Blues

48. Wrapped In Blue

"Candice." I'm not surprised when Dylan merely states my name with his phlegmatic tone. He doesn't move an inch from his seated state, taking a swig from his beer while he intently watches me. It reminds me of the leadoff of our connection. He was always vacant and sharp-eyed. His devil-may-care attitude is one of the things that lured me into his den in the first place, but right now, I don't find that part of him attractive at all. If anything, it makes me want to slap that nonchalant look off his face, knowing how it flaunts one fact: He's back to the old version of himself.

The one that would sleep with a woman every night, and if one of those women got lucky, he would paint them. And it hurts. It hurts so bad, seeing him drifting away from me. Seeing him with a girl who isn't me. But do you know what makes my pain proliferate?

It's the fact that the girl he has in his hold is her.

Melody.

Someone whom I might have been considering a friend.

"As if I was in need of more drama." Dylan mutters under his breath, taking a puff of his cigarette, before he attempts to push Melody off his lap. "Get off."

I gape at him, and though I know that he's intoxicated, I can't help feeling like I'm discerning someone whom I've never encountered before. Or maybe that's how he's been all along, and it was me who kept disregarding how noxious he was, beautifying and romanticizing whatever he did to me.

Melody, who's rendered speechless, awkwardly shirks away from him, her eyes darting between us, her face—even under the motley colors—flushed bright red. Ensconcing her deeply remorseful gaze on me, she swallows. "If I asked you to give me a chance to explain, would you let me?" She asks, her quavery voice barely audible over the jangly music.

"Explain what, Melody?" I ask, my own voice faltering too, and I can barely hear it over the sound of my blood bumping. "The fact that I just saw you straddling the guy I've been with less than two weeks ago?"

"I swear I wasn't thinking!" She pleads, advancing closer. "I've been drinking, and my head isn't clear!"

I do the one thing I'm good at: letting out a laugh, which I'm sure sounds as woebegone to them as it does to my own ears. Truth be told, I find nothing to voice. It feels like I have a pair of hands enclosing my throat so tightly, disallowing any air to go through, much less words. And maybe it's just my head that finds it grueling to function and form a single apprehensible thought. However, Dylan doesn't find it very arduous to voice his own thoughts. "Was that the same excuse you fed to the boyfriend you cheated on?" He questions, sounding bored and insouciant. "What can I say? Once a traitor, always a traitor." He shrugs, supping his beer.

It takes every ounce of control in me not to seize that beer bottle and smash it onto his head. Howbeit, a part of me agrees, the same part who always doubted her. My instincts kept warning me, adducing her ex-boyfriend as a proof. And those are the same instincts who tried to keep me away from Dylan. And I wish I listened.

I wish I stayed away.

"I'm sorry, Candice. I really am." She repeats the same apology Dylan said to me only yesterday, and seeming to have lost her prepossession, she looks away, evading my gaze altogether, before she grapples her purse from the table, and marches away.

How many apologies to treat a deeply rived wound?

How many apologies to mend a shattered heart?

How many apologies to rehabilitate a damaged trust?

How many apologies before I stop hurting and move on?

I'd give a number. I'd join an auction and recite boundless numbers.