An Unlikely Connection: Part 3

Chapter 8: New Beginning

"Is everything okay with you and Yosefin?" Vanessa said.

"I'll be home before dark," I said and left.

I drove to Maple Gardens without saying a word and no music playing inside of my car. The only few noises that filled my ears were the sounds of the tires rolling over concrete. Once I pulled into the park, the sounds of people skating came through my car. The sound amplified when I opened the door. There were tons of people out chilling, eating, lollygagging, and skating within the rink. I jumped in the rink without warming up.

I kept my mind occupied for hours, skating as long as I could. The temperature that morning wasn't hot, yet the cloudless sky made the sun slowly cook my skin. It turned the skin on my forearm pink. A few grades darker and I would have gotten sunburned. Luckily, the park had benches with umbrellas over them, and vending machines around. I ate a small snack, drank a bottle of cold electrolights to cool off, and then sat in silence. The people around me acted like my only source of distractions. I refused to open my phone because I didn't want to be tempted to speak with Yosefin.

"Let it go," I said out loud to myself over and over. "She made her choice," I said and looked straight ahead. Sitting on a bench without a parcel a few yards ahead was Yosefin. She had her head down into her hands. I could tell she was crying by the way her body kept shaking after she breathed in. The worry within me made me jog over to her without a second thought. "Hey," I said the moment I sat next to her.

"Josh?!" She said, looking at me with tear-filled eyes.

"What are you doing here?" Her tears poured out like spilling water from a cup when she blinked.

"I didn't do it," she wept in a shakey voice. "I couldn't do it!" I embraced her instead of asking her to clarify. She bawled loudly. Some people stared and came to see if she was okay. We had to move to the parking lot to get some privacy. "I couldn't go through it."

"What?"

"I didn't want to disappoint you," she said on the verge of crying again. "I didn't want to lose you to some stupid shit I created!" Suddenly, she screamed, "What the fuck is wrong with me?"

"Settle down," I said, massaging her upper arms. "What happened?"

"You said my name before you hung up," she wept with a turbulent frown.

"Yosefin?" Her frown got bigger and kept shaking.

"You called me Yose before you hung up. Why?"

"I thought that was what you wanted to become again." She cried some more but remained quiet. The more she cried, the more she had to use her arms to clear them up. I took off my shirt and gave it to her to use.

"I regret listening to them," she said with her face in my shirt.

"Who?"

"The doctors! My cousin! My dad!" Each sentence got louder than the one before it. When she mentioned her dad, she shouted his name. "Josh," she said, laying the side of her face on my chest. Her face was hot and sweaty. I said we should get in my car to cool off, but she didn't want to at the moment. "I'm sorry for all the bullshit I said and caused."

"You are a tough woman to be with," I said and kissed the top of her head. "What am I going to do with you?" She looked up at me with a worried face. Both of her eyebrows pushed inward and went inverted.

"If I were you and went through the shit you've endured, I would find someone less problematic." The suggestion to break up was something I thought about until she told me she didn't want to change. "You truly deserve someone better than this emotional wreck."