Between These Lines ✔️

e i g h t : r a i n y d a y s

A double update, because it might take me a long time to again lol
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Dear Wren,

There's always something romantic about rainy days.

I don't know why. Maybe it's because I'm a girl, and girls find things appealing especially when it's done under pouring raindrops. Kissing, dancing, the bull they pull off in at least a hundred chick flicks ever shown. You know the stuff.

Among the countless rainy days I have seen to grace the earth, there was one particular time I remember the most. Heavy downpour, close to a thunderstorm. Perfect. My class was over and I was sitting at the library floor, in a corner between bookshelves seldom visited and beside a glass windowpane that overlooked the school's parking lot, waiting for my dad's car to show up.

You had a basketball practice then so you can't give me a ride home. My ears were occupied with the puffy ear coat of my headphone, but I wasn't listening to anything. I was watching long rivulets of rainwater form and flow outside the window, interconnecting and separating all at once, when I felt a tap on my shoulder and saw Jake Higgins sit across from me.

'Do you mind if I join you?' He asked me. I hung the headphone on my neck. 'I do, but you already did,' I told him and although I wanted it to sound like I'm kidding, it came off as rude that he seemed to flinch.

'Hey, uhm, that's not what I meant. Of course you can join me.' I said. He uttered an uncomfortable okay and pushed his eyeglasses at the bridge of his nose, a thing he does when he's nervous. We weren't the closest friends, and it was the first time I have spoken a word to him in months, but there are just certain behaviors you can notice with people.

After that came an utter silence. Jake started flipping through the page of a sci-fi book he was reading. 'So what do you wanna talk about?' I asked him after a while. 'Nothing,' he told me simply. 'You came to join me for nothing?' Yet again I asked. 'No, I came to join you in your peace and quiet. It's like a jungle outside of here. Silence comes rarely, so I take it where I may.' He smiled.

And I realized how right he was. I was so used to the noise of your world, I thought I started craving for it. The endless gibberish about parties, gossips, dramas. 'You can go back to your music. Don't worry about small talk.' He encouraged and bent his head back down. I watched him in front of me. Dressed in a tweed sweater, he looked like an English professor. His pants were loose, so outdated from the skinnies guys prefer wearing nowadays; his hair cut clean and short. I heard people whisper faggot behind his back all the time.

Was that the noise he heard everyday? Was what he called a jungle the world I thought I fit perfectly in?

'I'm not listening to any music. This headphone's a fluke.' I smiled, shoving both pity and guilt under it. He looked up and returned me a warm smile, 'I knew it. Who uses headphones still anyway?' 'Me,' I told him proudly and he just shook his head and went back to his reading. But I can sense he was no longer into it with the way he'd flick his eyes back up at me from time to time. I dived in.

'Jake...do you ever have plans on you know...coming out?' I uttered. He froze and I regretted saying anything at all. 'Because it's never gonna be a bad thing...' I tried to make it right.

'Ellie...' He said my name, and there was something with the way he said it, the way he was looking at me. Like I don't know. Sadness, wistfulness...urgency.

And that's when you came in. Freshly showered, you looked between the two of us indifferently. You hated seeing me talk with other guys, but I knew Jake would be an exception. Practice finished early, so you were taking me home. I grabbed my things, stood up, and tentatively waved Jake goodbye. He said nothing and didn't even look me in the eyes. He only did when I made a mistake of looking back and saw him watching us walk away.

The entire drive was silent. I was. You asked me what was wrong and I told you I was just tired. It wasn't an entire lie. So no, that rainy day wasn't remarkable in a way that we kissed and danced under the crying sky. It was more romantic than that.

It was when the illusion of beauty I perceived your world to be in, started to crumble.

Ellie

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a/n: I hope you haven't forgotten about Jake Higgins yet. It took his name to come resurface in the story. I have mentioned him in the third chapter, if I'm not mistaken.

*And you guys, I did something undeniably crazy. I entered my other work titled Catching Lola Rivers for the Watty's this year. I was thinking of backing out since there's like a 2000% chance that I won't win, but since it's there I figured I'm just gonna wing it lol. Anyways, I hope you can check it out. It's only ten parts long and already completed so you don't have to agonizingly wait for updates anymore. So yeah? *wiggles eyebrows*

I hope I'm doing this sales-talking right.

Please check out my friend's books as well. Her name's iiInfinityii and she's a crazy good writer.

Until the next update. Ciao! :)