PRESENT"You are wasting your time with Cassiel.” His words are raw and harsh. “You are just existing and living your life like a zombie." His lips are twisting words as his mouth curls, like he's aiming to throw the hurt, and puke out the venom he's been feeling at me. “You don’t know what you’re doing. You’re delusional and you live in your pretty little bubble.”“Enough, Daniel! What’s that supposed to mean?” I’m taken aback. I’ve known that his feelings had been a mess. But I do not want to know what this mess spirals into. He turns around so I face his back, and I’m weighing the thought of putting a hand on it."What I mean to say is that you're just spending your life with Cassiel like you don’t have a better option! He doesn’t bring out the best in you.” He takes a deep breath, his voice is chilling when he pivots and looks at me. “You, though, live with me Ange.”We’ve had this exact same fight so many times. I close my eyes to think and say something that will be a setback to
FOUR YEARS AGO“Are you going to show up for Mr. Freyer’s class?” Carrie was sitting on the couch beside me, running her fingers down her golden auburn hair. She looked like a Disney princess done right.“Is he going to give another sermon on John Donne? Because all man now is an island.” I rolled my eyes when Carrie shot me a look. She gets boisterous and sassy when it comes to Literature. "Don't tell me you're in love with some old man because you like how pretentious he is in our classes?"Carrie has always been in love with Dante and metaphysical poetry. She wanted to revel in darkness and the spirituality behind human existence. She had this constant gleam in her eyes whenever she sat in Mr. Freyer’s class, like she was in awe or something.I wanted to ask her what Bertrand Russell once said, “Day after day, man is accumulating knowledge, but is the man getting any wiser?”I felt my inner Virginia Woolf fist thumping when I looked at her. What’s all this passion for?Carrie humme
FOUR YEARS AGO”Where were you, Lee? What happened to you?” she asked, pointing at my shirt. “I’ve been waiting for you. My lunch is almost over. I don’t have a free period next.” Carrie was looking me up and down, ready to fire her inquisitive questions at me.“I got sucked in some drama, sorry,” I mumbled as I took the seat next to her on the table. I put the backpack down as it was weighing my shoulders down, and took a deep breath. "I didn't mean to abandon you like that. Something just came up."“What happened to your shoulder? Your shirt looks drenched.” She tried to pry my shirt collar down to take a look. “What the fuck?”“Yeah, someone spilled their coffee on me.” I gently put her fingers away, peering a look at my red shoulder. "It was hot. It almost burned me."“What do you mean? You mean, hot coffee? Who did that?” Her mouth opened in an ‘O’, which she ultimately closed tsk-ing. "Couldn't they see where they were going?"“Someone,” I whispered, annoyed. "Just someone you d
PRESENTI am caught in a web of my own premonitions of an intricate pseudo-reality of lies.I was curious about where my heart could go, and it wasn’t that I didn’t want or love Cassiel. I have wanted him for so long, more than he can ever think. Sometimes, he thinks it isn’t so but it is this simple fact that has strung me all along. Even after three years of dating him, I am in constant need of want and attention from him.Is it bad to want someone this much?I am pondering over my love, or something in between, for both the men in my life, lost in my own alternate reality of thoughts when Daniel’s voice breaks me out of my dreamlike reverie.“Don't you want some more of that sumptuous wagyu steak?” He asks me, licking his lips discreetly. “You would love this!”“Yeah, I'd like that, Daniel,” I hastily murmur. "Are you ordering it again?"A shabby-looking flower girl with her hoodie rattled at the edges, enters the outdoor bistro where we are having our steak and potatoes with vino.
FOUR YEARS AGO"I didn’t know you go here. I mean in this class.” He was taken aback, looking at me with those big doe eyes. "Wow, what a coincidence.""You spilled coffee over me, yesterday. Remember?" I rolled my eyes at this handsome, dark-haired boy that has the best and the most river-like clear blue eyes I've ever seen. "It's not something one should forget easily."“Oh, I know, I didn’t mean that. . . I meant I didn't know that you, too, have signed up for this class."“Yes, I have. I’m minoring in it. You look like you’re doing the same thing, yeah, obviously.” I felt anxious talking to a stranger for the first time in a long while. Awkward.“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again after what happened yesterday.” He let out a gust of wind from his lips. "At least not this soon."“When I said, I guess so, I meant it.” I coughed and looked away. I wetted my lips, finding it uneasy to keep the conversation on. "By that I meant that I would see you around on the campus."“Yeah, I gu
Thirty minutes into the class…"I didn't get your name," I said to him, not looking up to meet his gaze while still scribbling notes in my notepad at the end of the class. "Would you care to share?"“Cassiel.” He didn’t break the word into syllables. "What about yours?"I took a long breath. I needed to extend this conversation. From the corner of my eye, I observed him. “Cassiel, what is that you are scribbling? Is it detailed class notes on Dryden?"“It’s your name, of course. You should look at this.” He quickly took up his notebook and flung it up in the air for me to view. He retrieved it immediately. "What do you think?"“Well, that was fast.” I was speechless. "Your penmanship is beautiful."“It was, not so much anymore.” His long hands formed a protective circle on the piece of paper he was protecting from my eye’s glance. I caught a peep but both of his shoulders moved too quickly and shielded again whatever he was working on. I sighed because he was so fucking agile and hand
FOUR YEARS AGOAfter class. . .After three long university classes, I finally wanted to get some exercise done and decided to take a walk around my big university campus. I got a coffee on the go and strolled around in the front courtyard of our humongous college, where I saw a couple of guys hovering around their expensive motorbikes parked against the old Victorian styled pillars and sidewalls.I quickened my pace when they suddenly started laughing and hooting as they walked past one by one around me. One of them stepped in front of me, looked right in my eyes, and whistled at me as I took long strides away from him. I ignored their behavior. That’s the only thing that seemed right at that moment. Lordy, I didn't have anyone accompanying me to this part of the campus, but heck, I didn’t care and I didn’t need a bodyguard. I could look out for myself. I breathed in and out.I’m a strong woman. I’m not afraid. I won’t regard or warrant their behavior. I can take care of myself.Just
PRESENTHe’s walking away. He’s going to walk even further away from me. I can feel it. I can feel it with every breath I draw, and every time my heart skips a beat.Daniel is the one to walk away when it should have been me. I have no self-control. When did I change into this unbecoming woman that I never wanted to be?Do I even deserve Cass? When I’m doing this behind his back. . .Someone knocks on the door and the bell jiggles for a long thirty seconds, awakening me from my delirium. It has been more than an hour since Daniel collected his clothes and walked out of this apartment, but he’s everywhere.As I pick myself up from the sofa, exactly where Daniel left me in a hypnotic state, I take a look around the room, and everything seems to shout out loud at me. Our coffee table, our wooden chairs, our bean-bag, even that old blow-up bed that lies unforgotten in the corner.They are all shouting at the top of their lungs. “You are a cheater. You betrayed him. He doesn’t deserve thi