Sway Me One More Time

Chapter 02

The sun was lower now, a brilliant, slow descent. Its light stretched wide and spilled like molten gold across the campus. Students, released from the day's captivity, began to trickle out, vanishing into tricycles, the safe enclosure of parents’ cars, and the usual after-school haunts.

I stayed behind a little longer. I let the meeting wind down slowly, meticulously wrapping up our notes and exchanging soft, weary goodbyes.

“We're almost done with this preparation. Let's continue this again tomorrow,” our president said, her voice carrying a sense of profound relief.

We exchanged final goodbyes. Each one was a quiet acknowledgment of the long day, before we made our way out, the intellectual weight of it all still hanging in the air.

As I stepped outside the SSLG office, I exhaled deeply. It was the kind of breath that sits too long, heavy and stagnant in your chest, before finally escaping in a shudder.

The long hallway was quieter now. Only some distant laughter echoed, a faint buzz of mopeds outside, and the dry rustle of papers as a janitor swept through an empty classroom nearby.

I adjusted my tote bag strap, letting the familiar weight anchor me. I started walking toward the exit, toward the gate. The same path I always took. The same tired tiles, the same blank windows, the same soft creak of my shoes with every predictable step.

But something felt profoundly off. Like the very air had shifted, grown heavy with possibility. Like someone had turned a hidden page I wasn’t remotely ready to read yet.

And then—

“Excuse me…”

I stopped mid-step, the rhythm of my escape broken. The voice wasn’t familiar. But impossibly, terrifyingly, it was.

Faint. Low. Like a forgotten melody struggling to be heard. Like memory trying, desperately, to speak.

I turned.

And there he was.

He was standing at the top of the stairs, suspended in the golden spill of the afternoon light. He held a folder, and looked suddenly, beautifully lost. The air seemed to coalesce and still around us, thickening into glass.

Students passed by, their conversations becoming blurred, muffled static. All I could hear was the frantic, desperate pounding in my own ears.

Not a distant memory.

Not a cruel, fleeting dream.

Not a name I repeated in my head like a prayer I had tried, and failed, to forget.

But him.

And suddenly, in the devastating shock of his reality, I was thirteen again.

I could feel the crushing weight of it—the sudden warmth of the sun, the paralyzing stillness between us, the way the whole world outside seemed to instantly disappear.

My heart hammered against my ribs, an animal trapped in a cage. My mind scrambled for any shred of logical explanation. But there was none. Not when he stood there, as real and solid as ever, with that familiar, almost imperceptible smile tugging at the corner of his lips.

“Raina…”

His voice. That voice I hadn’t heard in what felt like a lifetime of empty silence, broke through the buzzing static in my head. The way he spoke my name—it felt like a sudden, electric spark, igniting a devastating wildfire of memories I didn’t know I still possessed.

I froze. I couldn’t move. Not forward, not back. Not when he was looking at me like that.

He was looking at me the way he used to—with that same kind of intense, singular focus I remembered too well. The boy who made me feel like I was the only one in the world. The boy who, just as easily, broke my heart.

His smile faded, dissolving into a hint of uncertainty. It crept into his eyes, as if he didn’t know how to bridge the impossible chasm that had grown between us in the year he’d been gone.

He took a tentative step toward me.

“Raina, I—”

I didn’t let him finish. I couldn’t.

I turned away.

I didn’t know the precise reason why. Maybe a sudden, molten surge of old anger consumed me. Or maybe it was the sheer weight of the silence that had suffocated our separation, now too thick, too vast to let him just waltz back in as if nothing had fundamentally changed.

Because everything had changed. He had ensured it.

I walked faster now, my steps against the tiles becoming a frantic, rhythmic drumbeat. My breath came faster, shallow and panicked. I didn’t dare look back, not even once. My hand gripped my tote bag strap so tightly, the canvas dug into my shoulder, an immediate, grounding pain reminding me that I had to get away from this. From him.

I heard his footsteps following me, too close. They were a shadow I couldn’t escape, closing in.

“Lueraina, please—”

But I didn’t want to hear it. Not yet. Not now.

I reached the exit. The cool rush of the late afternoon air hit my face, a sudden reprieve. The campus was still busy—students heading to the parking lot, lining up for rides—oblivious to the small, private storm brewing inside me. My pulse hadn’t slowed; I could feel the heat of shame and panic rising to my cheeks.

I didn’t dare to look back.

As I slid into the familiar sanctuary of the passenger seat, I tried to steady my erratic breath. The warmth of the car and the soft hum of the engine felt distant, like I was on the edge of a memory I couldn’t quite reach.

Mama looked at me, her eyes scanning me with that familiar, unsettling knowing gaze. She could always tell when the delicate balance of my world had been thrown off-kilter.

"Are you okay, Lue?" She asked, her voice gentle, yet laced with a deep, instinctive concern.

I nodded, attempting to force a fragile, bright smile. "Yes, Ma. Let's go."

Mama didn’t seem convinced. Her eyes lingered, still studying me as she started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. The silence that settled between us was heavy—the kind of dense silence that only exists when someone is patiently waiting for you to articulate the truth you are not yet ready to speak.

As the car pulled away, the vivid image of him standing there, bathed in the late afternoon light, clung to me like a phantom limb. I had told myself, with determined repetition, that I was irrevocably done with the past. That I had painstakingly moved on. But then he had simply appeared, like an unshakable truth, and all the time we spent apart suddenly felt like a devastating, elaborate lie.

"You sure?" she asked again, her voice softer this time. "What happened? Is there a problem at school?"

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, turning to stare out the window, desperately trying to avoid her probing gaze. "Nothing, Ma. I’m probably just exhausted."

Mama didn’t push me further, but the tension in the air was undeniable. I could feel her eyes occasionally flicking over to me as we drove through the busy streets. I couldn’t shake off the haunting image of him—of his familiar face, like nothing had changed, even though everything had.

A few minutes passed before Mama broke the quiet again, her voice hushed now. "Lue, if something happened, you know you can talk to me, right? That was our promise to each other."

I swallowed hard, fighting back the tide of emotions threatening to spill over my carefully constructed walls. It was easier to keep the secret in, to continue the flawless pretense that I was fine. But Mama knew me too well; it was impossible to conceal it from her intuitive sight.

"He’s back," I whispered, the words barely audible, a confession to the wind.

Mama’s grip on the steering wheel tightened almost imperceptibly for just a second, but she kept her gaze fixed on the road ahead.

"Geighbryel?" she asked gently, her voice barely above a whisper. It was as if saying his name out loud might magically unearth all the buried pain I had fought so fiercely to inter.

I nodded, staring out the window as the memories I had tried so hard to bury started to creep in, chillingly tangible. "He was there earlier. Then I saw him… he was just standing there, Ma. After a whole year… after everything that happened."

Mama didn’t say anything at first. I could feel her processing the information, the heavy weight of the news settling into the atmosphere around us. The car slowed down as we approached an intersection, and the only sound that filled the car was the soft hum of the engine and the nervous, faint tap of my fingers against the armrest.

"How do you feel about that?" she asked, her voice careful now, like she was treading lightly on glass.

I swallowed hard. "Confused. Like... nothing changed, and everything's changed at the same time."

I shook my head, feeling utterly adrift. "I don’t know, Ma. I thought I was done. I thought I had moved on. But seeing him again... it’s like everything came rushing back, and I can’t make sense of it."

Mama didn’t reply immediately, giving me the vital space to gather my shattered thoughts. Finally, she spoke in that steady, reassuring tone I always relied on.

"The heart has its own way of healing, Lue. Sometimes, it takes time. But don’t let it control you. You have the power to decide what to do next."

I closed my eyes for a moment, taking in the wisdom of her simple words. "I don’t even know what I’m supposed to feel, Ma."

"You’ll figure it out," she said gently. "One step at a time."

She just drove, the steady hum of the car filling the space between us. We both knew that what I was feeling wasn’t something that could just be neatly fixed with words. Not yet.