Two Pieces of a Puzzle ✔

Chapter Six

ELIOTT

"An answer!" I gasped, looking around for Toby. 

He wasn't anywhere in sight. He was probably out with the boys. 

I let that slide and opened the notification right away. 

'Hey there! I have the tattoo on my wrist too.' a message read.

I swallowed nervously. 

Could this be?

Was this him?

Was this Eric? My Eric?

The Eric I'd lost a decade a go? Was he finally coming back to me?

'Hi, I'm Eliott.' I wrote back, not bothering to say anything else because of the state of shock I was in. 

'You spell that without two l's? That's weird.' 

I couldn't help but chuckle at the message. Whilst beating myself up trying to come up with an appropriate response that wouldn't scare him away but would keep him engaged in the conversation at the same time, my phone vibrated once more. 

'I'm Elias.'

Elias? Had he changed his name? Was this not my Eric?

My heart began to ache once more at the thought of that. Had I really gotten the wrong person? Had all that excitement gone to waste?

No, it couldn't be. 

My mind began to ache as well with all the cacophony of negative thoughts racing through my mind at that very moment, hitting the very last nerve and plummeting straight down into my heart with such immense force, they could've ripped every last organ to shreds.

I pushed the negative thoughts away. 

'Elias? Could you send me a picture of the tattoo?'

He read the message and I waited a minute or two before finally receiving the picture. 

My eyes widened. 

I glanced down at my wrist, then back at my phone's screen in shock.

They were the same. They were one and the same. It was him. It had to be. 

He had changed his name. 

'Well then, Elias. Have you ever been in love?' I wrote back. 

'Woah there.', came the response. 

For a solid second - or even a minute, I worried that I had come off as too strong. But he wrote back soon enough. 

'I have and I think it's great. I love the rush of being in love. It keeps you with something to look forward to, you know? It's the feeling of being in love that's so exciting but so tiring at the same time. What about you? Ever been in love?'

My heart picked up it's pace. 

This is exactly what Eric would have said. 

This was Eric Zhang, I knew it in the deepest pits of my heart that I had finally gotten a hold of the man I had been yearning for for a decade. 

This was my Eric Zhang. The boy whose raspy voice I would never forget - the voice I could sometimes still hear before I shut my eyes at night. The boy whose God-like smile I would never forget - the smile that broke my heart into a million pieces every single time I thought about it. 

The boy who I had fallen in love with.

The boy who I was still so in love with.

'That's a nice way to think about it. Been in love only once, didn't end too well. Made me think that love is bad and all that.', I admitted. 

He left me on seen for a while before eventually typing back;

'Love isn't bad. You just fall in love with bad people.'

I could've dropped my phone a second time.

"Eli, you love me, don't you?" Eric questioned in a soft tone, his head tilted to the side in growing curiosity. 

"I don't really like the word 'love'," I admitted, scratching the back of my neck, hoping he wouldn't judge me for what I had said. 

"You think it's bad?" 

"Very much so."

"Eli?"  

"Yeah, Eric?"

"Love isn't bad, you just fall in love with bad people."