Style: Fiction
Statement: N/A
You’re sitting on a cold bench, slightly shivering in a skin tight jacket, which, unfortunately, was soaked through by the rain. Most of the streetlights are off, save for a couple, and traffic has mostly gone. It feels like it could be just you, alone in the glimmering city, glistening with the sky’s sadness. You sigh and rub your arms in an futile effort to stay warm, but to no avail.
When you realize it's no use, you instead turn your attention to observing the weather, fixating on every drop to give your mind something else to focus on, other than the cold, and the other pressing issue on your mind: the messy fight you just had. YOU did not mean for the date to end as it had, you just got so frustrated at Brandon’s lack of understanding of something really important to you: your sexuality. He couldn’t understand that you could be attracted to two genders, didn’t understand that you weren’t “a stupid cheater who could leave me at any moment.“ ……..
At least the sky matches your mood. You can see the raindrops falling down, down, d o w n, hitting the ground like fat teardrops too big to stay on the sky’s face. You giggle a little at your internal poeticness. That’s not going away, despite Brandon saying “you need to grow up.”
Quickly sobering up, you start to feel hot tears prick the back of your eyelids. It feels like a million ghost peppers at once. You just want to go home. You just want the bus to come. You just want to be warm. Slowly dissolving into your own thoughts, you feel a panic attack coming on. But suddenly, out of the gloom of night, your eyes make out… another person?
The seemingly person-shaped shadow makes its way towards you, and you feel a mix of emotions. Scared, happy, excited. They come closer, step by step, shadows getting smaller and smaller, until finally, finally, you suddenly feel a little less cold and miserable and all things bad. After all, it can’t be so bad with another person.
Finally, the person stops. Right where you are.
Eyes drawn upwards, you see a person, a lady standing over, her gloved fingers curled around the hook of an umbrella, the loveliest creation known to mankind (or so it seemed to you at that moment).
For a second, a millisecond, it feels like the world isn’t the only thing that’s frozen. Then she plops herself down.
She doesn’t say anything at first, just simply holds out a gloved hand, and turns to face you, with eyes that look like warm pools of hot cocoa you could drown in for hours.
Breath catching momentarily, and cheeks flushing fire engine red, as an unfamiliar, but not entirely unwelcome sensation digs its way into your stomach, you slowly reach out your hand twine it around hers.
You both burst out laughing breathily at the same time. Who would’ve thought a cute meet could happen at a bus stop? Not Sandra Bullocks or Tom Hanks or any other famous actor or actress in a rom com, that’s for sure.
She smiles and says, “I’m Vicky. Well, technically it's Vishwa, but my friends call me Vicky. And you seem like someone in need of a friend right now.”
Her eyes flick downwards towards your lips at the word friend, and you smile a little.
“I’m Emily. And yes, I do need someone right now. Well, I might need your umbrella more but I’ll take you (and your number) as an added bonus”
As Vicky smiles and reaches out for your phone to add her contact in, you smile. Somehow, wait for the bus? Doesn’t seem so bad after all.