Memory Lane

PART 04 » saudade

Dedicated to Emily (EmSlough): for always writing stories that are true to your heart and true to your culture as well. You are one person here on this site with a true sense of identity in their writing. I know well that I've always wanted that for myself.

Author's Note | first off, I'd like to say thank you for 2,000 reads and #63 in short story. I'd also like to thank Eastwards for the wonderful graphic they made me. I am having issues with posting it on my Wattpad app, but I will try and upload it soon. Please check out their account if you're reading this. Also updates might be sporadic depending on my rather busy school schedule, but I will try to make the time it takes worth it. Please like and comment on this chapter if you liked it! -Cal

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p a r t f o u r

s a u d a d e

(n) • nostalgic longing to be next to something or someone that is now distant, or that has been loved and now lost

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I LOVE YOU.

I couldn't believe she was trying to send you a message as desperate so early on in the relationship as that, but that was Carla for you. She definitely had a flair for the dramatic, she used to do musical theater in high school, something she managed to squeeze into our text message correspondence that was supposed to be about you.

This frenzy that had riled her was caused by you, of course, and rambling on a lot about herself was her way of self preservation when it came to guys tugging at her heartstrings — another little fun fact about her that came up when we were texting.

Where the hell were you, Sean Perkins?

He was nowhere to be found since ten o'clock in the morning when we had walked to our next classes together. He seemed perfectly fine too, which made it all the more perplexing that he had vanished just like that. I knew his schedule pretty well, so I knew that he had missed four of his classes.

I frowned, glancing back at the message from Carla I hadn't responded to yet. I knew she was waiting very impatiently for my reply and that I was keeping her on the line by not giving it to her. She was waiting to hear back from me, the only thing standing in the way of her finding her lost boyfriend.

Yes, they were official now. It was just a regular winter day with all of us making our ways across campus with our hands stuffed deep into our coat pockets, when their hands held each other. I was a bit annoyed by the way it all happened, not because of Julie's words — those were definitely the alcohol talking — but because they were very inconspicuous about it after all the effort we had put into making sure it had happened.

Now flash forward a week and a half later, and I wasn't sure if I wanted him to come back. Or wanted him to come back to her, not after the way he did the first time.

But reality was reality, I knew it all too well. He was really Carla's boyfriend and she was really Sean's girlfriend. There was a small part of me that felt like I had been forgotten.

"Don't jump the gun," I texted her, utilizing the speech-to-text feature on my phone to reply more easily to her. "Just sit down and don't worry about him, he'll be fine. You'll be fine."