*R.I.P. Chester Bennington, frontman of one of my favorite bands growing up, Linkin Park.*
There are times when you wake up knowing that you have something in your life, whether it's an object or a person, and you're instantly happy because of it.
Those mornings, you just know your day is going to be awesome no matter what because of that.
That's how I felt the morning of December 27th, 2011. The official second day ever of my life with a girlfriend.
I was still half-asleep when my slightly open eyes glared at the light of day coming through the window's curtains, and the raging wind slamming on the closed door of my parents' bedroom sounded too close for comfort.
I contemplated the idea of getting up and closing the window of my parents' bedroom, just to get back to bed and get a little extra sleep, but I knew that, if I were to get up, I'd never want to go back to sleep.
So I stayed there, rather frustrated from the door slamming around without ever opening nor closing, watching my sleeping slowly fading away, and silently blaming my mother for wanting to air the bedroom up on a cold morning of late December.
But that's when I thought of her. When I was more on the 'half-awake' side than the 'half-asleep' one, Evelyn came to my mind. And I felt some kind of excitement coating my whole body from within, covering up that frustration from top to bottom.
My immediate reaction was to get the phone, still sleeping on the bedside table. I parted it from its charging cable and the screen lit up. Twenty minutes after ten in the morning. It wasn't too early, but still earlier than usual.
Actually, though, the first thing I looked at wasn't the time, but the notifications. Those four big digits invaded my eyesight anyway, but what I was most interested in was if there were any messages from Evelyn.
"Good morning my love :$"
This was the only text. And it was more than enough to bring a smile on my face and make me pop up to my feet.
"My lovely Avsam. Adorable morning, isn't it?" I typed all excited, while pointlessly rehearsing some noble facial expressions.
"A charming morning, some would say ;)" she wrote.
"The jokes are never gonna end, are they?" I chuckled. "You could've avoided the pedophile face, btw."
"Admit that's why you love me, Avsam." I don't think the smile on my face would leave any time soon.
"I'll admit. And, just so you know, today I'll think about you every second. So if I'm thinking too loudly, just let me know."
"I'll let you know :$" she wrote and I squinted.
"What's the deal with this face you're making?"
"That's my idea of the blushing face," she wrote.
Could you smile more than you already are? Because I feel like that's what I was doing right there. "You silly Avsam. I see you're using punctuation and capital letters too now, how's that?"
"Well, capital letter is automatic on the phone lol. But I am indeed typing better than usual. I know bad writing makes you mad."
And for a moment my smile faded, as a little worry caught my weightless spirit of that moment.
"Wait, you don't have to do something for me. I mean, I'm so happy when I talk with you that I probably wouldn't even notice. So don't do that. Just... be yourself."
"I am being myself, Avsam," she replied, "I'm being myself in love :$"
And that's when the smile came back to my face. I typed an "I love you, I really do," before leaving my bedroom and heading down to the kitchen for breakfast.
"Are you going out today?" is the first thing my mom asked me when she saw me.
I was in too much of a good mood to argue. "Good morning to you too, mom. Yes, I am indeed going out today."
"Where?" she asked.
"To the park," I said as I started to sip on my hot chocolate milk, "with, er, Andrew."
"Oh, I was starting to wonder whatever happened to him," she said, "you haven't seen each other that much as of late, am I wrong?"
"Yeah, you know. He made some new friends at school, so now he mostly hangs out with them," I lied.
"And what about you? Didn't you make any new friend?" It was starting to feel like an interrogation.
"Yeah, some," I lazily said, "but they're pretty antisocial and so they hate going out."
"Sure," she said, "well, don't forget to put on the warmer jacket. There's an unforgiving weather today."
"Got it," I said, quickly finishing up my breakfast and heading back to my room, to kind of escape that conversation.
I could just feel it in the air. If I'd stayed only one other minute, she would've gone back to the 'I love you, my friend from the city, but I'm not gay' predicament, and I sure as hell didn't want to talk about that.
• — • — • — • — • — • — • — •
I don't know what people find so appealing about winter. It never meant much to me other than a hopeless daily desire for sun.
Having to wear heavy jackets that covered my nerdy t-shirts, perennial cold hands impeding me to even use the phone, hair frosting on top of my head if I were to put just a little too much clay and making me look like Mr. Freeze, glasses fogging, risk of ice on roads. Do I even need to go on? The only thing I like about the cold of the winter is that I can use it as an excuse not to go out and stay at home.
That afternoon on one of the last seats of the bus, as I recovered from outside's cold, it felt like I was looking for the first time.
My eyes weren't covered by the wall of my misery anymore, and they could finally look at the world that surrounded me.
It wasn't exactly a pretty world, not in that particular moment. As the usual cast of old people sat on every seat of that bus, with breath coming out of their mouths, a returning sound of coughs and deep inhales, I looked around for someone closer to my age.
There was a kid, in one of the first seats, or at least he looked like a kid from behind. But then I looked to the right and there was this girl, facing me on her seat.
I made sure not to look suspicious, as I threw quick glances at her, as if I were taking pictures with my eyes.
I'd seen her before, once or twice. On that very bus. With warmer weather, she'd usually wear either black or blue t-shirts, and black or blue jeans. This time, she did have black jeans, but she was wearing a really heavy grey jacket with fur surrounding the hood on her shoulders.
Her wavy jet black hair escaped the cover of that jacket, swiftly falling on her chest area. And I could not, for the love of God, believe how much she resembled Selena Gomez.
She looked just like her. Same hair, same eyes, same lips. Once, I wondered if it was actually her. But what would Selena be doing in Queens?
My mind started calling her BusSelena, since I'd always see her on the bus.
I wondered where she was going on that cold afternoon of late December, until my mind started playing a game of words between 'BusSelena' and 'Barcellona' and I completely lost focus.
Flushing Meadows Park looked sad. The trees were left with no leaves, the grass looked darker, the playground wet and dirty.
No kids around. The only people spending their time there, in that moment, were lonely adults with dogs and some kids covered up to their noses, senior year possibly, in the distant bench, smoking in company.
Even Belle looked darker. And since she'd always be the one to assist the sun in bringing shine to the summer, that made me kind of gloomy. Her blonde hair seemed more on the white side than the yellow. And those plain black hoodies she was wearing as of late didn't match all that well with her sunny personality.
"Aren't you cold?" I asked after a brief hug on our usual bench, "You're only wearing a hoodie."
"I'm okay," she said, "I was about to ask if you weren't too hot in there," and she started pretending to look for me inside my jacket.
"I missed you, you know," I said with a hint of smile on my face, "I'm a good listener. You can tell me what's going on in your life, if you want to."
A man with a dog passed by and looked at me weird. I responded by squinting my eyes, which probably resulted in looking kind of creepy, but I was just trying to focus his face since I didn't have glasses.
"Really, nothing's going on in my life," she said with a shiny smile that brought hope back on that day, "what about you? You said you have a lot of things to tell me."
"Indeed I do," I smiled back, "turns out Evelyn, the girl from Cleveland, was in love with me. And so now she's my girlfriend."
"Sweet sanity," she exclaimed, and then asked me to tell her more. And I did. I told her the whole thing, without leaving any small detail out of it.
"I'm so happy for you," she said, "do you feel bad about the kiss with Amber?"
"Yes, I in fact do," I said, "a lie always makes me feel bad."
"I can understand why you did it, though," she said.
"Really? You do?" I asked relieved.
"Yeah, I know you well," she said, "but you have to wonder if she'll understand when she finds out."
"Wait. When she finds out?" I asked cringing a bit, "If she finds out. Why... how would she find out?"
"You never know," she said, "lies never live forever."
"Then I guess I'll be the first one to let a lie live forever," I was getting heated, "it wasn't a bad intention. You know that."
"Yeah, I know, Peter, calm down," she put a hand on my shoulder, "I'm just telling you. You have to look at every possible side of things."
"Okay," I sighed, "you're right. I'm sorry."
"The important thing, right now, is that you're happy," she said and we exchanged some silent looks before she kept talking, "so are you?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed, "yes, I'm happier than I've ever been. I'm considering a nine out of ten for this year despite all that's happened. So yeah, I'm that happy!"
"Glad to hear that," she said, "you know why I ask."
"Yes, I know," I said, "because we're four hundred and four miles away and I never even touched her let alone kissed her, but there's a time for everything, I guess. We add the ultimate definition to 'take it slow'."
"Okay, Pete, good luck then," she said, rapidly getting up, "I gotta go now. See you?"
"Yeah," I said a little confused, "of course."
• — • — • — • — • — • — • — •
As soon as I was done with dinner, I ran upstairs into the privacy (so they say) of my room.
Evelyn had asked me to call her because 'we needed to talk'.
I told her it was only one day that we were together and she was already throwing that line and worrying me, but she assured me that it had nothing to do with the two of us.
So I could only wonder what she wanted to talk to me about, as I waited for Skype to connect. I made sure that the computer screen didn't face the door but I did, so I could save the day in case of parental interference.
She called as soon as she saw me online. "Hey Avsam," she said.
"Hey yo, chica," I imitated the voice of one of her favorite wrestlers, Razor Ramon.
She turned on the camera so I could see her, and I did too right after her. As usual, the video quality made me wonder if she had replaced her webcam with a potato, but she still looked stunning.
"So what's the matter," I asked, checking my face in the small corner of the screen.
"It's about Frank," she said, "he... ehm... revealed something important to me."
I raised my brows. "Okay... and what is it? He's gay?"
"No," she said hiding a smile, "he... I'll attach the conversation, alright. Wait a sec."
"Okay," I gulped, "you're making me nervous."
"Here it is," she announced as the sound of an incoming message covered her voice.
"Wait a minute," I said, "I'll read it."
[12/27/2011 6:34 PM] Frank Spears: so listen evelyn i know it's kinda outta the blue but i have to tell you. i really like you and i don't mean as a friend. and now that you're single dunno...... i thought maybe i could give it a try.
[12/27/2011 6:50 PM] Evelyn Tiger: oh man.
[12/27/2011 6:50 PM] Frank Spears: ?
[12/27/2011 6:51 PM] Evelyn Tiger: sorry, i just didn't see this coming.
[12/27/2011 6:51 PM] Frank Spears: i understand
[12/27/2011 6:59 PM] Evelyn Tiger: listen frank, uh... i'll be frank with you. sorry. bad joke. what i want to say is, i appreciate you telling me this, really. and i really like you. i enjoy talking with you and all. but i'm in love with someone else. and i'm pretty sure about my feelings for this guy, so... i'm sorry. i understand if you don't want to talk to me or what...
[12/27/2011 7:04 PM] Frank Spears: no actually i'm glad you told me. others would have used me without telling me their real feelings. of course i'm sad about it but i'll get over it. at least i got it off my chest.
[12/27/2011 7:07 PM] Evelyn Tiger: i know it's not very nice to ask but... will you still be my friend?
[12/27/2011 7:10 PM] Frank Spears: of course i will.
"Man," I squeaked.
"Yeah, right," she said, "I feel so bad."
"Eh, I know," I jabbered, "I know how he must be feeling. I know what it's like to be friendzoned."
"Come on, don't say that!" she cried.
"Don't say what?"
"Friendzoned," she explained.
"Well, that's what it is. Not saying it won't make it any less true," I told her.
"But that makes me feel worse," she said and she actually looked concerned.
"Well, what were you supposed to do?" I asked, "You did the right thing."
"Yeah, he said that too, but I don't know..." she sighed, "how could I not feel bad?"
"It'd be ungodly of you not to feel bad. And by the way... you're in love with someone else?" I smiled.
She hid behind her hand and murmured a "yes". I couldn't help but smile shyly myself.
I felt sorry for Frank, but I couldn't help but feel special, as it was my first time in the position of the boyfriend.
"There's a replay of last night's Raw on TV, that'll cheer you up" I suggested, "see you on the phone?"
"See you on the phone," she agreed, turning off her camera, "love you, Avsam. Thank you."
"For what?" I asked.
"For existing," she said, and a smile automatically formed on my face as I ran the cursor on the button to turn off my camera.
"No, thank you," I murmured as I could feel the skin of my face getting hotter.
After she hung up, I just closed the laptop, put it aside and lay back on the bed, once again staring at the ceiling.
I ran a hand through my hair and, for the first time, I felt comfortable with it. My hair felt alive. I felt alive.
And even later, as I headed downstairs to watch Raw on TV, there was nothing in that house that could have stopped me from feeling good.
"Are you watching TV or are you playing with your phone?" asked my mother.
"I'm doing both," I said, "that's what multitasking is all about."
"Shall we call it a date?" I texted Evelyn.
"Every time we talk or text is a date to me," she responded.
"Watching TV never felt so good," I agreed.
***
And here we are! Did you like this chapter? If you did, you know what to do.
Are you enjoying Peter's good times? If you are, don't go anywhere and wait for the next chapter to find out how he and Evelyn will celebrate the end of the year!
Thank you as always and ta-ta for now.
***