My first published story. Wow, what a rush.
The rain pattering on the paved walkway outside made it difficult to concentrate. I h ate how it made me think of her. How often we take advantage of the most simplistic things. It's water falling from the sky, one droplet after another. No one is hiding out in a cloud pouring buckets of precipitation on us. It's nature at its best. You can't control it.
Maybe that's what I liked most about her. You couldn't control her. She was free. She was living life on her own terms. Her mind is liberated from worry, her soul so sweet. How can someone without a mean bone in her entire body cause me so much emotional turmoil? How can someone so blissfully unaware of my stressful mind invade my every thought? The rain, for goodness sake. How can I take the natural process of rain and compare it to her?
The Skybucks cup of pure black coffee bubbled in my hands. The loud beating of water on the roof continued relentlessly. I swing my legs onto the chair in front of me, leaning back against my blue seat. I shut my eyes tightly, colors exploding behind them. Swirls of black and blue. And red.
Such a powerful color red was. It was the color of her lips, the color of her hair… The color of her cheeks when she blushed. I did everything I could to make her blush. Her lips curling up into a smile, her dimples catching people's attention across the globe – particularly mine.
How painful it is to go to school on mornings like these, where I see her so often. Where I have to resist pushing her hair behind her ear when it falls in her face, or wrapping my arms around her waist when she almost walks right off a stage. I imagine how it would be to hold her, to kiss her as if she was mine. For a minute, I can actually feel this. For just a short minute, I can forget that my unrequited feelings are apparent. I can forget that she isn't mine. I can forget that I've dragged myself into this building of education so early just to see her first thing in the morning.
"Hi, Beck!"
Her voice rang through my ears. The sugary smell of cotton candy filled the room as she neared. She was always the first to greet me. Seven forty-five, every day. These were the meetings I had grown accustomed to. I'd be here first. She'd come next. There'd be ten minutes before the warning bell rang and the room started to fill. And in those ten minutes over the past two years, I'd grown close to Cat Valentine. Perhaps a little too close. Too close to a point of no return.
I opened my eyes slowly. She sat next to me and swung her legs over mine, as she always does. I smiled in spite of myself. I turned my eyes slowly to meet hers, the simplest form of torture I subjected myself to. My smile turned into a look of concern as I watched her ring the water out of her hair, a grimace taking over her face as she stumbled across a knot. She had forgotten an umbrella. And a rain jacket. Of course she did. What reason did she have to worry about something as natural as rain?
The water starts to form puddles on the floor. It occurred to me that her skin-tight jeans on my lap were also soaked through, her sneakers drenched as well. She didn't seem to care, though. She hardly seemed to notice. Just like she didn't notice the pain I was in.
Just like she never would.
I decided to write a oneshot at my own birthday party. Way to go, Ainsley, way to go.