Until I Met You

18: Until I Met You

Chapter 18

I wasn’t one to skip school. I would always be on time for class and, the only reason I would even think of taking a day off would be if I was insanely sick. Sure, I know that I technically skipped school that one day when I decided not to go on the boat excursion, however, I would’ve just been sitting in a classroom with nothing to all day if I had indeed stayed for the duration of that day.

Today, however, was not a justified excuse.

It didn’t even occur to me when I made the choice to track down Cason this morning that I was essentially skipping the day of school and, honestly, at the moment I didn’t even care.

“So,” Cason started. We were still situated on at the edge of the pier next to each other, however, we had actually been keeping a less-serious conversation for the past half an hour or so. “I’m suddenly remembering something that may make you slightly upset…”

“Yes?” I asked, edging him on to continue. I wasn’t that scared of opening up to this guy anymore. Believe it or not, I actually felt quite safe around him since he also shared with me a part of his part.

“I was just wondering why you used to get so upset when I called you Jessa the first couple of times?” he asked curiously, leaning back and resting all of his weight on his hands.

“Umm…” I said as I ducked my head and starting fiddling with my hands, thinking of a way to tell him the truth.

Suddenly, another hand came out of nowhere to rest atop of mine. Looking up, I saw that Cason had a small and encouraging smile on his face as he left his hand on top of mine.

A smile of my own made its way onto my face for a split second; however, it was long enough for Cason to recognize it before my expression turned to one of simple sadness. “When I was younger both of my parents used to call me Jessa because I didn’t particularly like the name Jessalyn; it was too long and I guess I just didn’t consider it to be a normal name. Anyways, as I grew up a little, I told my parents to start calling me by my actual name because I then felt happy to have a unique name while I was filled in a class with to Mark’s and three Sara’s.” I explained, laughing slightly as I felt a couple of tears gather in the corner of my eyes.

“I guess along the way my mom sort of gave up and started to call me Jessalyn, but my dad,” I said, shaking my head in an amused fashion even though I was also trying so hard not to cry. “He never gave the nickname up. Eventually everybody else had stopped calling me Jessa except for my dad. I guess when you started calling me by that name I was still missing my dad a lot and, I got mad at you the first couple of times before I realized that it was just a nickname.”

I looked up at the sky as I finished my explanation, and kept my head like that until the teardrops in my eyes evaporated or disappeared.

When I glanced over at Cason with dry eyes, I saw that he had a very guilty look plastered upon his face, but before I could tell him that everything was alright, he started to speak.

“Oh god!” he grunted, starting off his explanation by running a stressed face down his regretful face. “The first time I called you Jessa I remember seeing a mask of anger appear on your face, but I just ignored it. I thought you were being stuck up and annoying by telling me that I couldn’t give you a nick name. I was so stupid! I didn’t even think that there could be some other reason that you weren’t comfortable talking about as to why you didn’t like the name, and then I just continued calling you by that name.”