.

Even if I brought it up how would he react? He could start screaming which I highly doubted or he could be soft and understanding. Although the latter was most likely I didn't want to challenge him on any of them.

I wanted to get over it and act like it had never happened.

However, I also wanted to find out anything and everything that had happened.

My thoughts halted as I got the bus stop.

As I sat down to collect my thoughts I noticed the sky above me. It had changed into a fantasy of colours; pink, blue, orange. When had this happened?

It wasn't as thought this was the first time the sky had hanged in colours, it did this frequently. I couldn't tell you why it did or when it did, but I could tell you that it was beautiful.

I stopped looking at the sky for a moment and glanced up to see the townhouse the Terrence lived in right before me.

During my childhood I'd spent many days there playing with Terence and Janet in their house.

They didn't have many toys I was interested in so we usually watched TV or played games like hide-and-Seek or On-On. Back then the house was pretty much a mansion.

Everything was big and intimidating and I wondered how anyone stayed sane while being in such a large house. After going back to the house two years ago to visit Terence and his father I remembered distinctly noticing that the house had shrunken somehow.