Her Favorite Color- Chapter Three

            Somebody very wise once said "Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get."  You may have heard it before.  You're given a wide variety of chocolates, and you can have any kind that you want.  You look carefully at all the different shapes and sizes, and the different colors.  Everybody's life is like this.  It's almost like each kind of chocolate stands for the choices in your life.  Pick a dark chocolate, and you've decided what you're going to do with your life.  One of those chewy fruit filled pieces means health.  Caramel, a favorite to many, is your love life.  I was hoping to get a caramel, so I'd finally have that sweet, little chunk that would change my life.  But instead, I got coconut.

            So in other words, my decision was, well, to put it nicely, wrong.  It seems so simple for me to understand now, but back when I was just a teenager, it was so confusing and difficult.  It was just so mind blowing and complicated that I never gave it one thought, really.  After Tai pushed me to Matt, things changed.  If that was for the better or for the worse, I'll never know.  And after talking with Tai, my life changed again.  All these changes were too much for me at the time.  I couldn't sort out any of my thoughts, but all I needed to know was why Tai was feeling the way he did.  That was all that mattered.

            So after tennis practice, I set out to Matt's rehearsal like a good girlfriend would, except my thoughts weren't on seeing Matt, but on Tai.  I was remembering the touch of his hand on mine.  Sure I've held his hand before, but it was different that time.  And I wanted to know why….

            "Sora!"

My thoughts were broken and I never got to figure out why it was different.  At the moment I was trying to figure out why Matt was looking at me strangely.  I looked around and noticed that I had been so hooked on with my thoughts that I had walked straight past the place.

            We greeted each other with a short kiss on the lips, even though that was the last thing that I wanted to do.  I really wanted to talk to Matt about Tai.

            We walked through the park talking of little things.  We held hands like we always did, but this time I was more into noticing the different things between Tai and Matt instead of on the conversation.

            "You seem like you off somewhere else, Sora.  Something on your mind?"  He asked me as we sat on an old bench that surveyed the lake.  I didn't know where to begin.  I sat there thinking for a while, not knowing how to word or how Matt was going to react when I would.  He just sat there, looking all concerned, waiting for my answer.  Looking back on it, he really was a great friend.

            "I talked with Tai today at school."

Matt gave me a weird look.  I bet he was wondering the same thing that I had realized that day.  Why I cared all the sudden.  But the look disappeared, replaced by one that told me, "Oh.  That's nice, but I thought that it had something to do with us."  Maybe he really didn't care because this relationship was doing the same thing to him that it was doing to me.  But he pretended to look interested anyway.

            "So, ummm… what happened?"

            I told him exactly what happened, but without the holding hand thing, I didn't think that he would have appreciated that very much.  He listened to every word that I had to say.  Even though he, just like I had, never talked with Tai like we used to, Matt still felt as though he needed to stay a loyal friend.  I guess that all of our crests linger with us even after it hasn't truly been shown for a long time. 

            Matt though that maybe Tai was just feeling very pressured about which school he would be going to next year.  He had gotten scholarships for his soccer skills and was offered free rides to some colleges that wanted to have Tai Kamiya play for them.  I pretended that it made sense, so I just agreed with him.  Matt needed to get home anyway, so I didn't want to keep him.  But as Matt walked away, with his guitar strung over his shoulder, I knew that he was wrong.  He was my coconut candy.

            Tai wouldn't have made me promise not to tell anybody, never mind pinky swearing to it, if it had been about college.  And he would have told me directly, instead of keeping me wondering for such a long time.  But I knew that Matt was wrong, probably didn't even have the slightest idea, because he didn't have to see the way that Tai looked.  The hurt in those chocolate brown eyes was so fierce that it still has impact on me to just remember.

            With Matt gone I returned back to my thoughts.  I had always gone to Tai for help, but I couldn't this time.  I had tried Matt, and even though he had answers, they didn't help.  I was stuck alone. I hadn't felt this way since our first time in the Digital World.  I was told that my crest of love would never glow.  That had hurt me so much.  I felt helpless and weak, never to be as great as Tai or the others.  I ran away and nearly convinced myself that there just wasn't a point to being alive.  Maybe that was the same way that Tai was feeling now, just complete pain.  But something had kept me.  Tai and the other eventually found me.  I told them my story and began to cry.  But the thing that I remember most is when Tai hugged me.  He helped me that day. I was still feeling hurt, but it was like Tai had given me a chance to live.  Later that night, my crest glowed.

            I leaned back on the bench and looked through the leaves that danced in the wind above my head.  Still hanging on to the last remains of the memory, I thought of my crest.  Love.  Said to be the thing that makes the world go round was still a mystery to me.  Sure, I loved my mom and my family, but there's another type of love.  The kind that even a rock band like Matt's sing about.  It seems so simple to the eye of the beholder, but to the two lovers, it's a feeling much more complex and wonderful.  Or, it's a feeling that breaks hearts and ruins lives.    I wish more than anything to have known that that was the love Tai was going through, and that I was the only one who could fix it.

            But I didn't.  And if I've learned anything from life, it's knowing that you can't change the past.  So all I did that evening was stare at the setting sun.  I remember seeing it as a reminder of Tai.  His crest was a sun.  A tear slipped from the corners of my eyes as the last orange and red bean of light hit the surface.  The two colors on the water will forever remain in my mind and my heart.  They meshed together in harmony upon the dark, cascading waters.  It was a perfect moment that nature created.  It had been meant to show me something.  My crest was the color red, and Tai's, the color orange.  It's one of those things in life that are so completely obvious that you don't even realize it until it's to late.  I've always been terrible with timing.

*There it is!  Thank you so much to the people who are reviewing this story.  I know that this chapter is short, like the others, he he, but bare with me, I have a lot of stuff coming up (I hope), so please R&R and tell me what you think!*

~dorkiss