Love you to death

2

Leon was waiting inside the restaurant. As usual, he was dressed all in black, and looked incredibly handsome –although paler than usual. She walked straight up to him –and he immediately rose from the table when he saw Chanel approaching. Awkwardness was the name of the game. Neither of them dared say a word. But Leon offered her a seat at the table.

“Long time no see, Leon,” Chanel said, starting the conversation.

“Yes, I thought it was time to explain my side of things,” he said.

As mentioned, Leon is a very handsome man –tall, dark and handsome, and every girl’s dream –a well-matured man in the prime of his life.

While Chanel, on the other hand, was a mere girl of seventeen –she looks so common, not that attractive, and not that appealing. But she has a strong character, and the beauty of her character was expressed in her face.

She had a distinctive appearance with her dyed blonde hair with red stripes, and she wore blue contact lenses, which gave her an intense look. She had provocative pouting lips, which she always painted bright red–she looked almost like a Burgos Street bargirl. She took some of the red lipstick and rubbed it across her cheeks to add to her provocative visage.

She pencilled in her prominent eyebrows with a deep black colour, adding a vivacious look to her expression. Everybody that knows them, or saw them together, wondered what Leon saw in Chanel. Leon de Magallanes, the tall, dark Spanish aristocrat, and Chanel de Silang, the ‘ordinary’ Filipina girl.

But maybe love really is blind.

“So what lie are you going to tell me this time, Leon ha?! You broke my heart to pieces. You know how much I trusted you, and out of the hundreds of men that courted me, you’re the one I chose. You wasted your chances with a girl like me –one of a kind girl like me.” Chanel nagged him.

It was true that in some people’s eyes Chanel looked ordinary –but she was ‘one of a kind’ –something special

“Huh?” Leon was speechless

“What huh? Did I say something wrong?” Chanel was confused by Leon’s reaction –perhaps it was because she called him a liar

“Nothing. I was just saying that I’m here to explain –and I’m not going to lie,” he answered

“What is it then? Be sure it’s an acceptable reason,” Chanel warned him, gazing intently

“I had an accident a few months ago and lay comatosein hospital for a long time,” he began

“What?!”Chanel noticed that the restaurant staff were looking at her weirdly –perhaps she had raised her voice too much, she thought to herself. She was just too shocked by Leon’s revelation –she felt bad knowing that he had suffered, but she’d done nothing but to hate and accuse him all the time in her own mind, when he was actually lying helpless in a hospitalbed.

“Are you telling the truth? Or are you just giving me that reason, so you can get away with what you’ve done?” she said to him, staring him in the eye to gauge his reaction.

“I know it’s hard for you to believe everything I’m telling you, but I’m telling the truth. I was just released from hospital one week ago, and you’re the first person that I wanted to see,” Leon continued

“Really?” Chanel suddenly back-stepped–Leon really is her weakness –he always manages to touch her soft spot

“Yes. We can go to the hospital where I was confined if you don’t believe me,” he added. In fact, when Chanel started to think about it, she thought Leon looked very pale and sickly –almost ethereal.

“No, it’s fine. I believe you,” Chanel said with tears in her eyes

“Thank you,” said Leon full-heartedly

“I just feel guilty that I wasn’t beside you at the time that you needed me the most, and just thinking that you had fooled me instead,” Chanel said, crying

“It’s done. You know how much I love you,” Leon said sincerely.“I know and you should be. A girl like me is like an endangered species –very hard to find,” she answered with a tinge of humour.

“You mean like a duck-billed platypus!”Leon countered in sardonic repartee. Chanel didn’t know what a duck-billed platypus was, so she just slightly smiled and let Leon’s remark go by.

While she was talking to Leon in the restaurant, she noticed again how the girl staff were standing huddled together in a corner, and how they kept casting glances ather and Leon, almost sneering, and looking at them as if they were some weird aliens from outer space.

But Chanel didn’t have time to worry about the cheeky girl staff with nothing to do, so she just snubbed them; Chanel thought, “they’re probably just too envious of how an ordinary girl like me is together with a realman –Leon –the most handsome and elegant guy you could ever expect to see –and he’s already mine.”