𝟙 𝕐𝕖𝕒𝕣 𝕌𝕟𝕥𝕚𝕝 ℕ𝕠𝕨

❅ prologoue ❅

1 year.

     8,760 hours.

     525,600 minutes.

     1 year since the two had broken up.

     365 days since they had decided to become their own people and relearn what it was like to be alone and 8,760 hours since they realized that the balance of their relationship had been lopsided. The scale overturned, chipped and stained.

     525,600 minutes too long.

     These are the thoughts that ran rampant through Lance's mind against the distant white noise of the café customers chatting with partners and groups in their own individual booths. The morning sunlight grazed his freckled skin and the coldness of the empty seat that lingered eerily beside him was as apparent as ever. He could feel the ghost of his former boyfriend's laugh echoing against the glass window on the right. A mirage of his black hair draped against the table in sheer exhaustion as he ran—or how he used to run his cold fingertips through the dark, lanky strands.

     "-ir... Sir?" Lance turned his head from the direction of the window towards the voice that called out for him. He remembered how Keith used to say it. Deep and brooding like it was the most important word he knew. Like it could cure all things and do no wrong as long as the letters were to only escape his lips and his only. Lance wished he still felt that way.

     "Sorry... I'm a bit out of it this morning if you couldn't already tell." His voice was at almost a whisper, a dog whistle in the wind.

     The waitress looked at the boy with pity. Looked at the way his spine was bent over as if experiencing an agonizing pain. The way his shoulders cowered and his fingers were loosely folded almost in prayer. Maybe praying for a magical entity to relieve his sorrow and strengthen his spine, which he was clearly lacking; at least in the waitress' eyes.

     "Yeah, kid. It's pretty clear. Now, ya' gonna order something other than a lemonade this morning or should I just put my notepad away and grab the usual?" she asked, clearly agitated.

     Lance, for a moment, recognized the waitress' subtle beauty in the spotlight of the sun. The way her hair, black and full, wrapped around her neck and shoulders; almost constricting her like a snake. Her nails manicured and left uncolored, only sheer and glistening.

     He lifted his head slowly to meet her eyes, and gasped softly, realizing the saddening reason he'd even noticed her looks in the first place. Her eyes gleamed a mixture of dark grey and purple and Lance thought to himself glumly, she looks like Keith. "Yeah, Mila. You already know, a small lemonade."

     "Who drinks ice cold lemonade in the winter anyway?" she asked.

     "Me," Lance answered deadpan and unfeeling, trying not to urge any other questions and not exactly doing the wonders he'd hoped for.

     "You know you come here every morning," she said like it wasn't something obvious and a fact the boy didn't already know himself, "Why? You never come with anyone else and you're always gazing out the window like some prince is gonna ride in and snatch you up out of this hellhole. What's your deal?"

     "Nothing. I just like it her—" And that's when he saw it, "Ok, Mila. Shut up for a second... please."

     The reason he dragged his lifeless body out from between the warmth of his sheets each and every morning an hour too early to drive to a café without a single decent item on the menu besides a small cup of lemonade. The reason he dealt with an insufferable waitress who didn't know how to read when a person clearly wasn't in the mood to exchange words and didn't know when or even how to keep her boundaries.

     A figure stumbled frantically down the sidewalk to the bus stop a few feet past where Lance sat. One hand clinging to his grey beanie and the other cradling his bookbag like a football down towards the end zone; desperately trying to reach the bus before it pulled off and left him in the wake of his own anxiousness.

     Lance starred out at the other boy, Keith, and Mila looked at him with her eyebrows scrunched and lips rolled inwards, processing the view she was getting of a pining Lance McClain. "Oh... I get it now. No need to spill your heart out to me. I get it. But a word of advice? If I ever knew a guy or girl who looked at me the way you look at him even when he runs as ridiculous as that, I'd love them for an eternity so I say go for him—"

     He let out a breath he hadn't even realized he'd been holding in his lungs. Keith really did suck all of the oxygen out of him. "We broke up a year ago. It's been a year today. December 13th. A day that'll haunt me until I die because it's the day that I lost the love of my life."

     "Well you're definitely one for the drama, aren't you? Just putting that out there but, no one's sayin' forget about all that. Just, at least learn somethin' from it. You clearly have feelings for him... strong ones at that. All I'm sayin' is think about how you want your future with him to look. Do you wanna spend an eternity only looking at him through a glass pane? 'Cause that's what your life is gonna look like with you mopin' around in my café."

     Lance looked at her and then back at his hands clasped together. Saw how the sunlight brushed against the empty seat in front of him and realized the saddening silence that seeped from it.

     "Mila, do you have an envelope?"

     "Yeah, sure kid. Just give me a second."

     The boy pulled out a blank sheet of copy paper from his bookbag and flattened its crease along the table as he listened to Mila rummage through unorganized drawers for an envelope. He pulled out a black ballpoint pen and started to write. Started to translate the untranslatable. Aka, the feelings that he'd kept in his own personal version of Pandora's box for so, so long.

     Mila hustled back with a cream envelope in hand, "Got it!"

     He finished scribbling the last few words after looking at his phone to see that the time was creeping up on him and soon, he'd be late for school if he didn't speed the process up. He hurriedly folded the paper to fit the shape of the envelope, licked the edges of the casing and doodled a cursive 𝒯𝑜, 𝒦𝑒𝒾𝓉𝒽 {'To, Keith' in cursive} on the front.

     "Thanks, Mila. I owe you one," Lance said as he grabbed all of his belongings and dashed out the front door of the café with a bell's ring in his wake.

     "No problem, kid! Maybe one day you'll come in here and actually buy something other than lemonade!"

     "I did that once! Never again," he said.

      Lance ran all the way to his white sedan out in the parking lot out back and took a stop at Keith's house on his way to their school. He clasped the envelope in his hands and let his fingertips run freely against the material. His time limit didn't give him much of a chance to be nervous or hesitant because it was now or never, in a sense.

     He laid the envelope against the mat at the entrance of the Kogane household, rang the doorbell and scurried off like a frightened creature of the night. Shiro opened the door slowly, clearly unexpectant of visitors at a time like 7 am. But he looked down at his feet and held the envelope in his palms, read the title and looked in Lance's direction.

     He gave the man a soft smile and got one in return. Shiro nodded and Lance knew his letter would be delivered.

     It's been a year since they broke up.

     365 days.

     8,760 hours.

     525,600 minutes.

     A year since they'd parted... and a year until now.

                 ~ ⓈⓉⓇⒶⓌⒷⒺⓇⓇⓎ ~
{1,354 words}
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