Perfectly Imperfect

Chapter 1A :: Chasing All The Things That Keep Me Young

Goodbye. People have told me that it’s the hardest thing to say.

At one point in time, I might have agreed. But now is not the point. The reason we’re both here is the past. Our story starts with a fairly easy and abrupt goodbye. Well -- maybe not our story. My story.

If the retelling is as interesting as living through it, well... let’s just say you’re in for one hell of a ride.

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I turned my head around the small diner to see every other person staring back at me.

Great, we were making a scene. There goes my tip money.

I swallowed my remorse and sighed, looking back into the green eyes of the instigator of today’s problems. I crossed my arms to show the disdain I felt at Jullian’s lack of cooperation. How typical, I huffed in my mind. It was kind of scary how familiar I was with these situations.

5...4...3...2...

“But why?” he finally spluttered after our small staring match. It was probably the tenth time he had said it.

Why is it that guys always can’t believe they’re being rejected? Jullian should have seen this coming a mile away- it was quite obvious we had been drifting apart lately.

I bit back the urge to roll my eyes, “I already told you, Jullian.”

The face every girl I knew called adorable or sweeter than sugar scrunched up with confusion and hurt, “Since when is ‘it’s not working’ a solid excuse? Why is it not working?”

“I don’t know!” I threw my hands up in frustration.

So much for handling this maturely....

To say he wouldn’t snap after this would be asking too much, “What the hell do you mean by that?”

“It just didn’t feel right, okay?” I mumbled, casting my eyes down from his to avoid looking like I was challenging him.

He sighed and ran a hand through his heavenly curls, “Who says that it won’t feel right later on? It felt right to me. I care about you. Why don’t you give me another chance?”

I gave him a disbelieving look, “I know I won’t ever feel right with you. And don’t you dare say that you care about me. I’m not stupid. You never paid any attention to anything I was saying... you were too busy staring at other girls’ butts. I’m not a jealous person, but you were laying it on way too thick.”

He looked into my eyes, searching for weak links in my will. After a minute it was apparent that he had found none.

“Whatever, I’m out,” he turned on his heel and stormed out. His oh-so-creative last word would have been more impressive had it not been for the cutsie jingle the door's bell made when it slammed shut.

Nirali stared after him from beside me, shifting unformortably from one foot to the other. “You didn’t have to embarrass him like that in front of the entire diner...” she whispered.

I shrugged and continued wiping down the table as I had been doing before Jullian interrupted.

If you ask me, I had already done everything I could to avoid hurting Jullian more than this. I already broke up with him yesterday in private. He came here today in front of an audience to try and guilt trip me into taking him back. But I wasn’t going to badmouth him right now, so I didn’t bother explaining my reasons to Nirali.

She sighed and tucked a lock of perfect, jet-black hair behind her ear. Nirali always looked like she had stepped out of a Bollywood movie. She also had a lot of disdain for my dating habits. I knew a lecture was coming... especially since she had fancied Jullian herself.