"You drew stars around my scars, but now I'm bleeding..."
Gaia Ashmore has lived under the radar of her strict mother all her life. Every aspect of her life - from her fashion sense to her career - is controlled by her mother. And even when Gaia mov...
"You're crying out behind the smiles and I can see right through your lies, and what we had is dead inside you're acting like it's still alive." – Hardest To Love, The Weekend
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I DIDN'T BOTHER wondering about the blue-eyed girl after our brief conversation - even if she crossed my mind endless times without warning.
For instance, I was sitting in the coffee shop, Moonlight Cafe, a little far to the east side of the university, sipping my usual black coffee; she crossed my mind. I was typing up my essay for the course assignment about why I picked psychology; she crossed my mind. I passed by a flower shop and saw a girl that looked exactly like her smelling a rose; she crossed my mind.
It was like she was everywhere. The littlest of things reminded me of her. The most random of things. I was perplexed as to why the universe was trying to force someone as good as her into my life. But I was hell-bent on making sure she'd never enter my messed up life.
I did apologise to her. And that was the very last page of our storyline; the end of it. There was nothing more to be said or done about it; she said she was over the whole incident. And after hearing her response, I decided to move on as well.
Not that it mattered. It would always come back to haunt me anyways. Just like the wretched night that made me regret my very existence every day.
There were clouds floating in the sky mindlessly as a light breeze brushed past me to bring in the calmest of senses. I walked through the dimly lit streets of Oxford with my headphones blasting NF's discography, finding the music best to distract me from my surroundings and my thoughts.
My mother's rented apartment, where I started living after shifting from Turkey because of my admission into the University of Oxford, was quite far from the university. Initially, she suggested I use public transport to and fro, but due to my discomfort with communicating with strangers or just their presence, I decided it was best to simply walk the distances with my headphones on, enjoying the fact that people minded their own business.
My mother was the kind of woman who'd distribute sweets around the neighbourhood whether or not she had good news or a reason to celebrate. She was friendly, kind and the only one who didn't see me as everyone else in the world.
She was only twenty when she first got married to my late father, saying that it was love at first sight. He'd come from Germany to Turkey for work and first saw her at a coffee shop there. It was the innocent kind of love that lit up a candle for the world to be brighter. Their marriage followed the introduction of three boys - Aslan, Kemal and me, Ilkay, being the youngest.
