The Wrong Girl

Epilogue

Three years later.....

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Elena walked the familiar street where she had grown up with a tinge of nostalgia creeping up her spine. She had spent 18 years in that place and then she'd grown up. Why had she grown up? Elena walked in that winter morning and felt like running in that park where she had first met Nina, or enter that church where her mother dragged her into every Sunday, or maybe even her high school, just to see what had happened to the long familiar hallways where she'd spent all her days thinking of things that had lost their importance now, her classrooms filled with strange young faces with hope that she used to carry in her face somewhere in the past.

Four years, since she'd last entered that building. Four years since she had been a child. What they said about growing up wasn't overrated at all as she had assumed. It really was a toll on life itself. How could high school worries that seemed almost murderous to us seem so irrelevant to the problems that we face now? How can a simple deadline to an article that is supposed to be published in Barcelona, a city that I don't even belong to, stress me out so much? Why do we have to choose responsibilities over fun? Why does distance become the basic agenda of friendship, even though world is getting smaller and smaller by the day? And why the hell does loving another person is nothing but a bother these days? Elena passed by the local park asking those questions that had ceased to bother her amidst the chaotic life she had been living in completely different place. But as she walked the snow filled street, she realized those questions hadn't lost their importance, she had simply stopped asking them. Maybe she knew she could never answer them.

Along the years, Elena had lived in Barcelona; she had found a niche in photography. As she had traveled the local spots of that unfamiliar place, she had gained vision of the things that eyes had ignored through the lens. She found tragedy in the birds that flew, found love in the withered trees and somehow the camera captured exactly what she had seen. Elena today was an acclaimed photographer who created stories through her pictures. And just last year, she had realized that nobody gave life to the story of her photos as she could. Double occupation had taken over her life, and after she had arrived for a holiday that Nina and Aaron had invited her to, had she realized that she had long since ceased living her life. She was working her life away.

Nina and Aaron, as Elena had predicted and wished for, had grown stronger through the years. Their differences drove them apart (according to the stories she had heard over the weekend) but they always found their way back to each other. When asked the best part of their relationship, both had answered in a flick of a second, making up, as if fighting was inevitable but so was patching up. Elena smiled at their perfect love story. And just like that Elena had found a new story to write for her magazine, a tribute to the imperfect people who found their perfect halves through fighting.

She sighed and laughed sadly, realizing she was thinking of work even then. She wasn't sure if she ought to be sad or glad that she was falling in love with her work. As she smiled, she grabbed her smart phone out of her pockets and started making notes for the article.

Suddenly her phone started vibrating in her hand, it was Nina.

"Where are you?"

"I'm...." Elena never got to reply, Nee beat her to it.

"Guess what... I'm engaged!!! Aaron proposed five minutes ago! You've got to come see this ring. I think I'm about to faint! Ely. He took me to our high school and said the sweetest things. I couldn't reject him. You've got to hear all of this, hurry back my maid of honor!"

"Wow... Nee that's great! I'll be right there... I'm so happy for you!" Ely said with her eyes full of tears of joy.

"Hurry back!" was the last thing Nee said before hanging up.