Cindy And Clark

break time

I don't believe I mentioned that I have always had very strict parents. No dating. If you go to a friends house we must know the parents and literally everything about them damn it.

Well in result of that I had a lot of relationships that I kept hidden.

Word of the wise, if you are to strict with your child, it doesn't matter how good they are, eventually they will lash out.

Clark was yet another hidden relationship. And he wasn't the first one to want to meet my parents.

Now my phone had been broken for a few months due to a drunken episode from my father where he came in and entirely smashed what I believed to be a reasonably indestructible slide phone. Because of this I had no way of talking to Clark outside of school (nor anyone else for that mater). Both of us were extremely eager when we found out I was getting a new phone.

Now back to the strict parents thing. My father, completely convinced that he did not trust me at all (which to an extent was reasonable) downloaded and app onto my phone to monitor everything I did. And after that lovely lecture I realised what this meant for Clark and I. Sure maybe he could text me and all but he wouldn't be allowed to say certain things. He would have to keep it casual. He wouldn't be allowed to talk to me like my boyfriend.

So after a lot of heavy thinking I came to a decision.

I stole him from his friends during lunch telling him how we needed to talk. I explained how I got my phone, finally (he lit up and it shattered me) and about how my father would be watching my every move (he visibly deflated).

And then I broke the news.

"Clark I like you a lot. I love you. And I want to give you the opportunity to actually be apart if my life outside of school. I want to give you the chance to meet my parents. But now is not a good time. I need to fix things. But I can't fix things while we are together. I can't fix things and the be like 'oh hey here is this guy I have been dating for, like, several months. Here, he wants to meet you."

"So what are you saying," I know he already knew but he wanted to hear it straight on.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes before speaking "I'm saying that we need to break up. So I can go and fix things. And if you want to try again for real this time then you can come back and we will start over with you meeting my parents."

"How long is fixing things gonna take?"

"I.... I don't know...."

He let out a long sigh, "damn it cindy."

I apologized quietly and looked down.

"Hey," he said lifting my face to look at him, "it's fine," he said but I knew it wasn't. He sighed and closed his eyes, "god, this sucks."

I looked down again. The guilt was dragging me further and further down, looking at him wasn't going to help that.

I was leaving a week early for spring break and decided that ending it then would be reasonable. We would break up. Have at least two weeks away from each other and that would be easier to handle. So we had roughly 2 and a half weeks left together.

The last day we had together I told him that he was hanging out with me and no exceptions. There had been a lot of thing we both had been taking care of before break so we didn't get to spend as much time together as I had originally thought.

So we are hanging out during lunch, one on one. There was a lot of awkward small talk. 10 minutes before lunch was over he broke a small pocket of silence.

"I don't think we should get back together after this."

I physically stopped. I had a hard time processing what he had just said. He saw this and jumped into explanation mode.

"It has nothing to to do with you, you're amazing, I love you,"

I heard the quick panic in his voice and he continued talking but I didn't hear anything he said. Nothing registered and I was numb to reaction.

All I remember after that is suddenly being in 5th period rather than lunch. Halfway through fifth period is when it registered. And in the middle of silently reading and answering questions, tears began to fall from my face.

Luckily I had two of my closest friends in that class, one being right in front if me, Mulan (we just call her Lani), and the other just to Lani's right, Merida (Meri).
As class went on the silence progressively grew in to quiet mumbling which masked my muffled sobbing. After I was able to regain enough composure I explained what happened. Of course, the queens that they are, the instantly jumped in with the perfect dosage of understanding, advice, encouragement, and the 'you're free now, you don't need him' attitude.

By the end of class I easily took a deep breath and decided that I was going to have a blast in California, which included flirting up a storm and shit posting pictures of me in bikinis on social media.

Clark, insisted on walking with me to the busses and I admit that I felt uncomfortable. I wasn't ready just yet to say no.

We reached the point where we were to part ways and I slipped into his pocket the necklace he gave me, along with a letter I wrote the night before. A 'goodbye but not for forever' sort of letter. I almost didn't give it to him at all. The words I had written all seemed pointless now. But I poured my soul onto that paper and I wanted him to have an idea of how much he hurt me.

After shoving the items awkwardly in his hoodie pocket I kept my head down and tried to speed away but he held on to my arm. "Hey," he said and I unwillingly looked up at him. "One last kiss? Please?"

I didn't want to. I wanted to run away. Part of me even felt the need to scream 'how dare you ask for such a thing! No!' 

But as I said before, I wasn't quite ready yet to say no. So numbly I let my lips touch his, eyelids drooping half open and only for a second did we touch.

Then I turned away without another glance and dragged my feet up the stairs of the bus.

What the hell just happened...?