Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 35

And in that instant, my heart opened.

Because I remembered it all.

I remembered that almost-kiss on the beach, when his eyes searched mine and we leaned in, close enough to taste the electricity, until the flash of a flashlight and the stern voice of a tanod made us scramble apart, laughing breathlessly as we ran.

"Seeking my pride when there else nothing to hide…"

I remembered the arcade, the clatter of tokens, the burst of laughter when he beat me at Zombie Shooter, then lost on purpose so I could win the last round. The neon lights made his eyes look gentler, softer.

The ferris wheel, how he looked like he wanted to say something but didn’t. How our fingers found each other anyway, slowly intertwining, palm to palm like a whispered promise.

"Let me just waking up together with you…"

The fishball stand where he insisted on adding too much sauce to his. The way he stole one from my stick and nearly choked laughing when he didn't like the wsy it tasted.

The theme park, where he tried winning me a stuffed toy and failed miserably. I teased him, and he claimed it was rigged. That day was all sunshine, us racing down crowded paths like kids who had nothing to run from, only toward.

"Faking a smile there’s no reason to cry…"

I remembered the way he kissed me in the curb, our first, hesitant, urgent, confusing. And the second one, in the car, quieter, full of things we didn’t know how to say yet. The one where I started to fall for real.

And the ocean.

The weight of water. The panic. My limbs failing. And his arms, pulling me back to air. To life.

"It’s breaking my mind to see the truth is a lie…"

And through all of it, the jar inside me, the one that held everything I couldn’t say, was growing lighter.

Not because I emptied it.

But because something else had started to fill me.

"There’s no logic in life but darling love is understandable…"

His voice broke again on that word, darling. My breath caught.

Love didn’t need to be big or grand or clean.

It could be messy. Spicy fishballs. Missed carnival prizes. Interrupted almost-kisses. Gasping for air and being pulled back into it.

It could be this.

"I’m not a prodigy it is just my agony…
The plants in my hand I have to risk it all…"

I looked at him, not the James people whispered about. Not the James I tried to save.

Just James Andrew Gray.

The boy who once said he wasn’t worth loving, singing like he finally believed he was.

"It’s hurting my eye to see what’s going on…
Let me just waking up together with you…"

And suddenly, I wasn’t afraid anymore.
Not of what tomorrow might hold. Not of what people might say. Not of the jar within me.

"Waking up tomorrow with you…
Waking up together with you…"

The last chord faded into the wind.

He looked at me, eyes asking what words couldn’t. And for the first time in a long time, I didn’t look away.

I took him in. All of him.