Letting You Go Was The Hardest Thing

Letting you go was the hardest thing - Chapter One

Letting you go was the hardest thing

Copyright © 2011 All rights reserved

Chapter One

Picture on the side is Charlotte (Model Violet Budd)

Four years later...

"Hi! This is Meredith. I can't come to the phone right now. Please leave a message after the beep and I'll get back to you." 

 "Damn it," I cursed as I still held my phone to my ear. "I can't believe this - no! I can't believe them!" I growled, then dialed my mom's number, but it went straight to voicemail, again.

"Any luck, Charlie bear?" my best friend since freshmen year, Mike, asked as he drove towards UCLA for our graduation.

I didn't answer; I was fuming, seething in anger as I prodded hard on the keys of my cellphone. I couldn't resist sending a very upsetting text message to my lovely mother asking why they were not here, in Los Angeles, to attend my graduation. I specifically told Caroline a week ago about it and when I tried to call them about their arrangements, all I got was the voicemail - the whole week.

Despite the anger, I wondered if  this was payback for missing my own high school graduation four  years ago. Could it be? But then again, I thought we were already past that stage when I called six months after I left to apologize, why I suddenly left and told them not to terrorize Caroline for not saying anything.

And then there's not coming home for breaks and holidays.

For the last four years, I had exhausted all means of evasion I could think of why I couldn't come home. The web of alibis I had accumulated seemed to compile like a thick book and the saddest part of it, was to avoid a certain someone who I coudn't seem to forget.

Yeah, him.

He still invaded my every thought, and there was not one day that I wasn't thinking about him.

It sucked.

"Charlie bear?" Mike asked again.

I looked up from my phone and turned my head to him. "Oh," I said, shaking my head. "I'm sorry. It's just that -- "

"It's okay," he interrupted then grinned, still eyeing the road. "Maybe this is payback for missing your own graduation," then he snickered like a dork.

This was what I loved about Mike - great minds think alike.

Michelangelo, or Mike as he liked to be called, was of Italian descent: broad shoulders, muscular, tan skin, dark brown hair styled in a buzz cut and his eyes, damn those light brown eyes that could  make any girl weak in the knees! And let's not forget his cool tattoos on his left arm and collarbone.

He is what you call a 'womanizer', not a 'playboy' which he strongly tried to differentiate to whoever called him any deplorable name relating to his lifestyle. As he always stated, he was not a playboy because he doesn't bang and go. The difference was that he bangs and actually develops a relationship with a girl - relationship meaning more on the physical side - then drops them like a hot potato maybe three weeks to a month. Two months was his longest, surprisingly.

We had a couple classes together since we belong to same department. He tried to make a pass at me during freshmen year and believe me, he did everything he could to make me swoon, but I was immune. I wasn't sucked into his vortex because like I said, there was only one guy on my mind and I guess you already know who that is.