Getting Wilder ✔️

issue fifteenth: cafe and cheat

"His hat was pretty jaunty."

Ray laughed. "You have questionable taste in clothes, McKenzie."

I was quiet as Cam and Ray talked and laughed while we exited the Sherlock Cafe. Under normal circumstances, I might have found the hat-shaped mugs, the black leather seats and the waiters dressed in tailcoats rather funny and intriguing. However, with my heart in my stomach, it was hard to find anything funny at all.

We walked along the street for a while with my input to the conversation at a minimum. My mind was preoccupied with thoughts of Wilder. What did he really want? He seemed to be jealous when I told him I was going out with Marien. And yet, he pushed me away again. Then he would kiss me like I was the air he needed. What did it mean? Why was he tossing my heart around like this? When he knew how fragile it already was.

 Cam gently tugged at my sleeve and I came out of a reverie as I gazed at him, my vision unfocused. 

"Nic, is everything okay?"

Apart from the fact that I felt like someone was crushing my heart, yes, everything was splendid.

"Yeah. Just tired," I answered in a monotone.

He bit his lip nervously and exchanged a glance with Ray. I could tell they didn't believe me, but I couldn't care less. They wouldn't approve of me pining for Wilder anyway. A part of me knew it was unhealthy. But somewhere deep inside, I couldn't stop searching for the guy who had become my best friend. Somewhere I still hoped I would find him. 

We walked silently for a while as they tried to get me to talk to them, but I didn't say anything. Cam hadn't ever believed that Wilder liked me anyway. I had needed assurance and I hadn't got it from him. And I was terrified that maybe he was right. I fixed my gaze on the road as we walked, lost in my thoughts before Ray suddenly spoke up, "Hey, isn't that Mr Evans?"

I looked at where she was pointing and sure enough, saw my dad sitting in what appeared to be a cafe. I could see him behind the designer window glass, sitting across a gorgeous blonde woman who was smiling and talking to him. My stomach fell, my instincts tingling. I stood rooted to the spot and gaped at him, trying to wrack my brains and figure out if I had seen her somewhere and if she was one of his friends. However, I came up empty-handed.

"Er...Nic?" Cam asked, scratching his neck uncomfortably. "Let's go, man."

I stood and stared for a few more seconds, bewildered. I had to be thinking too much. It made no sense that he would be sitting in a cafe, talking and laughing with some stranger on a weekday when he usually had such a hectic schedule. I came to the conclusion that she was one of his company's clients and tore my eyes away from them, fixing them on Cam's instead. Anxiety gnawed my insides as I nodded at him and let them lead me away from there, a growing fear in my heart.

                                                                                                        *

I lay on my bed, gazing aimlessly at the ceiling with Arfie lying on my chest as if trying to suffocate me. Despite the fact that it was a little harder to breathe, I enjoyed the feeling of his erratically beating heart against mine and hugged him close, as if trying to thaw my frozen insides.

I knew I had two weeks to go for the English assignment. Angered by apparent class discipline, our teacher had told us that we would now have to read out our assignment and explain the plot pyramid in our own words. I had initially decided to go with 'Twenty-One Guns' by Green Day and had watched the official video to try and wrest some meaning out of it. However, I wasn't sure how to explain a wall being broken and two people making out for an uncomfortably long amount of time.