Colourise

Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Jenna was at the school cafe, hovering her hands over the Nikon camera John had given back to her. 

Julian, she closed her eyes, just think of him, and all your problems with John will go away.

'Jenna?' She opened her eyes to see Melvin take a seat across from her. He spotted the camera in her hand.

'The lens,' his eyes widened. 'They're broken.'

Jenna turned the camera lens towards her. 

'Yeah, it did,' she replied,'a friend of mine was trying to save me, but ended up dropping my camera.'

Melvin laughed. 'Interesting friend you have there.'

A waitress approached them. 'Would you two like some brewed coffee?'

'Yes please, two cups,' Melvin held up two fingers.

'Mel, you don't need--'

'It's okay, my treat,' he winked. The waitress left their side.

'I was thinking,' Melvin continued,'maybe we could do, you know, the thing we promised each other a week ago.'

Ah. Jenna remembered that she would tell him what was inside a love guru's head, and possibly her heart.

'Go on, ask away.' Jenna laced her fingers together. After being stabbed with lies so many times, it was so easy for her to tell the truth. She'd always been an honest and fair person.

The waitress soon returned with two steaming hot cups of coffee.

'Oh, that smells good,' Melvin took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Jenna decided to take a sip of her coffee. The liquid was hot, but it wasn't scalding.

'I actually have so many questions to ask you,' his eyes brightened. 'You've always been helping people, sharing their stories, but I've never heard about your story.'

He leaned forward. 'I want to know who made this strong, awesome love guru like Jenna Rodriguez come about.'

Jenna laughed. 'You can't be so sure.'

'I'm very sure,' Melvin looked very excited about this discussion as he stirred his coffee.

'Alright,' Jenna began,'two years ago, I had someone. We weren't exclusively dating, but I guess we could have been official. The bridge we were treading on was extremely fragile. It was those kind of relationships where you still go along with it even if you know that bridge might crumble anytime.'

He drank his coffee and gently set it down. 'But you hate being on the blur about everything. How did you handle that kind of guy?'

She shrugged. 'I guess I just cared for him too much to bother.'

'So what happened?'

'I thought the feelings will just die and we can part peacefully, but our relationship ended...terribly.' Jenna's voice went hard and her jaw went firm. Melvin must have guessed that she didn't want to talk about how it happened, because he was silently watching her drink her coffee.

'It's okay if you don't want to talk about it,' he replied,'you deserved better than that.'

She looked up, wondering how he could understand her sorrow. Melvin practically took the words right out of her mouth.

'Thank you,' she replied gratefully.

'Okay, so that was two years ago, what's up with you now?'