The Boy She Left Behind ✓

Chapter 3

The chapter is dedicated to @daniella-lavonne for being a constant support for me through out my writing, for being an awesome writer herself (CHECK OUT HER STORIES PEOPLE!!!! ), and generally for being her amazing and beautiful self.
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Did I wait around to actually let him explain? Let the stranger, who knew my exact choice in cocoa and had a picture of me and him tucked in his wallet that I had no recollection of, explain his actions while we happily sipped on tea? Well, of course not!

Here's what I did: I shrieked loudly and threw the wallet away as if the very leather could poison me. He picked it up, brushed off the dirt and slowly made his way towards me. My mind, however, refused to register the words that left his cautiously moving lips. Instead, in a beat of the heart, I turned around and ran down the street and straight to my home. I could hear the thudding of his feet on the pavement as he followed close behind, continuously calling out to me.

Curiously enough, unshed tears blurred my vision throughout the way back home.

Rushing inside my flat, I hurriedly closed the door and forced out the breath I had been holding in.

"Emma, what's wrong?" exclaimed Sandra as she took in my bewildered state.

Before I could answer her queries, the door started to get banged upon as the blue-eyed guy yelled from outside, "Emma, let me in! I promise I can explain! Just please let me in!"

I scrambled away from the door and held back my sister who had moved to open it. "No," I pleaded in-between the tears that were freely flowing down my face now, "Please don't open the door."

"Emma, who the hell is it?!" demanded Sandra.

I took in a shaky breath and found that the answer actually, surprisingly, hurt to say out loud, "I don't know..."

The banging on the door continued and so did the pleading. However, much to my protest, eventually Sandra pushed me aside and opened the door.

The blue-eyed guy froze in mid-knock, but he wasn't the only one to freeze - my sister, Sandra, went ghost pale at the sight of him. She gasped and covered her mouth with her hand, breathily whispering, "Mathew?"

*----------*

For the next hour, I was sent to my room like a child on a time-out. All the while, my sister sat in the living room with the blue-eyed guy or Mathew as she had been calling him.

I sat on my bed with my head hung low and my hands tucked in my lap. I had stopped crying a while ago. Honestly speaking, I had not the faintest idea as to why I had begun crying in the first place. I vigorously rubbed at my eyes for my foolishness and then tried to solve the dilemma that I had been presented with.

Five minutes in, I groaned loudly and gave up. The only two facts that were clear were that Mathew knew me, very well too if the picture was any indication and; that I couldn't, for the life of me, remember him.

Suddenly the door to my room opened. Sandra came in, slowly shut the door behind her and then fell against it. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, as if trying to prepare herself for a fierce battle. Opening her eyes, she looked at me and smiled.

For the first time in twenty-nine years, the smile didn't quiet reach her eyes.

"Just hear me out before you start talking," she said, sitting on the bed beside me.

She handed me a phone, one that I hadn't seen before. "Em," she sighed. "Sometimes to protect the ones we love, we have to lie to them. Sometimes to... save them from a bitter reality, we have to weave a new one. And I know that a lie's a lie but... it's for everyone's good."