RUNAWAY GROOM

Chapter Two: Wedding Day Hijinks

I remember when I first met Francis, he was the new kid in my school during junior year and everyone wanted to be his friend, his accent, his attitude and his demeanor made you want to get closer to him, but he always was closed off. Sure he can hold conversations but he preferred being a recluse, he enjoyed the quiet that's why art class was his favorite.

We had an art class together and to my luck, there was an empty seat next to me considering my class was uneven and no one wanted to sit next to me. So Francis took it. I remember what he wore that day, he had a white shirt with this leather jacket on and washed denim jeans with ankle coffee brown boots.

I knew he was stylish just from his attitude toward other people, he always did try to make time for his peers around him but still felt lonely. He was like an animal who loved its owner but the second they left they hated it.

In the art class, we were doing self-portraits, A mirror was bent on a stand so we could see each other, and my portrait looked like something that a child made to have their parents hang up on their fridge.

I glanced next to me and I saw Francis' and to say shocked would be an understatement, it looked so much like him and it was so good my mouth flew agape.

"That looks so cool." I exclaimed.

Francis turns to face me.

"Thanks, mate." Francis smiles.

"I wish I could draw like that." I start then I pick up my horrible self-portrait.

"It's not that bad mate." He expresses.

I look at him like I was just asked the most confusing math question ever. I feel like I could smell his bullshit to make me feel better from a mile away.

"Your kidding right?" I ask.

"It looks like something that a kindergartener would make, actually you know what? A kindergartener can make something better than this." I explain.

Francis has a light chuckle fit and then stops.

"Your funny mate. How about I help you?" He smiles.

"Help me how? It's supposed to be a self-portrait." I shrug.

Francis takes my paper from in front of me and flips the other side and starts sketching, with occasional times when he kept staring at me, I felt like I shouldn't move or even said anything cause I was so scared of him making me look even worse then I drew myself.

"Hey, can you smile for me?" I give him a smile with teeth, even though I'm insecure about them, Eve and Jeremiah have a field day talking about my teeth.

After a couple of minutes he's done, he shows me the picture and I'm completely shocked. It looked like looking in a mirror, seeing my smiling face in a picture almost made me giddy like a little schoolgirl. I grabbed the picture in amazement. I couldn't believe the new kid helped me smile so much just from a picture.

After that day we always talked in art class, we started hanging out, and hell we even planned to get matching tattoos after we graduated high school. But everything changed when he started dating my sister.

He rarely drew anything, he stopped making our inside jokes to each other, we barely got to hang out, and his whole view on life changed. It was like Eve changed the fun things about him and made Francis a robot.

He was different and I hated that he had to keep impressing Eve to make her happy. I could see he was slipping to keep up with Eve that's when he popped the big question.

Now we're both twenty-two and he's sulking somewhere while I'm sitting in the place where the wedding would have happened. Aniyah is laying her head on my lap while Liv is sitting behind us on another bench.