Black Waters (Frank Ocean Love Story)

Chapter 三十二

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Darkness laced the sky in a subtle manner, mixing in with the pinkness of the setting sun. It was a pretty, yet puzzling sight. I didn’t focus much on the sky, though. Instead, I walked with my head down, counting my steps and stabling my heart beat. It just wouldn’t slow down.

Every step I took into the park meant something. It meant everything. When I began to take the swampy smell of the river that the ducks swam in, my knees almost buckled. The hut was right there.

The back of his head was right there.

I inhaled and tried my best to exhale, though my breath almost caught completely in my throat. He was there. Forrest was there.

He turned around and looked at me. I could just feel him looking at me, even though I couldn’t see his face at all. But he turned around for sure—I at least knew that much. There was no rush in meeting him, so I took my time approaching the hut. When I planted my feet on the steps, I didn’t look up. It was like Freddy Krueger was standing before me. I was terrified to simply look up. Without looking up still, I sat down on the bench across from him.

“Christopher,” he said. His voice pierced my soul like the sharpest of all knives. At last, I looked at him, his smile radiant and reflecting pure happiness. He still scared me, though. This all seemed too unreal.

“Forrest.” I said, smiling just as he did.

“How come you keep calling me that? In your music, and now here. What’s that about?” He asked jovially. The tears instantly fell. His laid-back ways were so foreign yet so familiar all at once. It was so beautiful.

He was beautiful.

“I call you Forrest Gump because you left, and no one knew where you’d gone.” I replied softly.

“I didn’t leave, Chris. You did. Remember? You told me how you felt, and then you left out of embarrassment.”

Well damn. That was a spot-on interpretation of the situation. It kind of hurt my feelings. But I knew he meant well, so I didn’t make much of it.

“Alright, you got me. But how else was I supposed to feel? You didn’t love me back, and Mia—” I paused when I mentioned Mia. “And Mia wants to kill me, even though her boss wants me alive.”

I was expecting Forrest to be utterly confused by my statement, but he didn’t even flinch. “Of course I want you alive. I can’t love you dead, can I?”

Now I was the confused one. “Wait…you’re…you’re the boss? You’re her boss?” Forrest nodded plainly. “Mia works for you? Griff works for you?”

“You’d be surprised by the amount of people that work for me. They all work for me, and it’s all because of you.”

I wanted him to come out of the dark so badly, so I could see his face, read his expressions. But maybe the distance was good.

“I don’t understand.”

“Christopher, a little while after you left, when Mia broke up with me, I realized that I felt the same way you did about me. I wanted you. I wanted to love you. But you were long gone, fulfilling dreams that I was jealous of. To make a long story short, I formed an army whose original goal was to kill you. But then I stopped being envious and realized that we would be better off together. So their goal switched to finding you and making you mine. But then I found out about Ajahni. Now, my army had to kill her. But Ajahni is a complex girl. She’s smart, and she’s damn determined to find you. Instead of killing her, I was fascinated by her. So I made my army become a major obstacle in her journey to find you. The night a girl was taken away from your concert? That was me. I captured her. The time she broke out of the hospital? She broke out to find you, so I drugged her. It was just so much. And now she thinks she’s close to finding you. But make her give up, Chris. Show the world that we’re in love again.”

I was confused and cross. I was a bit offended too; after processing Forrest’s words, it seemed like he wanted me to ditch my love for Ajahni to be with him. How dare he? He’s the one that has been putting her through so much, and now he just wants me to up and forget about her?

“Wait a second,” I said suddenly, “Ajahni’s been looking for me?”

“Ever since you left her.”

This news was shocking and surreal. She was really looking for me, the way I had been looking for her. We could have been in the same place at the same time. I could have walked straight past her, but if I had looked closer, I would actually see her. But it wasn’t too late. I could still find her. And now I was invigorated to find her; somehow, Forrest’s little speech made me feel like I still had a chance.

“Come out here.” I ordered, my anger rising as I went back to thinking about what Forrest had done. “Go on, show your face.”

Without hesitation, Forrest stood up and walked into the light where I could see him clearly. My whole heart winced when I saw him. This was ultimate déjà vu. But seeing him gave me a different feeling—not one of hopeless and desperate love, but one of boundless friendship. I wasn’t looking at Forrest, I was looking at Roshon. They were two different people. Forrest was my love, Roshon was just my friend.

As I saw him, I finally figured it out. My love for Forrest had died long ago. I tried to make it consistent though, only because he was an excuse for me to not mourn too much over Ajahni. It wasn’t him I cared about, it was her.

“Roshon,” I uttered, a gratified smile growing on my lips. I was happy that I discovered the nature of my situation. “I don’t know what you’re here to offer me, I don’t know if Darcelle told you I was coming or not, I don’t know why Griff works for you or why he made me help him fake his death a few years ago. But what I do know is that you were a good friend to me. Now, I have to go. I’m cutting off any relationship we might have or actually did have. Speaking to you is just not healthy for me right now. You’re…you’re not what I want.”

The words were a thousand-pound weight relieved from my shoulders. It was so refreshing that my broad smile was almost accompanied with a chuckle.

Roshon grasped my hand. I could have imagined this to be an amazing touch before, but now it had zero meaning to me. “You know that’s not true, Chris. Think about all you’ve been through. I’ve been watching you. I know, Chris. I know how you feel. Don’t fool yourself. Just think.”

I did think, but all I came up with was the same thing I told him before. It just wasn’t going to happen.

“Roshon, just stop. I’m over you.”

And then I walked out, the darkness engulfing me in a pleasantly foreign happiness. I was right.

Tonight did change my life.