serendipity x shawn mendes

eighteen

• shawn •

"So, you never really told me about how Bella wanted to get back together." Andrea brings up the subject that has been on my mind for so long up until now. I seemed to have forgotten about my problems with Bella while hanging out with Andrea, but I guess that's ruined now that she's brought it up.

"I don't want to talk about that," I say quickly, stirring my straw around in my lemonade.

"Oh." she frowns, looking at my hand movements as I continue swirling the straw around.

"I'm just... depressed. After what happened."

She raises her eyebrow, almost looking amused. "Depressed?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure you know the actual definition of being depressed?" she asks me. What is her problem? "Do you know what depression really is?"

"Yeah, depression is basically when you're sad." I shrug.

She gaped at me, shocked. I don't even understand what's going on or why she's getting so defensive. "There's a lot more to it than just being sad, Shawn." she says quietly, sounding disappointed.

"Well my girlfriend cheated on me-" I start but she cuts me off.

"I'm sorry, but you're trying to say you're depressed because your girlfriend cheated on you. Are you kidding me?"

"You wouldn't understand." I say, trying to stay calm even though she just made me feel even worse about myself.

"And why not?"

"Because you've never loved someone, Andrea."

"Love doesn't sound too appealing the way you talk about it." she crosses her arms and leans back into the booth, staring at me and waiting for me to reply.

"Love is an amazing thing."

"Yeah, maybe while it lasts. But when it's over, it's going to turn into something else. Something horrible that will tear you apart until you're completely empty." she talks about love so cruelly, like love is a sin. But I guess, in her world, it is a sin. She doesn't want to go anywhere near love. It's forbidden territory in her mind. "I don't ever want to love someone so much that they can do that to me."

"It's not that you don't want to..." I try to explain, but I don't know how to word what I'm thinking. "You want to love someone, you're just afraid."

"You think you know what I want?"

"Maybe not, but I do know that nobody can stop themselves from the way that they feel. It's your feelings, and if you can control them that's pretty fantastic. But I haven't met anyone who can, and I believe that nobody will ever be able to stop the way they feel."

"You have a point. But someone can get over the way they feel."

"Why would they do that?" I ask her. "When they could just be happy instead?"

"You don't know what obstacles could be in the way of someone being happy!" She finally raises her voice, which is what I've been waiting for. A few people around us stare for a few seconds until they see us just sitting there, and then they look away like nothing happened.

"Why did you have to make a huge deal out of this whole thing?" I ask her in a hushed voice. We have made too much noise already.

She looks at her hands sitting on her lap and shrugs. I reach under the table and set my hand on top of hers. It's kind of a far reach and it was a bit awkward for my hand to be stretched under the table, but I just wanted to comfort her.

"Andrea, are you... depressed?" I ask her quietly and her eyes dart to mine. It made perfect sense; why else would she have been so defensive about it?

Before she can answer my question, our waiter Ashton came back to our table. I pull my hand away from hers and drop the subject like she probably wanted me to.

But this was not going to be the last time we talked about it. I would find out what's wrong with her, and I would make it better.

xxx

all i want for christmas is shawn mendes