My online valentine

4 - Friend

There was something so ordinary about becoming friends with Elle.
She was just another perfectly fitting piece in my mess of a life.
I think we're all some sort of a puzzle, our nature , our life... we keep building it, we keep adding new pieces and every person we meet becomes a part of it.
I liked that Elle was a part of mine.
She just fit in.

I had seen people who didn't fit in together.
Two pieces so different and so opposite that they ruined the whole puzzle.
I didn't interact much when I was around people but I observed them.
I saw my parents sit at the dining table in awkward silence, I noticed my mom's little flinch when my dad put the plate down too harshly. I saw the way my dad could talk for hours with his office mates and I noticed the long silences when he was lying on the sofa with my mom by his side.
I saw the two people in my class who always sat together but one of them would keep trying to bring up a topic , anything to get a conversation going while the other gave the most disinterested replies.
I saw one person put in all the effort while the other couldn't care less about it.
And I saw couples who said they loved each other , and fought to stay together just to fight again.

It scared me.
It scared me to be around someone like that.
I didn't like the idea of marriage.
I didn't even like the thought of friendship.
Hell, I wasn't even really interested in just talking to a person until Elle.
I didn't need to pretend around her.

It wasn't like what we had was special, something nobody had ever had.
To be honest I wasn't even sure what exactly we had.
Were we BFFs now?
Were we friends?
I don't know but whatever it was I liked having that in my life.

The conversations just flowed.
We talked about the stupidest things on this godforsaken planet to the deepest darkest things we could think of.
We'd saved each other's name as priority contact within the first weeks. I'd finally told her my real name.
She was surprisingly cool about it.
She saved my number as Winchester .
Elle thought it was a cool name.
"Winchester , like the rifle.", she said.

Her contact name was inspired from her last name. Castielle Novak.
NovaCorp.
She appreciated the nickname .
It was the name of a military force in Marvel comics. I got extra points for creativity.

NovaCorp : You did your research for the name. Proud of you.

Winchester : Yeah you should be. If only your last name was cooler though. Something like Xena or whatever. I could call you XXX force.

NovaCorp : I'd have killed you for that.

Winchester : It'd have been an honor to die by your hands, my lady.

NovaCorp : Oh god, bugger off. Don't call me my lady.

Winchester : As my lady commands.

NovaCorp : You're unbelievable.

Winchester: Unbelievably respectful you mean?

NovaCorp : Sure you are.

Winchester : Okay but for real if you were about to die and you could have only one last thing to eat, what would it be?

NovaCorp : POPTARTS!!! Definitely pumpkin flavored poptarts. Without a doubt.

Winchester: Why poptarts?

NovaCorp : They make my heart happy. I have an addiction to poptarts. They're like cocaine to me but better. And less illegal. Since I was like ten I knew I'd have my last meal be poptarts.

Winchester : Yeah.....very normal thing for a ten year old. Every ten year old just thinks about death and dying and last meals.

NovaCorp : I did.

Winchester: Well...Do you think about dying often?

NovaCorp : Sometimes , yes.

Winchester : Does the thought scare you?

NovaCorp : It does. It's terrifying, to just exist at one moment and be gone the next. One second it's a person , a human being with a bright smile and sparkling eyes and they love things and they talk and move and the next moment they're just.... gone. Nothing but a sack of bones and flesh. Are you scared of dying?

Winchester : Not really. Sounds pretty tempting tbh.

NovaCorp : That's ... sad.

Winchester : Hey I might wanna die but atleast I'm not one of those morons who hang shitty sings like "Live, Laugh, Love" in their bedroom. I hate nothing more than those signs hanging in some cliché looking fancy bedroom.

NovaCorp : You're weird.

Winchester : You're weird.

Elle didn't judge me, she didn't get offended by my dark jokes and she replied pretty quickly.

I could count on her to give her honest opinions on things.
She didn't care what most people liked.
She did her own thing.
She thought Superman was overrated and she said it.
She liked pineapple on pizza, and as horrible and disgusting as it sounds, it was her thing , and she couldn't care less what people thought.

We were very different in a lot of ways but we still fit together.

Once I was sitting in class , staring at the boy infront of me who wouldn't stop tapping his desk.
It was a pretty common thing. I went to public school. It pissed my dad off , he wanted me in a private school but punching walls and swearing was apparently unacceptable there.

The tapping noise was annoying the hell out of me and I was mentally just imagining smashing the boy's head when my phone buzzed.

NovaCorp : OML! I am sitting in a bus and there's this little girl infront of me and she's probably with her grandpa or something and he's extremely old but she just gave him a cupcake from her lunchbox and he's smiling so wide gosh they're so cute I wanna hug them!!!

I was more confused than anything. I couldn't understand how a person could just look at another person smiling and just think 'yes this smile I like it I will smile too'.
I didn't understand how anyone could find happiness in someone else's happiness.
Seeing other people happy usually made me realize how fucking much my life sucked and I got annoyed by them.

Winchester: You find very weird things cute.

NovaCorp : No but it is ADORABLE. He has the kindest purest smile ever. My heart is all gushy now.

Winchester : You're like a child. I'm sure it's adorable.

I slid the phone back in my pocket and started staring at the guy infront of me again.
Somehow he annoyed me less.
I mean I still wanted to punch him but I thought Elle would probably find his weird happy tapping cute and I hated the guy less.

She was so different than me.
Yet somehow similar in a way.
I didn't know how else to describe it than two sides of the same coin.
And that sounds like the corniest , cheesiest shittiest line in history but I wasn't smart enough to come up with a better comparison.
Elle probably could have though.

I still didn't know what she looked like or where exactly she lived, all I knew was if there was anything called friendship in my world, this would be it.
She was the only and the closest thing I had to a friend.