🗸 the quintessences of cherry & cigarette

4.1: serendipity

"D--Devin..."

Cerise's quivering tone makes Devin's gut churn and heart constrict like all the blood has been vacuumed from within. Add to her discernibly unpleasant exclamation, her obsidian eyes wide, and willowy frame stiff, and all those emotions - fear, confusion, uncertainty - swimming across her visage, and his vestigial distress proliferates into full blown, crippling dismay. He can only keep imagining the worst - Cerise leaving, Cerise avoiding him like a new kind of plague, Cerise not wanting to even remotely associate herself with him...

Devin cannot let that happen.

Taking a small step closer to her, he gently says, "Cherry... hi."

He decides that's the stupidest of all the things he could've said.

Slowly, as if her motor controls are being resuscitated after complete homeostasis, she swallows, and says, "I... I need to go."

Eyes lowered, she brushes past him. Devin sends out a hand as if to stop her, but thinks the better of it and pulls back, calling out to her instead. "Cherry!" her nickname, a word so sweet, yet can never match the sweetness of her personality, has ripped from his throat with so much urgency that his voice sounds alien and detached even to his own ears. "You said you didn't judge people..."

Cerise stops, much to his relief, but doesn't face him.

At this point, Devin feels like he's reaching to hold on to something that didn't even exist in the first place. If practically seen, he knows there isn't much between him and Cerise, but then, his instinct insists otherwise. There is definitely something between them and he needs to save it. Cerise's silence is filled in by the winds and the waves, engaged in their susurrating, and singing, and rising, and crashing. Desperation increasing, Devin speaks again, "you said you didn't care who I was, or what I looked like, or--or..." He's at a loss for words, at a loss for hopes of keeping this - whatever this is - from dying out. "Cerise... just..."

His frustration builds to a point where he now wants to punch something. Something so hard that it breaks his fingers and the physical pain overtakes this stupid, emotional agony. Unfortunately, nothing of the sort is within punching distance, and so Devin balls his fists and shoves them deep into the pockets of his hoodie, counting backwards from fifty in his mind to calm himself.

He's at thirty-seven when Cerise finally turns around, scrutinizing him as if she's looking for answers to questions she doesn't even understand. Then, she says, "you're Cigarette..." like she's confirming that once and for all.

"Yeah..." answers Devin. For some reason, he wants to look away from her. He takes to staring at the stipple of trees a short distance to the right of where they stand.

"I wish I could say I didn't judge you, but you already know that's not true..." Cerise's voice is soft, filled with something that sounds like regret. "I was just..." she trails off.

"Scared?" Devin fills in questioningly. Then, with surety, he says, "you were scared of me."

He hears her sigh. "God, I'm such a hypocrite... I said I didn't care, but then your reputation is... it's so..."

"Bad," Devin states, unable to hold back the mirthlessly cold laugh that bursts forth. "So, you do judge people after all, Cherry."

Cerise starts, "I'm sorry. I didn't--"

Devin cuts her off, "it's alright. You're only human. All humans judge..." Regretting how rude he comes off as, he adds, "our ability of higher thinking kind of mandates judgement."

The quietude that shifts in between them is bothersome, unwanted, and full of things that go unsaid. These are things that Devin doesn't know how to express without possibly messing them up so badly that his jerk of a personality shines through. Briefly sparing her a glance, whence he sees her thoughtfully chewing on her bottom lip, he tilts his head back a little to look at the sky. Clouds - gray and massed, to match his mood - scud by slowly, making somber promises of a rain later in the day.