Cherry Wine

prologue

I still remember that day.

 It was raining and bleak and dreary. I pressed my cold, cold hands to my cheeks and shivered. The smiles and the friendly banter around me should've brightened the room, but all I could see was the blank faces behind the pretty porcelain masks. I closed my eyes and hoped to see something more than that black and white reverie.

To me, loneliness is no animal. It's no untamed beast that will devour you as a whole. To me, it was the silhouette of my nights, a glimpse of my salt-stained lips as I held myself in a darkened room and wept. It was the soundless whimper escaping my throat as darkness wrapped its hands around mine. Loneliness was no monster, but it makes you the lover of one.

I still remember you.

How could I not? 

Fiddling with the frayed ends of my sweater, I wiped the sweat off my brow. In that dark rainy day, before you came to me and turned my universe upside down, I should've run away with all I could. I should've held my dear heart in my hands, I should've stood before a mirror one last time to see if my eyes really did sparkle when I was thinking. But honey, after all that happened, after all that we did to each other, my heart still sings that if I knew that you existed even a second before that fateful rainy day, I would hold you in my arms and memorize the calluses in your hands and give you my heart because it has always been yours to break.

It seemed like any other day. It seemed normal and lonely and boring and like everything I've known like the back of my hands. There was no chill down my spine, no uncomfortable feeling of someone staring, observing me. There was nothing except my pen and the familiarity of my yellowed diary pages and ink-stained fingers.

"Hey, is this spot taken?" 

Such simple words. Nothing intense or filled with passion. Nothing dangerous or reckless. But I remember, clear as day, that that was the last day the girl I knew lived. The girl I knew who liked books and words and her family more than anything. The girl who never wanted to play with fire and never really felt the need to drown in colours. The girl who actually felt happy when she smiled, the girl who daydreamed about fairy tales and happy lives and not about boys who leave nothing but ashes behind. That girl, whoever she was, is now a dream which was fading away.

I had looked up with a smile ready on my face and faltered for a second when I saw you.  Messy hair, rain-drenched shirt and a lopsided grin. Fate is a cruel, cruel thing. It never gives any warnings, any signals. It drives you right into a storm and you won't even know it.

I scooted over and patted the bench,"Well, you're in luck."

His grin widened and all I could see was the red seeping through my black and white reverie.