Love Letters

Love Letters (Part 39)

Cass returned from the changing room and I quickly pocketed my letter.

‘Ty, Alex said Kaia’s on her way to the shop now, you have to go and walk her down from the station.’

‘Why can’t you go?’

‘Because, it’s raining outside and I don’t want my hair to get frizzy.’

‘But I can't even remember what she looks like, am I supposed to stand there with a placard saying ‘Kaia’?’

She stared at me blankly until she realised I was joking, ‘Just go.’ She said more sternly, obviously not pleased with being made a fool of.

I left the shop and pulled my hood up over my head, unlike some, my hair wasn’t an issue, I just couldn’t see very clearly with the rain in my face.

When I reached the station there were so many people standing around that I had no idea where to start. One girl stood leaning against the wall so I walked up to her and she tilted her head up to look at me.

‘Ah, you made me die!’ She muttered.

‘Sorry?’

‘My character, you distracted me and I died.’ She replied, pointing to her phone.

‘Sorry.’

‘Stop saying sorry so much.’

‘Uh… well, sorry. I mean… Are you Kaia?’

‘Nope.’

‘Oh.’

Someone touched me briefly on the shoulder and I turned around,

‘Tyler?’ For a moment she looked just like the girl from the department store. I stared at her and wondered if it was in fact the girl I’d seen but when I blinked, I could no longer see any resemblance between that girl and the girl standing in front of me.

‘Hey, Tyler?’ She asked, repeating herself again, assuming that I hadn’t heard her the first time.

‘Kaia?’

‘Yeah, hi, should we…?’ she motioned towards the exit.

‘Yeah, right, let’s get out of here.’ I had no idea how to make conversation with her, I’d known her for pretty much all of my childhood but right now I felt like I didn’t know her at all. I wondered why I had thought she resembled that other girl and I looked at her again as we walked out together. She had a similar hair colour and was about the same height but that’s where all the similarities ended.

They were very different to each other. No doubt Kaia was good looking but that girl had more subtle beauty. She was by no means ugly or even close to ugly but there was just something about her that had made me almost recognise her but obviously, that would’ve been ridiculous.

‘You don’t have an umbrella?’ Kaia asked, taking in my soaking wet appearance as I shook my head.

She shrugged, ‘never mind, I’ve got one. It should cover the both of us, hopefully.’

So we walked through the rain, Kaia and I, our shoulders touching as we attempted to shelter ourselves from the brutal rain. She dragged her luggage behind her and we took it in turns to lug the brute to the shop while the other held the umbrella. At one point her umbrella turned inside out and she struggled to rectify it so I offered to take it off her and turned it back out but by the time I’d done it, we were both soaked through completely. She was wearing a flimsy jumper with a pair of jeans and she’d already started shivering.

I thought about taking off my jacket and passing it to her, but I didn’t want to, for two reasons.

Firstly, I was half-shivering to death myself and secondly, I didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. But I knew it was the decent thing to do so I took it off as quickly as I could and offered it to her at an arms-length.