so... school's starting tomorrow. i feel dispirited, somehow. but owell, it's the final year, which sadly, comes along with the A' levels and then enlisting. i wish people don't have to wish, but i wish life could steer auto-pilot and i'll resume it 3 years later. so much work to do!
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starts from:
stories of love and lost #0
stories of love and lost #1
stories of love and lost #2
after the row we had that day, i knew it was the end of our friendship... or whatever we once shared.
i mean, we did recover from the anger we had, about ten minutes after the awkward silence that ensued. what i meant to say was, we didn't fully recover from the verbal slurs we exchanged. it's like -- spilling a glass of milk and leaving the mess there. there was just too much unresolved tension. too much for us to talk about it, and too much for us to move past it. everything unraveled.
perhaps it's a good thing. maybe we've always pretended to see past each other's flaws, thinking it of nothing and letting all our feelings pile up till yesterday. then now we've come to realize we actually don't know anything about one another. and we're not that compatible as friends at all. i don't know. maybe yesterday was a sign that we were never suppose to meet.
so after that day, we sort of drifted away from each other. you know, not hanging out together as much and then not even talking, that kind of thing? we both found different friends who had more interest in the stark differences our lives were heading towards. i pursued the arts, something i've always been fascinated by, then moved on to university where i finally majored in music and psychology. her, she found fulfillment in her need for logic and rationality in the sciences. i don't know what happened to her after that, since our majors were different in its entirety. we both lived in different worlds, we're both living in different worlds.
and maybe it's this that reminded me of our contrasts. that i believed in dreams, in passions, soul, or anything that doesn't fall in the circle of logic, while she was the chaser of pragmatism, the future, or as i've said, anything that falls inside the circle of logic. i thought people who had dissimilar views could stay longer together than people who shared the same. i guess i was wrong.
the point is, we lost touch. so imagine what i felt when i saw her again four years later.
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it was the most typical of summers, the most typical of settings - a Starbucks parked comfortably along a quiet street -- not that it was an isolated area but it was almost as if, that people who walked past this place would just be fade into the atmosphere, taking in the calmness it seemed to provide.
I was working as a barista. It wasn't as if I hated being one. But at some point in I've considered quitting and finding more joy working in Borders or Barnes & Noble. Still, I had to work off my student loans and this offered the best pay compared to any bookstore I wanted to work at. Fun can wait.
Anyway, as I've said, it was the most typical of mornings. Shouting orders back and forth and accidentally including whip cream in a customers order. You know, the most typical of days.
I didn't really expect anything much to happen since... well, I never really do. At most on good days I'd see people arguing but... other than that, pretty uneventful. Then, at about three-thirty, after people started streaming away from their lunch hour caffeine chaos, she appeared. Just -- there. She entered wearing a floral dress and looking pretty much the same as she used to. I remembered her the moment she stepped in, and I also knew it wasn't a coincidence the moment she saw me, because she had the same smile she always did when she was searching for something. Or someone.
I knew she was there looking for me. but like always, she played it coy (which, i must say, was one of the things i really didn't enjoy about her) and had a latte, placing herself inconspicuously. i wasn't the one who made her order and so we didn't 'cross paths'.
i admit, it did cross my mind to finish my shift and leave without talking to her at all. like, what am i suppose to say to someone i've not been talking to for years and when it ended on a sour note? still, i would feel really guilty after that for ditching her so i went up and we talked.
'hey,' as though i had anything better to say. what did she expect? 'hi, i'm glad we're finally talking? i'm so, so sorry.' no way.
'hi,' she said without looking up from her phone. typical.
'so,' wanting her to finish my sentence
'so...' she did not.
'what're you doing here?'
'nothing much, can't i have coffee?'
and i just wanted to walk away right then, just storm off. whatever.
'right...'
it's important that you know i didn't sit down because it would be as though i was meeting her instead, and hell, i did not wanna lose this game she's playing. what i said went nowhere, clearly, because we were now silent with me standing like a fool while she continued doing whatever she did on the phone. after a while, she finally spoke (and i mean finally), because it was exactly what i needed to restore the great wall of china between us.
'so... why're you here?'
what a bitch.
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inspiration:
bits and pieces of life's experiences.
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