Under the Umbrella ✓

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Aria was ready to drop. She hated the days she had school and had to work at the clothing store, but in spite of that, she took up an extra part-time at a convenience store on the days she had no school and she had no time for any idling.

She was walking back home after the evening shift at the clothing store and while she would have visited Coffee Break like she regularly did to refresh herself, she couldn’t do it anymore.

She had hit a new kind of low, a kind where she didn’t even have the energy to smile. She hadn’t realized that there had been something holding her up all those days but now that it had bailed out on her without a warning, she missed it when she didn’t even know of its existence before.

Everything had been going wrong ever since her father visited their house. She wasn’t blaming him for appearing quite literally out of nowhere but she believed the timing was wrong. The timing for her family had always been wrong and she felt like they were under a curse whenever situations like this arose. She wondered if God really watched over them because every day seemed to bring a new predicament in as if it were a reminder to something. If only she knew what it was, because she was tired of mysteries.

Aria couldn’t get to the airport on time to see her father one last time before he left. The untimely traffic that day was despicable and downright evil. That might have been the first time in her life when she genuinely resented her father for leaving the way he did without even handing down a way to contact him. However, Hailey’s successfully engraved words in Aria’s head was blaring enough to make her see that this was her fault so she didn’t have it in her to complain.

The day she returned from Elliot’s apartment, Hailey went all out on her again, repeating the exact same things she had poured out to her on the phone and more. Hailey had found out that their father had been sending them some money, enlightening whoever listening in to whatever that was going down in their house that Aria hadn’t even been the only one to support the family and that she had been acting like a responsible saint all along by hiding the fact.

The only reason she had secreted it from Hailey was because she was afraid she would refuse to live on that money when Aria was failing to make enough. She knew she bore responsibilities but she never really thought she was responsible.

Either way, she didn’t bother to defend herself like she typically did and for once and for all, she took all the blows in silence. Hailey hadn’t spoken to her since that day no matter how many times Aria had tried to start up a conversation. It had been two weeks already.

It had also been two weeks since she dropped by Coffee Break in fear of bumping into Elliot inside or around the area. She couldn’t understand why she was so tenacious on avoiding him in the beginning. She even thought that it was probably because she was embarrassed about crying a river huge enough to launch a mini aquarium. Amongst all other thoughts that kept her awake in the night, Elliot was one of them, and it was in between one of the muses about a few days later she realized why.

She couldn’t tell since when she had started to like his attention on her but she realized she wouldn’t have stayed as long as she did at his apartment deep in conversation, getting to know him and mindlessly talking about herself too, if she didn’t like it. 

Because he was the first person in a very long time to show an unfeigned interest in her, she realized the sly part of her mind desperately wanted to form a closer relationship with him. She wanted to change his title from a stranger to a strange friend. She wanted to tell him her stories and make him laugh. There was so much. So much she wanted to ask and so much more she wanted to know about him.

But she was scared. It seemed to be the only thing she was familiar with in the past few days. She was scared of uncertainties turning into potentials. She was scared of possibilities in itself. She was afraid she’d fall for Elliot because she was too simpleminded and inexperienced with the ways of her heart in that aspect. The world survived on trust but she didn’t know what to make of living when she couldn’t trust herself. It was preposterous the way her thoughts coiled but if doubting herself was a way to eradicate even a sliver of joy that might seep in through the crevices of her heart, then so it be. How was she to think of the light when her sisters continued to drown in the dark? 

Never in her life would she have thought happiness could be frightening. She was terrified of losing it before she could even gain it and she was terrified that it would ultimately hurt her. It was funny how at the end of it all she was still trying to protect herself even though she thought she deserved to suffer.

She might have not stopped at the right time but it wasn’t too late. They would eventually carry on with their lives considering each other a passing cloud, just as she willingly became to nearly everyone she had met, because she couldn’t be something as certain as the sky above them.