Rumours are a fickle thing. They come and go for the tastes of a cruel mass of people that feed or reject them based on their entertainment value. However, while never the same, there has always been and there always will be some sort of gossip making rounds for as long as there are people congregating together.
Exactly for that reason, one can never rely on the information that is provided by them, as the sources always change it the more it gets passed around. Sentences are being added and words are fabricated. Everything becomes so huge and strange, even if there is always some authenticity laced into it, in some form. How else would it even be brought up, after all?
Sally had always made a point to never engage in the rumour mill that went around the school. She figured that they were silly and immature, especially the teenage sort, and they could be dangerous to be dealt with, considering the way one wrong word could ruin one's reputation.
However, when rumours are being exchanged right in front of her, well, it was kind of hard not to perk up and listen. Whispering hastily, a handful of emotions coming across faces, the girl could not help that her steps seemed to stall when coming close to the group.
So, she embraced that part of her little animal brain and let her feet carry her slower, as she grips her books closer to her chest, as she tries to not give away her eavesdropping, she only lets herself give a side eye. The closer she got, the clearer those words became.
"Did you hear?" A girl in blue asked another.
"Yes, I did! I can't believe it!" A ponytailed girl responded.
Blue seemed to perk up at the admission. "Do you think that it's true?"
Sally is getting closer to passing them. A part of her wanted to snap at them to just spit it out, or else she would never get to hear it.
"Of course, it's true." Ponytail scoffs."I saw it with my own eyes!"
"What happened exactly?" Blue asked once more, her excitement mirroring Sally's own.
"Yesterday, after cheer practice, I was coming back from organizing the equipment. It was, like, really late. Almost five o'clock. When I was passing by that utility closet near the coach's office, I started hearing some voices. I couldn't very well just leave, right? So, I sneaked a peek from the door, and then I saw it..." Ponytail paused, adding to the dramatics, while Sally rolled her eyes inwardly. "You know Sam Gordon, right? He was making out with that sophomore Christine whatever."
A series of gasps were heard.
"I was so shocked that I stumbled back and made some noise. So, they stopped. If I hadn't, who knows what would go on that closet!"
it was all very impassioned that Sally almost gagged. Until she processed their words and she swore that she could taste bile threatening to come up.
Her steps faltered, head snapping to the group. She grips her books so tight, close to cutting off her blood circulation, as she keeps herself from screaming at the pair of girls.
This is ridiculous! Sam would never do such a thing. Would he?
They were whispering quieter now, hands on their mouth, ever the dramatics.
"Doesn't he have a girlfriend, though?" Blue asks, adding to the histrionics. "That Sally girl? I think I have her on my biology class."
"Yes, exactly!" Ponytail shrieks."I think they started dating last year, and were going steady, even."
"God, how awful it must be to find out your boyfriend is cheating on you! I swear, I would never show my face at school ever again!" Blue commiserated.
"Yeah. Pity that." Ponytail echoed.
Sally centred herself and tried to calm her senses down, before pacing out of there as quickly as she could without giving herself away. She wanted to place as much space between her and the pair of gossip-mongers.
Finally, she reaches the bathroom and finds an empty and reasonably clean stall to hide herself inside. As she sits on the toilet, the words run in her brain while she tries desperately to sooth the stinging in her chest with deep breaths.
It is not true, though. Ponytail did not know what she saw. She was just desperate to have another rumour boiling up for tomorrow, to be the centre of everyone's attention for a hot minute.
The girl let that thought sooth her, disregarding completely the part of her mind that kept repeating the logic that there was always a little bit of truth in every lie.
A forced laugh escaped her throat, barely hiding the anxiousness that intertwined in it. She has to talk with Sam, she has to check his story.
She fears what she will come to find out.
"It's silly, isn't it?" Sally asks, her tone trembling in nervousness.
Sam stares at her blankly. He was always a little too good at hiding his true feelings, but, right now, she is a little concerned about whether he is cognizant or if he was hit in the head a little too hard with a ball, just by how much his face looked like a blank slate.
The girl had told him about what had happened earlier that day, thinking it is kind of her to fill him in on the filthy gossip about them that was bound to spread like wildfire tomorrow. Another part of her, however, told him just because she is yearning for solace, she wants the reassurance that he was most certainly not cheating, preferably by mocking laughter or impassionate declarations of love.
The silence stretched. The once faint noise of cars passing by on the avenue outside is growing louder by each second, echoing around the both of them.
"Right, Sam?" She repeats the question, close to whispering this time.
The blond athlete blinks and she thinks that guilt begins to sketch on his face, but it was gone in a second. It had been so quick, so faint, that she convinced herself that she must have just imagined it.
He stares at she with those vivid green eyes. Ones that used to be filled with warmth, now holding cold indifference.
Maybe she should have seen this coming.
Sally could have seen it coming, the signs were there, but she had made herself incognizant. She ignored the stolen glances her lover gave to another. The sinful whispers exchanged when assumed she was not around. Became oblivious to the empty side of her bed, the one who once occupied it warming up someone else's sheets. She turned a blind eye to the slow replacement of herself.
She became a specialist in pretending that Sam was not sullying her trust. She is too good in papering over the bad in his personality, a bad she has always known, but that never seemed to bother her. She ignored it for so long that the acknowledgment of his infidelity was forgotten. It was no longer a possibility in her mind, because she did away with all self-awareness.
It all came crashing back when he said, "I'm sorry."
Because they both knew exactly what he was sorry for.
Sorry for the forthcoming whispers headed her way, because he knew she hated when rumours were centred around her. Sorry for betraying her trust. For neglecting her, when all she did was give him her all. For crushing every dream, every planned future she had with him to dust. For going behind her back and doing everything he used to do with another girl. For falling out of love with her, when hers for him was growing stronger every day.
Sally mourns the fact that she will go out of this situation as the fool, as the spurned woman. She regrets that she had been so blind, but she wagers that seeing it coming would not make this hurt any less, not when the person she planned to spend her entire life with was planning their own with someone else the whole time.
Sam walked down the cobbled stone sidewalk, getting closer to his destination with every step.
He entered the bookshop, the smell of paper and hot coffee basking him in a sense of familiarity. He finds it almost comical that, while he hated reading with all his strengths when he was a kid, he came to enjoy it very much in his adult life.
Long months out at sea, doing next to nothing, tend to push people into finding eclectic hobbies, the blond man came to discover.
Looking around, there is not much people patronizing the store, besides some shoppers who were browsing shelves in the back, which he could not see from where he was standing.
While he took his business mostly to big box bookstore in Anchorage, due mostly to convenience, this little nook in the main street of his hometown had always been his favourite, even back when he did not care for books. He used to come here often a few years ago, just before he left for Alaska, with her.
They served good coffee here, so he did not mind bringing her around, munching a muffin and sipping an espresso while she browsed the shelves. It made their afternoon when there were no good movies at the cinema or the mall got boring.
As for now… Sam does not care to know what made him come here these days, but he knows that it had something to do with his hankering for a feeling of nostalgia. Besides, any excuse to be out the house was good enough, and visiting his favourite bookstore gave him a notion of classy debonair that his wife appreciated enough not to press him on it.
Besides, Christine hated reading. She would never volunteer to take him or come with him.
The blond man walked through the rows of shelves loaded with all kinds of books, dragging his fingertip along each one. He closed his eyes, dragging his finger farther, then stopped.
He grabbed the book he stopped on, flipping through the pages. He remembers that he learnt that trick with Sally, mostly when she was not exactly sure about what to get. He would mock her, but she defended the practice, saying it was easier and fun to see what she would land on.
The title was hardly something he would normally choose, but just by briefing over the words, he could tell that it was something that his ex-girlfriend would enjoy. He would not be surprised if she had read it already.
Putting the book back neatly, he could not help but let his thoughts wander as he moved farther through the shelves.
Wondering how she is doing nowadays. Wondering what she is doing. In essence, he would like to know if her life turned out to be good, or if she feels the same emptiness in her heart.
Since they broke up, late into their last term of high school, he had not heard much from her, not what she finally decided to do for college nor where she came to live. He had been expelled shortly after, and left for Alaska by the time that she graduated with their class. He had not kept any contact with any of their former colleagues, aside from Christine, and so had no-one to ask.
Every time that he ends up meeting her parents running errands around town, and this is more than a little common for him all things considered, he remembers is taken by the desire to ask where their daughter ended up, but he would look at Christine and be reminded that it was no longer his place.
Christine. He was married to her now. He proposed to her after she finished school, at their parents urging. She became pregnant with his child at one of his seasonal vacations from the fishing boat, and so it was only right.
At first, the boat had been a prison, a punishment. Now, it is a refuge away from his family. He feels sorry for his son, stuck with a father as crappy as his had been in his time, but he does not know what else to do.
They started talking about having more children, but he does not know if he is ready for that just yet. His firstborn had been an accident, and they messed it up big time. His wife argues that, now they are planning it and are well-established, things will go smoother, but he never took the time to consider having two children with Christine, time to consider if he even wanted one child with her, lest of all two.
It had been fun sleeping around with her back in school. Even if it was wrong, that only made it better in some sick way. Being with Christine was addicting, it was pure adrenaline in his veins. The possibility of being caught spurred him on. The fact that he could not have her because he had someone else made him only want her more.
Now that it is all said and done, now that Sally is gone, it was not the same. It was boring and it filled him with a sense of dread because she reminded him of the cruel boy he once was. Being with his wife now was a reminder that he had let go of something that could have made him great. She was a reminder of another sin that he was undoubtedly guilty of.
A hushed laugh broke Sam out of his thoughts. A laugh that was dear to him, one that he could recognize from anywhere. It was like a force, bringing him closer to the siren call.
There she was, looking as beautiful as the day he first laid his eyes on her. Her eyes were closed, a soft smile on her face as she dragged her fingers across the books.
His heart seemed to stutter at the simplicity of it all, but then he heard a deeper laugh, turning his head, his heart seemed to stop all together.
Nathan Prior was watching her with a smile full of affection and eyes that softened at the sight of her. What really made him stop dead in his tracks, however, was that, on his hip, was a child. A child that was clearly the creation of them both.
Sam did not know what to do with himself. He felt frozen, stuck in place watching as Sally opened her eyes and grabbed the book that her little game led her to.
Turning the book this way and that way, he saw a glimmer, bringing his attention to the ring that enveloped her finger. He, then, brought his attention to Nathan's finger and his heart started again, pounding, as he took sight of his ring. They were married and had a child.
Married to someone else. Having a child with someone else.
Sam could not see straight, not with the knowledge that he was indisputably replaced. He should have known that, with the years that passed, his ex-girlfriend would move on and find love somewhere else. He is the first one to say that she deserves it, and that she deserves all the happiness her life can bring.
However, actually seeing it in real life was a cruel hit of reality. It made him realize that he wanted Sally to be happy with him, that he wanted her children to be had with him, and if there is no way for that to happen, then he wished that she would rue for the rest of her days. Just like him.
The weight of regret was heavy on his shoulders, dragging him to the ground.
There she is, with that look of complete an utter adoration, gazing at Nathan and her child, a daughter. The look that he once had the privilege to know, to be looked upon with. There she is creating a future with someone else. Creating a future that she once planned to create with him.
Sam only has his boat to look forward to.