Dear Celia

X

November 

The days seemed to merge with one another. Everyday was the same. Get up, eat, maybe watch some TV or read or take a walk, eat, sleep, repeat. It was an endless cycle of torture and boredom, but I genuinely did not want to do anything else. With dreadful realization, I knew I had become one of those mopey teenagers who just drowned themselves in self-pity after a terrible breakup. I once judged them and thought that it was stupid to feel sorry for yourself, but now I could understand why. When you’ve lost something so important in your life to something so selfish and pathetic, you don’t really want to do anything else, because anything can remind you of what you lost.

In this case, it was walking into town to do Auntie Marie’s errands.

I stopped getting groceries or picking up the mail and fell back into the routine I had had before I met Celia. It was five years of absolutely nothing, and I wondered if being Celia’s friend was any better than those five years because honestly, they both hurt as much.

I wondered if Auntie Marie knew that something was up with me. If this happened three months ago, she would have caught on instantly and found some way to cheer me up, but she was busy with Uncle Jed. He forgot to do simple things now, like to wash himself or eat meals and it broke Auntie Marie’s heart. It broke mine too, and I wondered if I deserved to be selfish enough to cry over Celia.

With that thought in mind, I decided to pick up milk for Auntie Marie one Thursday in mid-November.

It proved to be the worst idea ever.

I marched into town with the mantra, “Get over Celia” echoing in my head, because that was the whole point in going into town. I had to man up and realize that this was a normal teenager thing to be rejected by a girl. Every man had to have gone through this at some point, right?

But the moment I saw her, everything fell apart.

It was like looking at something so surreal that all you could feel was this ice-cold shock and nauseating feeling as everything that hurt came rushing back. All I could see was her, and her green eyes and crooked glasses and heart-breaking face.

It made it worse to see another boy standing next to her with his arm around her waist.

“Lucas!” Celia exclaimed in surprise, staring at me with wide eyes.

“Um,” I stuttered, almost dropping the carton of milk I was holding as I searched for words. My face felt unusually warm, and my palms were sweating. “Hi...” It had been almost a month and a half since I last saw her, and the memory was painful enough.

“W-what are you doing here?” she asked somewhat cheerily, extracting the boy’s arm from her waist and holding onto his hand instead as she took a step towards me.

“Just… um.” I raised the carton of milk.

“Right,” Celia said awkwardly. Then, as if she knew an awkward silence would soon enfold, she stepped aside and said, “Lucas, this is Chase. My, um, boyfriend.”

I nodded at the guy. “Hi.”

“Hey,” he replied. He looked like any other 18-year-old boy with his beanie and hoodie and Vans sneakers and pretty-boy looks.

“Lucas is my, um…” She faltered, and I stared at her waiting for her to say something. She didn’t.

What was I to her, anyway? I wasn’t her friend anymore, and definitely not anywhere close to her ex-boyfriend. The realization struck me like a cold punch. What had Celia and I even become in the last few months?