"So…is Tifa your girlfriend, Cloud?"
I stood at the top of the steps peering into the darkness, listening to the voices wafting up from the dimly lit room below. A burst of excitement raced through my mind as I awaited the answer to the question the girl had asked. Anxious seconds passed and no response emerged from the gloom. I descended the stairs a short ways, and stared curiously around the corner.
Cloud stood awkwardly in front of Aeris, the new female companion we had acquired. She was an exquisite sight; her silky brown hair flowed down her back and shoulders like a cape, and her amazingly bright green eyes sparkled with spontaneity and happiness. She wore a blood-red skirt, with a ribbon in her hair to match. Cloud had his back turned to me, but I knew the confused look he bore upon his face.
Regret flooded my mind as I pictured his expression: His eyes were wide with surprise, two separate, stormy oceans of blue. His forehead was a wrinkled desert of doubt as he frowned at Aeris. His mouth was down-turned with surprise, and his cheeks drooped as his scowl pulled at them.
"No!"
The answer had been inevitable, I knew. Optimism is probably the greatest heartbreaker for hidden loves. I made my way back up the stairs to my perch on the stop step, drooping onto the cold cement when I reached it. I saw the love that Cloud himself had not yet discovered, buried in his eyes. When he looked at her, everything else in the world disappeared, and she was all that mattered. Whenever he talked about her, his emotions amplified a thousand times over and his excitement grew. He loved her and he didn't know it yet.
I put my head in my hands and let the familiar despair overtake me. I knew that Cloud was the only one I could ever love. The rare times when he smiled made my heart cartwheel in my chest, and caused me to beam along with him. When he spoke to me, I listened with my entire being, devouring his words with attention. His comings and goings made me infinitely happy and miserably sorrowful. His presence was a necessity for my emotional survival, and the absence of it caused my soul to ache with explicit incompletion.
As Aeris and Cloud created a bond stronger than any I could ever create in the basement of Don Cornell's mansion, I stood on the landing and cried. Life was a cruel dealer, and it had dealt me a hand of especially heartless circumstances.
---------
Once, in my disheartenment, I concluded that Aeris was the one who sent me such reminiscing dreams. I had thought she was jealous. Though she would always hold his heart, any worldly happiness he might experience belonged to me. But I convinced myself that she was not capable of such an evil, and ignored it. Whatever the case, my eavesdropping moments came back to haunt me often, asleep or awake.
Cloud was gone for seven days. During that time, no dreams of the two disturbed my sleep.
I stood at the top of the steps peering into the darkness, listening to the voices wafting up from the dimly lit room below. A burst of excitement raced through my mind as I awaited the answer to the question the girl had asked. Anxious seconds passed and no response emerged from the gloom. I descended the stairs a short ways, and stared curiously around the corner.
Cloud stood awkwardly in front of Aeris, the new female companion we had acquired. She was an exquisite sight; her silky brown hair flowed down her back and shoulders like a cape, and her amazingly bright green eyes sparkled with spontaneity and happiness. She wore a blood-red skirt, with a ribbon in her hair to match. Cloud had his back turned to me, but I knew the confused look he bore upon his face.
Regret flooded my mind as I pictured his expression: His eyes were wide with surprise, two separate, stormy oceans of blue. His forehead was a wrinkled desert of doubt as he frowned at Aeris. His mouth was down-turned with surprise, and his cheeks drooped as his scowl pulled at them.
"No!"
The answer had been inevitable, I knew. Optimism is probably the greatest heartbreaker for hidden loves. I made my way back up the stairs to my perch on the stop step, drooping onto the cold cement when I reached it. I saw the love that Cloud himself had not yet discovered, buried in his eyes. When he looked at her, everything else in the world disappeared, and she was all that mattered. Whenever he talked about her, his emotions amplified a thousand times over and his excitement grew. He loved her and he didn't know it yet.
I put my head in my hands and let the familiar despair overtake me. I knew that Cloud was the only one I could ever love. The rare times when he smiled made my heart cartwheel in my chest, and caused me to beam along with him. When he spoke to me, I listened with my entire being, devouring his words with attention. His comings and goings made me infinitely happy and miserably sorrowful. His presence was a necessity for my emotional survival, and the absence of it caused my soul to ache with explicit incompletion.
As Aeris and Cloud created a bond stronger than any I could ever create in the basement of Don Cornell's mansion, I stood on the landing and cried. Life was a cruel dealer, and it had dealt me a hand of especially heartless circumstances.
---------
Once, in my disheartenment, I concluded that Aeris was the one who sent me such reminiscing dreams. I had thought she was jealous. Though she would always hold his heart, any worldly happiness he might experience belonged to me. But I convinced myself that she was not capable of such an evil, and ignored it. Whatever the case, my eavesdropping moments came back to haunt me often, asleep or awake.
Cloud was gone for seven days. During that time, no dreams of the two disturbed my sleep.