Romance In Fall

Chapter Four

Melancholy and nostalgia are something that's no stranger to me. If possible, those two are my only companion every night when the moon reached its peak in the night sky. Most times, those two are the only things I feel. Everything around me seems to be a painful memory of 'what was' and a constant reminder of 'what could've been'.

Despite what my friends and family believes, I'm not depressed. No. I'm just nostalgic. I just wish everything is back to normal. I just want to live again. But I know that I'm the sole purpose why I'm just about to exist right now. Lying and pretending that things are okay is one thing, but believing that it's true, is another. It's a thin line that I refuse to cross.

That is why I don't understand why I'm here sitting on a park bench a few blocks from school, nursing a cup of melted chocolate marble ice cream after school. If I still have my sense of time intact, I would say I've been here for a little over an hour. I stopped eating my ice cream halfway through the cup. I used to do this with my parents every weekend and with my friends everyday after school.

We would just sit here and do nothing. We'll talk about nothing and everything. Make stupid theories and do stupid things. It's fun to just sit around and appreciate each other's company. Not a care in the world. We still tried doing it after we found out, but it's just not the same.

Speaking of the girls, I only managed to escape them by a hair. They were all waiting for me by my locker, so I made a last minute decision to just bring my stuff home with me, explaining the added weight on my bag.

The girls started texting and calling me a few minutes after I left the school premises. Not wanting to be disturbed, I shut my phone off and shoved it at the very back of my bag. They know that something is up since lunch, but I don't think they know how bad until I started avoiding them, which is hard since we all have Arts together and Jasmine is in my Calculus-- the last class of the day.

They didn't waste those opportunity to ask me what's wrong, but I just shrugged them off or pretended that I didn't hear them. At Calculus, I knew that Jasmine was set on talking to me so I sat on the chair farthest from her. I can see her confused glances at me, but I ignored it.

Five minutes before the bell I asked our professor if I could go to the restroom and I stayed there until the class ended. I couldn't risk getting detention after school. I'd rather do something else than sit for an hour surrounded by four dull walls-- not that I do anything but that, though I'd like to sit and do nothing under my own terms, not by the rules of an overly uptight adult that thinks they're so much better than me just because they have a college diploma under their belt.

Maybe the girls are right. I should really stop being so bitter about life. I sighed tossing my melted cup of ice cream in the trash bin a few feet from me, after sending a silent prayer that it gets in. Somebody must have been listening to me for once because it actually got in. I smiled a little. It seems to be the only good thing that happened today.

The creaking sound of the wooden bench due to added weight brought me out of my little world. The sound made me snap my head to the right. I didn't expect to see him seated beside me. I didn't expect anyone to be seated beside me, for that matter.

Hard, brown-- almost black-- eyes stared back at my own blue ones. Eyes that promises pain to everyone who does him wrong, but  did nothing to scare me off. Eyes that are sharp enough to notice the slightest of movements. The intimidating scar that ran from his left temple down to his upper lip is evidence enough that he went through enough pain to be able to greet it like an old friend.