Chapter 4

"That long?" He asks, looking guilty now.

"Yeah. The direct buses are very infrequent." I reply, feeling my emotions dip. It would be Five o'clock by the time I would get a bus, and everybody knew that 5 o'clock was the rush hour. I internally groaned at the number of people that would be on the bus at this hour of the day. I would reach home by 6:30.

I think he could see my distress.

"I could drop you. If you want me to that is." He offers, sounding nervous. I wasn't really keen on my mother finding out that a boy dropped me home. She was quick to come to conclusions, and the people in my locality weren't open-minded people. The very reason why I wanted to get out of this country and start new someplace else.

But I didn't tell him all of that though.

"It's very far from here, around 40 minutes journey. Besides, it's literally on the other side of where you live. I wouldn't want to do that to you." I went for the safest answer.

I watched as his forehead creased, which indicated that he was thinking.

"What about the metro?" He asked me.

"There isn't one closeby. Although there is a metro station half a kilometre from my house, there is none here." I reply.

"I will drop you to the metro station then." He offers, I think about it for a while and then decide to do that.

"If it's not much of a trouble for you," I said.

"Of course not. Besides I feel kind of responsible for all of this." He says. I give him a grateful smile.

"Let's go?" He questions, slinging his bag over his shoulders. I nod my head at him before doing the same and walking out of the shop.

It was then that I noticed that this shop was in a place way away from our college. I was a little grateful for that, but a part of me was also suspicious about this. Did he not want me to be seen with him? It was not like there weren't any food places near the university. I quickly pushed those thoughts away.

He handed me his spare helmet and waited for me to hop on.

"Most girls would be really scared to sit behind me for some reason that I don't know, but you seem confident." he mused, turning towards me slightly but never taking his eyes off the road.

"You travel to college every day if you were a bad driver, then you wouldn't have survived all this while," I reply. He shakes his head, chuckling at my response. I tried to ignore how he said most girls. I didn't want to know that.

While we paused at the traffic, waiting for the red light to turn green, I saw a middle-aged couple giving us the stink eye for no damn reason. I rolled my eyes at them.

"I can't wait to get out of this country," I commented loudly.

"What happened?" Carter questioned, looking at the couple.

"They are looking at me as though I am having sex with you out here in the middle of the road. Not like they would be entitled to pass their judgement even if I was doing that." I muttered, giving the couple the stink eye with a much sharper intensity. Thankfully they turned away. I guess they weren't expecting me to have that reaction.

"Don't mind them. Those people have no other thing to do other than judge others." He said before driving off from there as soon as the lights turned green. 

"So you are applying abroad like you were planning to." He says after a while.

"You remember." I was surprised that he remembered even after these years.

"So, where have you applied?" He questioned.

"Just a few places in Europe. I am waiting for the response now." I felt him nod.

"I pray that you get into the university of your liking." He says.

"Thank you," I reply, happy that he said that.

"What about you. How's your Australia plan going?" I asked him, recalling that he wanted to go to Australia for further studies.

"I haven't tried for anything yet. I don't know if I should." He admits.

"Carter, listen to me carefully. You should try for Australia it would be a great opportunity for you. I have known you for three years and trust me when I say that I haven't seen the amount of passion for the subject in any of my classmates that you have. Don't you dare waste your talent without taking a leap and grabbing the things that are meant for you." I say sternly, gripping his shoulders a bit more tightly with each word.

"Okay, fine! I will get it done by this week. I hope you are right about this." He says with a laugh.

"When am I ever wrong?" I joke. Just as I do, he pulls the bike to a stop. It takes me a second to realise that we had reached the metro station. I quickly hopped off the bike and handed his helmet back to him.

"Thanks for the ride and also thanks for today. I had fun." I reply, the shyness creeping in now all of a sudden.

"I should thank you really. Rihanna and all went out, and I couldn't go because I had a lab going on that time. I felt rather lonely until you made it better." He replied, with that wide smile, but this time it didn't bring back the butterflies but rather broke what little hope I had.

I didn't let him see that his words had hurt me, and kept my smile plastered on my face not faltering even for a second.

"Bye!" I waved at him one last time before I turned my back at him, and this time for the better.

What did I expect? This wasn't a basic Wattpad story where the school's heartthrob took notice of the invisible girl. Those things didn't happen in reality. I would always be the invisible girl, the one you would only notice when the crowd cleared, and the loneliness crept in.

I was way past the ' your words hurt me so much that my chest hurt' phase. I knew better than hoping that everything would get better things didn't work that way. I had learned it the hard way.

I stepped into the metro and was grateful that I was able to get a seat. I plugged in my headphones and played my 'slipping into the darkness' playlist. Today felt like that playlist and I didn't bother trying to listen to some upbeat music, I couldn't stomach it.

I was hoping that the place I would finally go to would be much better for me.