Walking With The Outcast

Chapter 16 - Ace

This is news to me, but it shouldn't be. I do not know why I thought that she was as much a loner as I was, but I had never seen her with anyone else. However, it makes sense now to think that she probably has had friends. With her sweet disposition, anyone would be lucky to have her as a friend.

I write nothing, though, waiting for her to continue. Her past is a mystery to me, and this is the most I've gotten from her. "You know the girl that Ethan likes? Alicia? We met in Kindergarten, along with another girl, Nicole. The three of us we're best friends, completely inseparable. Or so I thought." Lucilia whispers the last words to herself, pain coating each syllable. "I was surprised when Ethan said that he liked a girl named Alicia. I didn't think it was the same one, until you said she was a redhead."

I slip the notebook to her, and she reads it silently.

"What happened between us?" Lucilia repeats my question, and her eyes dim. "Oh, we grew apart, like most friends do, I suppose."

She does not elaborate, but I know that there is more to the story than that. Nobody just grows apart from someone that they've known practically their whole life. I don't interrogate further, however. At least, not about that topic.

"I want to meet your parents."

She sputters at my written words, but recovers speedily. "Ace, I told you. They're out of the country."

"I know, but you must speak with them somehow. And friends are supposed to know each other's family, right?"

If I'm going to date Lucilia at some point, then I want to get on her parents' good sides. Especially her father's.

Lucilia does not answer, doesn't even look at me until we're halfway to the grocery store. Her silence unsettles me, as I know that this should not be such a bad conversation.

Her blonde tresses blow in the wind, flipping and twirling and dancing with the air. She stops on the sidewalk, angling her face towards me. Her eyes remain emotionally blank, as she speaks hesitantly, like she regrets her next admission. "Ace," Lucilia sighs out my name. "I haven't spoken to my parents since the last time they were in the States."

This time my silence is not the result of social anxiety.

"They're busy with their jobs," she hurries to explain. "And I don't want to bother them."

I frown deeply. What type of parents would consider it bothersome to speak to their child? Besides mine anyway.

"Maybe when they come home, you can meet them?" Her tone is wistful, her expression dejected.

"But you don't know when they're coming back?"

She hands me back the notepad. "Correct."

Ending the conversation, she stalks forward with me trailing behind. Evading her notice, I quietly slip the picture of us from my pocket and try to mouth words to picture Lucilia. Immediately, my throat tightens and the silent words I try to say slither away from my tongue and back to my mind, forgoing their chance to become real. I try again, imagining that the girl that holds my affection is not three feet away, oblivious of my internal struggle to vocalize everything I want her to know.

It doesn't work.

She doesn't hear me telling her the things I feel for her, the way my heart strains against my ribs when in her innocent presence, the way my focus is singularly hers, and the way my life feels as if in perfect harmony when her soft hand slips into mine.

I am a coward.

I can fight foes and stare a monster in the eyes, but with her...

I crumble.