Polaroids

BONUS: FIRST DATE

Dedicated to @abandoned-waves for giving me this idea so if anyone was interested in reading something like this then thank him/her because s/he persuaded me to do this.

MAY 15TH 1987 @ 5:41PM

The door is swinging open and shut as people walk through but none of them are him. She looks at the time impatiently and decides that if he doesn't turn up in ten minutes then she would be leaving.

She sighs and looks down at the table that she has chosen beside the window. It would make sense that on her first ever date she would get stood up on. It was inevitable for people like her.

People made their promises, you let them in and take down your walls and in return they just burn everything inside down. They fuck you up and move on, leaving a confused, crazy girl behind.

She's not even sure why she agreed to this date. Maybe it was because she felt sorry for him, standing so nervously as he ran his hand through his curls over and over. Maybe it was his slight stutter as he asked her that made her feel sympathy for him because she wasn't really the most approachable person.

Or maybe it was his bravery that took her in because she wasn't used someone asking her out so openly and in front of all those people who hate her and would love to see her dead.

She looks around the little restaurant that he had told her to meet up at. It was small but it was cosy and she already felt safe with the slow swaying music and dark lit room. She hadn't the foggiest clue what home really felt like but she imagined it was something close to this.

She was just about the grab her bag and stand up, swearing as she did so. She turned to the door and dithered a bit. Now she was up she was second guessing whether she should wait or not.

The decision should have been easy. He'd ditched her and he wasn't coming so what the fuck was she waiting for? Somewhere in the corners of her mind though, she wanted to give him a few more minutes.

Just in time, the door swung open loudly and then she heard some clattering and loud swearing in Italian. She turned around to see Adriano lying on the floor with one foot in a bucket and a mop on his head. He was soaking wet.

"That asswipe! What the fuck has he done now?" she muttered under her breath.

She walked over to him and pursed her lips. He was twelve minutes and forty seconds late. He looked back at her, his brow dripping with water and looked almost defeated. The mop covered half of his bronze face but still he was smiling.

His smile dropped when he saw Helen walking towards him and turned into a nervous chuckle.

"Hey, umm Helen, can we talk about this? I'm so sorry for being late and making this a huge mess and this is probably one of the worst dates that you have ever been on and I'm probably making it so much worse by talking right now but I'm—"

He stopped. Because the most astonishing thing happened. Helen was laughing. Not just small laughter, but a full belly laugh that went on forever and it sounded like music to Adriano's ears. His heart swelled with pride that he, Adriano De Luca, had made the most beautiful girl that he had ever seen laugh.

He stuck his hand out and together they lifted him out of the mess, whilst he promised to pay for all the mess he had caused though he pointed out that maybe the mop and bucket shouldn't have been put in such a position that it was easy to fall over.

Helen couldn't understand what was happening during the date. She was happy and smiling and it felt so unnatural after so long but it felt so natural to be with him. She was so used to having a stoic face, devoid of emotion and now she felt like she was an open book.

She learnt that he was an aspiring photographer and he took a picture later on that date, of her laughing and smiling and she looked like a pure angel. She tried to get him to delete it but he wouldn't and eventually she relented.

She learnt that his father was an general in the army and that his Italian blood was from his mother. She learnt that he had no siblings and all his cousins lived in Italy or Mexico.

And she told him about herself too. She couldn't stop and it was like she had been injected with a truth serum because she didn't lie about anything. She told him things she had never told anyone and for days, she felt so angry that she had let her guard down with him.

But in the months that followed, she was so glad that she had. Because even after hearing some of the worst things about herself, he had stayed.

Adriano did everything he could to make her laugh and every time he succeeded he thought that there was no better sound in the entire universe than her laugh. And god forbid, he ever did anything to make her cry because she had already suffered so much and he would never forgive himself if she ever did.

He promised himself that that day would never come.