The Dictionary of a Hopeless Romantic Wordsmith (2020)

Chapter Nine

I did not talk to Ethan that same night he sent that message because I don't know how to talk to him.

I did, however, find myself reading that message over and over. And it gets more painful the more I do.

It's currently 3A.M. and I'm still kind of lost right now.

I need an excuse.

Something that could help me talk to him. Something we both love doing, or something I thought we could both enjoy.

Right now, my mind is as blank as the pages of my still to-be written novella. And the only thing I can see in my head when I close my eyes is Ethan's face, pointing his right hand to the right side of his head—just like that painting.

The only difference is when Ethan pulls the trigger, every moment we shared with each other from the very beginning flashes back before my eyes, and then…everything just disappears. Gone. Never to be seen again. Wiped from the existence of history.

I picked up my phone and opened my Chat! Messenger app and scrolled through the different profiles I have added there. Basically Ethan, Aris, and Ray. Well that's useless.

I opened my Chirper app. It's basically a microblogging app where you follow people in certain niches to see what their talking about. I mostly follow the Literature, Writing, and Astronomy niche—following locals who, in my eyes, were great at that particular niche. Most of the things I read in Chirper had lead me to do my own research about the said topic. The people there make something mundane to the public eye  like astronomical events or literary masterpieces interesting to the point that you'd want to see things for yourself.

I scrolled endlessly on the app, hoping to find something of interest—to use as an excuse to talk to Ethan and hopefully set things back into its place.

Every time I see Ethan like that in my head—pulling the trigger of our story and completely giving up on it. I feel a painful gaping hole growing inside of my stomach.

And then, I found my excuse.

The head of the Astronomical Society of Ethan's university is holding a free viewing of the supermoon happening tonight—an event when a full moon or a new moon coincides closely with perigee, which is the closest the moon is in its elliptic orbit.

Maybe after the viewing, we could talk, hopefully unfiltered. And things would be okay again.

To be honest though, I do not know if there's really a problem or I'm just making a problem out of nothing.

But there's no denying that something inside of him snapped that night. And there's no denying that I played a part of that.

All I honestly want right now is for everything to be okay with Ethan. Just okay. Maybe I can build our friendship again from that okay.

I opened my existing conversation with Ethan.

I took a deep breath.

I can do this. I can do this.

I don't want to prolong this silent game anymore. And honestly, I feel that Ethan doesn't either.

BeatsByDrei: Hi Ethan. By any change you're still awake?

I hit send and I waited.

After about ten minutes, I received a reply.

TheGreatEthanJames: Is anything a matter, Drei? It's late.