CHOICES (Completed)

INNOVATIVE MESSES

I put the copy of The Notebook back into the shelf as I move along the aisle, looking for something good. I want to read, I want to feel calm.

I walk between the shelf when my eyes fall on The Great Gatsby. I take it out and move my finger over the page.

-just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning all over again with the summer.

I hear Trevor’s voice reading the book to me, in my head and I smile sorrowfully.

I loved Hardin. And I can’t let this go on. I didn’t miss Trevor. I just missed the moments we spent, ones I was happy in. So I’ll just have to make new moments. With Hardin.

I hear footsteps behind me and it’s only when I know that person was coming to me, I turn. I turn to look into the bluest of eyes I had just been thinking of not moments ago.

He just looks straight into me and his eyes hold a moment of confused surprise before he whisks it away. He closes in and reaches out his hand a bit.

“Do you mind?” I blink and then realise he meant the book. The one in my hands.

I look down at it and then hand it over, our fingers brushing momentarily. I swallow. He still looks affronted, from before and he turns away to walk back when I speak up.

“You’ve read it already.” He pauses and turns back slightly to look at me.

“Just reliving some things.” Just exactly what I was doing. I don’t know if it was creepy or beautiful.

“Hardin saw us. Together-“ He turns completely to face me, looking at my face blankly. I don’t know what possessed me to tell him that. But if I want to keep us together, I have to stay away from Trevor. And he needs to know where we stand too.

“-and he chose to assume certain things.”

“He can choose all he wants.” He dismisses it casually and it puts me at unease. This probably meant nothing to him, but Hardin and me, us, meant a great deal to me.

“Trevor you, uh, you don’t know anything about Hardin and me. And I’ve waited too long for this to happen. And now that it finally, has happened, I just don’t want it to blow off.

So it will be better if that kiss or anything of that night does not come to Hardin’s atten-“

“God is that what it meant to you?! That HARDIN shouldn’t know. That was all there was to it?” He whisper yells and takes a few steps closer to me and I back off reflexively as I hit the shelf.

I stare right back into his eyes and I could see hurt flashing. And I could tell that my eyes reflect it too, as I relive the moment within me.

“You have no idea what it meant to me.” I whisper lightly. I have to let it go. I have to eat up that night. It never happened.

“Oh believe me, I do now.

I was devastated and broken to no measure and still all that meant so much to me which clearly was just another secret to hide from your boyfriend, that too when you were in a perfectly stable condition.”

“Perfectly stable condition! You think I was in a perfectly stable condition when I had to hear all that, see you relive all that pain when I was myself-“