First Term Love Story

Chapter 33: Ducks

We walk together along the path of the park, me kicking the fallen leaves as we walk side by side. A lake soon appears and I suggest that we feed the fishes and ducks. Eugene agrees eagerly and we purchase some fish food and bread to feed the ducks. We settle on a bench and throw food to the ducks and fishes in the pond.

"I used to come here all the time when I was little with my father,"

"You could come here with him now,"

"He's not well..." he says solemnly.

Right.

"I'm sure he'll get better, then, you can bring him out here and feed the ducks and fishes together."

"I suppose so." He says as he leans forward to throw more food out.

"What did you guys used to do?"

"He bought little bubble packets for me and I would blow bubbles all over their lawn," he says with a sad smile.

"That sounds like fun,"

"It was, I had a lot of fun then... What about you?"

"My parents, Cameron and I used to do baking together, that's where I really found baking as a hobby. I did it a lot when the younger ones, Alicia and Ally were born but not so much with my parents let alone Cameron."

"Cool, let's have a little walk around the pond," he suggests, already standing up with the bag of bread and fish food, giving me a hand to hold. I take it and we continue walking around the lake, talking of our childhood and our little old stories.

It's not long before we run out of the food but we continue making rounds around the lake leisurely. We are almost done with our third round when Eugene's phone rings, he fumbles with his phone to answer it.

"Hey," he greets and he slows down his pace.

"How'd you know?" he says, looking at me with a smirk.

"Okay, okay. We'll go get the food,"

"No problem."

"We are going to get dinner for the boys," he says as he takes my hand again and we walk back towards the car.

"What are we getting?"

"I don't know, it's really our choice tonight, they just request for chicken, we can buy whichever kind." He tells me as we enter the car.

"Mexican?" He recommends.

"Yeah, sounds good," I say as he reverses out of the lot to the road.

I look around the car and my eyes land on the stereo, "Why don't you ever listen to music in the car?" I ask.

He hesitates a little before softly saying, "It's a habit," but it doesn't seem as simple as that.

I continue looking between him and the stereo, hoping for him to open up to me about it but as we arrive to the restaurant, he hasn't said anything else about it. I try to think of something else as we alight the car and enter the restaurant. Eugene pushes open the door surely, holding it out for me to pass through. We are quickly led to a seat and we look through the menu. Eugene orders the chicken and sides to go along with it and drinks for us to sip on while we wait.

"I'm sorry about just now, I'm just ... I don't really feel like talking about i-"

"It's okay," I say with what I hope looks like a reassuring smile.

"Tell me more about your family," he says, smiling back at me.

"Well, you know Cameron so I don't think I'll bore you with his nonsense you already know of... I have two younger sisters who are very much younger than us, five years or so younger. My parents had Alicia and Ally around the same time. When they were first born, Cameron never wanted to spend time with them, he'd rather be on the computer so in turn, I spent more time with them then. I used to dress them up in clothes and tell them magical stories. I also taped down some of the stuff they did because my dad had recently bought a new camera and I was playing with it all the time when he first got it, especially when he wasn't at home,"