Pedestrian |✓

|1| s t r a w b e r r y

Love. What is love anyway? Is it that wonderful and tingly feeling you get when your crush's arm lightly brushes against yours? The way your heart beats a little bit faster when he says your name, making it sound a little more special than the way you usually hear it? Are the sparks that travel through the tips of your hands to the end of your nerves define it? Is it the butterflies that attack your stomach when he gets closer or the sweet scent of his cologne filling your nostrils? The slow-mo moment when everything just stops and his hair would whip sexily sideways, as he walks towards your direction wearing that heart-stopping smile of his?

Is it the way he held your hand and you just felt so secured? The way you see your future with him unfold in front of you with just one 'I love you'? Can you say that it is love when he kisses you under the stars while everyone cooed and awwed?The way his eyes sparkle when you kiss his cheek for the first time, the sound of his chuckle when he finds your blush amusing, those kisses that make your toes curl and leave you out of breath? Is it love? Was that love?

I don't know. It never happened to me because I was one of those people who stood outside the limelight, who claps after the couple kissed. Who support their best friend when the love of their life finally asked them out. The one who watches when a guy declare his undying love for his girlfriend and cheer with the crowd. Their waitress on the first date, the passerby when they're kissing heavily under the rain, the one who listens to their love story, the one who gives advice, the one who has the locker beside the nerd but was never mentioned in the story.

I was one of the students who are mentioned when the author needs to show the reader that the protagonist is in school. The one who sits at the table next to them in the cafeteria but "never heard" their conversations even if it was too loud. I was one of those who would side-step because the hot bad boy is arriving with his posse or maybe because the mean girls are on their way.

I was the extra in every love story because I'm not popular nor a nerd. I don't hate a bad boy slash player who has a dark past that nobody knew, I wasn't in love with a dork who's secretly a hottie behind those big framed glasses and baggy sweatshirts that cover his drool-worthy six-pack.

I was just there. I am the pedestrian student that's usually described in three words: student, classmate, people and that's it. I was there to supply the gap in between the bottom and top of the chain, to make a point that the main character is somewhere, to emphasize the cliques. To show the difference.

I was one of the people who had to be there or who will patronize the it crowd? Who would watch as the nerd gets tripped and laughed at? Who would be there to join the food fight that they started? Who would be the people, crowding the parties that the popular crowd hosted? Who would be there to block the way when the nerd's running late and is clumsily making their way to their locker on a fast speed but someone is walking too slow in front of her, so she would side-step me and would bump into the right person who would turn out to be so hot. Pfft.

So who would that be if we weren't there? Right, no one. So there had to be me, there had to us. There had to be pedestrian people who fill in the space between them before they find real love.

Love only happens to the people on top and at the bottom of the food chain, not to us. I learned that years ago, living with cliché people. My mom was a nerd who fell in love with a player who happens to be my dad, my sister was the popular kid who fell in love with the dork. Then there was me.

In my entire seventeen years of life, I only had two boyfriends. The first one was in middle school - Sam and the other one was in sophomore year-Mackenzie, who both became my boyfriend for two months.