What Love Entails

three

sous l’ame || three

♠︎

I didn’t dare to look at River. Who knew what kind of malicious look he had on his face.

“Before you all start, NO. You cannot change your partners,” Mr. Smith said strictly.

We had to do some research on some writers of the 18th century who were not that well known and write about their works. The submission deadline was next week. I wondered how I was supposed to work on it together with River; it was impossible. Maybe I could just do it myself-

“And I won’t accept only one person doing all the work while the other lazes around. You have to present your report with your pair together.”

Oh, well.

River was quiet the entire duration of the class, and stood up to leave as soon as the bell rang. I was extremely worried; how were we supposed to get this done? We didn’t even talk anymore. And I was sure he didn’t want to start talking to me anytime soon. I shook my thoughts out of my head and proceeded to the cafeteria for lunch. There was no point in thinking about it right now.

“Hey, Kyla,” Andrea smiled. “Mind if I sit here?” She gestured towards the table I was seated at.

“Not at all,” I smiled back.

I went back to eating my french fries as Andrea licked her lips before taking a big bite of her hamburger. “Sorry if I’m a messy eater,” she said after swallowing her bite. I raised my brow. “That’s what the other girls told me,” she shrugged, rolling her eyes. I laughed. “Don’t worry, you eat just fine.”

“By the way,” she began. “Isn’t our manager so annoying sometimes?”

“Is he?” I frowned.

“He’s always like ‘Stop eating, Andrea.’, ‘No, that’s not it, Andrea.’, ‘God, Andrea, you’re such an idiot.’”

“Maybe he has enough reason to say that,” I chuckled, remembering how Andrea often got caught eating food from the pantry.

She paused, before sheepishly grinning. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Well, I guess you’re free from our annoying manager today,” I grinned. “After all you don’t have your shift today.”

She laughed.

_______

I was currently at Ginger, taking orders when the bell sounded and Bree Renolds entered. I was stunned as a nervous feeling erupted in my gut. Bree perfectly knew about my relationship with River, as she also had a role to play in it.

“Yeah,” she was talking on her phone. “I’m at Ginger. Please hurry.”

She put her phone down and finally looked up. I could see the surprise in her eyes when she saw me. “Oh, hey,” she greeted me. “I didn’t know you worked here.”

I smiled. “You want to order anything?”

“Uh, not really...” she scratched her head. “Actually my car broke down just outside here, and I have this really important thing to attend.”

“Why don’t you hail a cab then?”

“No luck,” she shook her head. “But it’s fine. River’s apparently just around the corner so he’ll be here to pick me and take me there.”

“Oh.”

“So...” she trailed off. “How you been?”

“Just fine. How about you?”

“Fine,” an awkward silence ensued. “So, I’ll just go have a seat now.”

“Sure, go right ahead.”

After a couple of minutes, I witnessed River rush inside. “Bree!”

Bree’s eyes immediately lit up. “Oh you’re here.”

“Let’s go or you’ll be late,” he said with a concerned tone.

“Right,” she smiled, and you could see it in her face– how happy she was to have him as her boyfriend.

As they started walking out the door, Bree turned back and uttered a quick bye to me. River turned back to glance at whom she was bidding bye to, and his eyes locked with mine. He held his gaze for a few seconds instead of looking away quickly as he usually did. And then they were gone.

I started thinking about it. About it all. My heart still hurt and grieved a lot when I thought about it, but you could say the pain had lessened a bit now. It was still unbearable, but back then, I could hardly even breathe when I thought about it. My whole body used to feel like it was broken into pieces. But it had been four months now since then, and I could tell I was on the way to healing.

I thought about what would’ve happened if I hadn’t done what I had. If I had just told River sooner. And if everything had just gone well and happy. I probably would’ve been the happiest person in the world if things went all right.

I smiled bitterly as tears stung my eyes. There was no use thinking about the ‘if’s; there was nothing that could be done. There was no way to fix what had been gone and lost. Gabriel seemed to have noticed that I was feeling right in the dumps. “You’re not looking too well, Kyla,” he said. “I think you should go home. There’s only about an hour until your shift is over, so it can be managed.”

I tried to tell him that it wasn’t necessary but he insisted, so I packed my things and left for home. On reaching, I immediately went up to my room and collapsed on the bed, falling asleep almost immediately. I was extremely exhausted – mentally and emotionally.

I opened my eyes after a deep nap, immediately after which my phone buzzed. Rubbing my eyes, I reached for it and checked the content.

1 new message

I opened the the message. It read:

In case you’re wondering, it’s still the same number.

I frowned as I saw that it was from an unknown number. I typed in a reply:

Sorry, but who is this?

After a minute or so, the reply came:

It’s River.

My heart jolted. I scanned the number, and immediately recognised it as his. I had deleted his number as closure but I still knew it by heart. Anxiously, I typed:

Oh sorry. I just didn’t think you would still have my number.

My phone buzzed after some seconds.

Why? Because you don’t have mine anymore?

___________

I took a big breath and swallowed the lump in my throat as my hand reached over to press the doorbell. It had been so long since I had been to his house, which was just a few blocks away from mine. We had decided on meeting at River’s house for working on the project. I hadn’t even thought that he would have taken the initiative to ask me about it. Will it be fine if you come over to my place? he had texted.

Summoning my courage, I pressed the doorbell. After half a minute of me anxiously looking around, the door opened. River looked surprised for a brief moment before his expression reverted back to normal. Maybe he thought that he would never see my face when he opened the door to his house again. “Come in.”

I nodded and took a step inside. My heart was beating furiously. Once inside, I took a look at the place and I immediately felt calm. Everything was exactly how I remembered it to be. River’s place always had a soothing effect on me, and I could see that it still did. The scent of lavender lingered as it always had. An immense wave of nostalgia hit me.

“Have a seat,” he gestured towards the sofa. “Want a drink or anything?”

It felt so weird to be having a normal conversation with him after so long. “A drink sounds nice.”

“Sprite?” I nodded and he walked towards to the kitchen.

I sat down at the sofa, facing the television. I looked around and saw the furniture and decorations I had been so accustomed to before. I heard River’s footsteps and immediately tensed up. He handed me my sprite and sat down beside me. “Thanks,” I mumbled and sipped the drink, trying to escape the awkwardness in the atmosphere.

If it weren’t for the small space between me and him where we were both seated, I could’ve sworn that he could have heard the thumping of my heart. “So..” I started. He turned to me and held my gaze. “Do you have any writer in mind?”

“That’s easy,” he said nonchalantly. “Shakespeare.”

A smile made its way to my lips. “You do know that he’s the most popular writer of all time, and that we’re supposed to write on writers that were not well known?”

“We were?” He frowned, looking genuinely confused.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yeah.”

“Oh, well,” he smiled.

I was dazed. When was the last time he had smiled towards me?

We started searching and doing our work, and I was surprised at how I didn’t seem that nervous anymore. I had always felt extremely free and comfortable with River; and it looked like he still had that effect on me.

We didn’t converse much, just occasionally giving our opinions on the research. Halfway through, River got up to get some snacks and came back with a bowl of potato chips and popcorn. “Help yourself.”

“Thanks,” I immediately dove my hand into the bowl of chips. I was super hungry.

I could’ve sworn I heard a light chuckle but when I turned to look at River, his expression was normal as he drank his sprite. “So I heard things got hot between you and Kaden at his party.”

I almost choked on my food. “What?”

His eyes caught mine in a lock. He had on a serious expression and I could clearly see the pools of brown in his eyes. “Is it true?”

“No!” I almost shouted, horrified. “Nothing happened.”

He nodded and averted his gaze. “Alright.”

“We just talked and that’s it,” I added in disbelief at what kind of things people were making up.

“Talked?” He raised his brow.

“Yeah,” I shrugged. “Normal talk.”

Thankfully that was the end of the topic and we got back to work. We were soon done for the day. “We’ll need just one or two days to run through the project and refine our presentation,” I evaluated. “And then we’re done.”

“Cool.”

“I’ll be off then,” I stood up. That’s when it hit me and I added softly, “Thanks for having me here.”

“Right,” I didn’t look up as he spoke and reached out to open the door for me. “Bye.”

“Bye,” I muttered before quickly going out of the door.

I tried to steady my heartbeat as I kept walking. How was it that everything seemed normal? That what had happened never did? Why was he acting so different now? He used to basically refuse accepting my existence and was so rude the few times he did. Why was he actually civil now?

I was tired of thinking. I freed my mind from all the thoughts as I trudged into my house, climbed up to my room and jumped into my bed. I closed my eyes, and before long, sleep entered and my mind was free.

——————