One Balloon Away

62

She was at a loss of words every once in a while someone messaged her. They mostly messaged her asking if she had any pictures concerning a specific event, and a few of them per manners asked her how she doing. She wished she could speak her heart out, unburden herself, she wished they were trustworthy people. But yet she found herself typing an 'I'm fine' every single time, and they believed her.

She didn't mean it when she said she was fine, but did they mean it when they asked if she was okay?

It was funny how she scrolled through her list of contacts, only to have nobody to talk to.

Until one day, she got a message,

"Hey, is this Renée? I'm Gabriel, from Paris"

Gabriel, Bella and Renée, they were the ultimate trio in middle school in Paris. They were inseparable until, they started growing distant from her, taunted her, belittled her, bullied her. They played with her, one moment asking her about her new bag and the other laughing at her.

Renée replied to Gabriel in affirmative, although their words did haunt her, she couldn't hold grudges against them. Although her mind refused to forget, she had forgotton them. Almost immediately she received another long message from him.

"I know it's weird that I'm contacting you after all this time, but I...I've been going through a rough time recently, and I realized how badly we treated you back then, it has been a long time, but that doesn't mean it wasn't wrong. This might sound stupid but I'm sorry for everything, I hope you're having a good life"

After seeing his message, Renée contemplated whether she should play it cool and say it was okay and pretend to forget everything, or be honest. She chose the latter, because she was tired of faking she was fine, she wanted people to know it wasn't okay. It was this decision that kindled a dead friendship.

"yes, it's still wrong"