The Company of Myself.

The Company of Myself - Chapter 18

"Quinn! I'm sorry! Come back!" I marched across the front lawn, stepping over lifeless bodies and littered red cups. From behind, I could hear Pandora catch up to me. "It's not what you think it is! Ivan's just a friend!" I whipped back around at her, and stared incredulously at her pleading face. Unbelievable.

"Then who is he?! You and him obviously share something!" I barked back, frustrated with her. I searched her face for a answer, but she stayed silent and looked at me, saddened. I shook my head, scoffed, and turned back around to walk.

"I didn't think I'd ever see him again! He moved to Canada." She wretched an hand around my arm and pulled me back. "Believe me." She pleaded, looking into my eyes.

All the anger, frustration, and disappointment was building up in me. All my trust I had put into her, and she hadn't told me about him? Who was he? Who was this, Ivan, that showed up from Canada and claimed to be her knight and shining armor? 

"It's not like I lied to you about it. I honestly thought I'd never see him again." She panted. I stared at her for a while, wondering what to say, or what to do. The thought of having another guy wanting her just as I had, killed me. Pandora wasn't a prize to be won, but she sure was treated like it.

"I want the entire story. Now." She took a deep breath and hugged me, before telling me her long tale of Ivan Pearce. About their past times, memories, and lives together.

Ivan Pearce was Pandora's life. Her love. Her better half. Or at least, that's how it was.

"I met him my freshman year. He was a junior, and I had Algebra II with him." We walked slowly down the steep footsteps of my neighborhood, occasionally looking up to the night sky. I gazed at her the entire time, listening intently to her story. "As you can guess, we ended up together. Likely, right? The perfect guy falling for the perfect girl?"

"Huh, he's not perfect. He's repulsive." I muttered under my breath.

"And I was happy. And he was happy. And we stayed like that. For almost three years." She paused, and sighed deeply before starting again. "Next thing I knew, he wanted to go to New York and start over. And that meant taking me along. And I won't lie. For that moment, it seemed like the most ideal thing ever. To run away with the love of your life to a foreign place and start over. He would make money at gigs with his band, and I'd strike up work as a waitress of something. Our life..." She trailed off, and I heard her sniffle. "...it seemed so... untouchable. Like nothing could hurt us. It was perfect, and I was wrapped up in his love, as he was with mine. We were seventeen and nineteen year-olds., who just wanted to get out of the place we were living. We didn't know any different from our hometown." She grabbed my hand, feeling weak.

"But a week before leaving to New York, I realized."

"You realized what?" I said calmly, no longer angry with her, but more sympathetic.

"...I realized that I didn't want this. I didn't want to run away from my family and friends. I wanted to go to college, and find myself. And running away to live with my boyfriend made those visions looks bleak and weary. I wasn't doing what I wanted to do. I was doing what I needed to do to keep our relationship from falling apart." I threw my jacket over her, as wind blew through her soft curls. She sniffled, and I wiped the tears from her face. She hesitated, catching her breath.

"I told him I needed space for a while, and that maybe one day, I'd come to find him. He agreed to that, and promised that one day he'd find me too."

"And he went off. Without you."

"Yeah. He moved off to New York, and I stayed. Two months later, I found out he and his band had migrated to Toronto somehow, and weren't coming back. And by then, my parents were making decisions to moved down South, here. I understand that I should've waited for him, but nearly five months had passed, and I never thought he'd find me here. From what I heard, he fell in love with a girl up North and they married each other. I ultimately thought, if he could move on, why couldn't I?"