Nari had seen her friends fall in love enough times to know what was going on with her two newest friends, Kallie and Ali.
“You two are always so close to each other…” Chenn complained at breakfast.
He had invited her to come along and sit at their table this time instead of sitting by herself. Since she had agreed to be friends with him a few days ago, she couldn’t refuse without seeming as though she were upset with him.
Besides, sitting with Chenn, Kallie, and Ali was far better than sitting alone pining away and wishing someone cared enough to sit with her or talk to her.
Ali rolled his eyes. “So what? You and Nari hang out together all the time. Ever since a few days ago, you two have been like…” He shook his head. “I don’t have a good simile for you two. You defy all the ordinary categorizations. But you two have been glued to each other more or less…”
Chenn blushed. “Have not…” He mumbled.
“Have too.” Kallie chimed in.
She had grown bolder with them over the last few days, speaking out and showing her true spirit to them as the days passed. It turned out that Kallie was quite opinionated, and she was also just as happy as Nari had first believed she was. But once she started talking, she didn’t always remember to stop, and when she was teasing someone, she could be merciless.
Nari blushed now at the implications of Ali’s words.
“Yeah, well… If we are, it’s only because she doesn’t know her way around here, and I’ve taken it upon myself to help her find her way about… Nothing more.” Chenn glared at Ali.
Ali smirked, raising an eyebrow. “I never said it was… But you seem a smidgen too adamant that it isn’t anything more…” He turned to Nari.
Her eyes widened, and she hunched over in her seat, staring at her lunch – a runny bowl of soup with questionable chunks floating in it and a hard, stale biscuit that she thought might break her teeth should she decide to eat it.
“Both of you seem fidgety today…” Ali noted. “Sure there’s nothing going on?”
Nari let her gaze flick up to his for a second before dropping it back to her bowl of soup.
Simultaneously, she and Chenn responded. “Yes!”
Chenn, however, met his friend’s gaze, glaring at him.
Nari kept hers focused firmly on her soup bowl.
Ali grinned, and Kallie giggled.
“At least we’re honest about our relationship…” Ali responded.
Then he leaned over and kissed a giggling Kallie on the mouth. She sat in silenced shock for a moment. When he moved away, she had a broad, silly grin plastered to her face as though she’d just found out she was entitled to be a billionaire.
Nari almost choked on the mouthful of oily soup she was eating. Chenn gave her a good pound on the back to make sure she was alright.
Ali and Kallie sat laughing at the two of them.
“You two really are perfect together…” Kallie sighed, a wistful expression on her face.
“Keep dreaming.” Chenn snapped.
Kallie’s spirits would not be dampened. “You never know, Chenn. I think that you’re already in love… You just haven’t realized it yet.”
Nari’s blush deepened, going crimson.
Chenn’s blush spread to his ears. “I-I… I think I’m done now…” He stared at his bowl of soup, sloshing it around with his spoon. “This didn’t look appetizing in the first place… And I’ll be sick if I have to choke down any more of it.” He joked, but the joke lacked his usual sarcastic humor.
Nari stood up too. “I’m done too… I’ll go with you, Chenn, and drop our bowls off.”
Ali and Kallie snickered at the two as they walked off.
***
Chenn put his hands into his pockets, staring at the floor. “Were they right?” He mumbled.
Nari started at his sudden speech. “Wh..what? Right about what?” She stammered.
“Us? You know… Ali and Kallie… They think we’re in love.” Chenn’s voice became a little stronger.
“U-us…? No… There is no us, Chenn!”
There can never be an us. We can’t be together. He chose Amory’s side… He might seem nice, but he’s not. Deep down, he’s bad – maybe not evil, but he chose to go with Amory, so he can’t be good. I don’t know why he came here, but none of the reasons are good. So even if I didn’t have to betray him in the end… It couldn’t happen! She argued with herself, wondering why she didn’t quite believe her own argument.
He hung his head. “Yeah, that’s what I thought…”
“Chenn?”
“Hmm?”
“Does…does that bother you?” Nari murmured, laying a hand on his arm.
“What? Why would it bother me?” Chenn spluttered.
“Because you sound like I drowned your cat.” Nari raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t have a problem with that. I knew we were just friends… I just wanted to make sure that’s really what we were and that you didn’t think we were something else.” Chenn mumbled. “We just made up for our bad start a few days ago. I don’t want us to go ruining anything. And I wanted to make sure you didn’t think we were more than friends…” He restated.
She shrugged. “I never did… We’re friends. But…” She smirked. “I think we’re pretty good ones so far.”
He laughed. “Yeah. Guess so.” He smiled at her, his eyes twinkling. “We do everything together, after all… If Ali is to be believed, anyway.”
“Who cares what he thinks about our friendship? It’s what we think of it that matters at this point…” Nari muttered, the scene at lunch coming back into mind and causing a blush to rise into her cheeks. “Really… The nerve that man has. And he pulls Kallie into it right along with him. Never fails… Every single time he starts teasing us, she jumps in.”
“I think…” Chenn stopped, grabbing her arm and whispering in her ear as though it were a secret. “I think that’s because Kallie really is a terrible tease. She just hasn’t had the nerve to show it until now.”
Nari giggled – something she rarely did, since it seemed weak and girlish. “I think that you, Chenn Covalenti, are quite observant.”
He grinned and resumed walking. “Why thank you.”
***
When Chenn finally finished his round on the night watch, he collapsed into his bed in silence. He was exhausted, but his mind would not stop whirling.
Nari was the focus of his thoughts. It was little surprise to him. She had been since day one. But now a new problem nagged at him. Kallie had told them they were perfect together and that they were already in love, they just didn’t know it yet.
Could it be true? He had felt a deep stab of disappointment when Nari told him that they were just friends, nothing more. He had been hoping for something else, but he couldn’t determine what. Had he wanted her to say that she felt something more – maybe that she liked him? He wasn’t sure. He did want to think that she liked him in more than just the friendship way, but it was hard to think that when she had waved the notion of them together off so easily.
He buried his face in his pillow, sighing.
Life hadn’t been easy before she came along, but it hadn’t been complicated either. It was one steady routine of eating, sleeping, and forcing himself to get up in the morning despite the overwhelming guilt he knew he’d face.
But when she showed up. When she showed up in his life after years of absence, everything had changed. She upended his boring routine, but now that a more exciting mode of life presented itself, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to live it. The old way of life was seeming better to him by the minute.
He had been enthralled with Nari ever since that day in the alley when she’d stared at him with those tear-filled, green eyes as though pleading with him to take back the bullet, take back the actions that had led to her sister’s death. But he couldn’t take them back. He hadn’t been able to undo the things he had done to cause her death.
And he never could.
Tears came into his eyes.
He couldn’t let himself love her. He couldn’t. Because at some point or another, his secret would come out, and when it did, she would hate him. Her hatred would break his heart, and it had already been broken too many times to fix.
He couldn’t live through another heartbreak. Not another one. He couldn’t live with another hate-filled gaze or pitying smile. He was sick of them all. And another one would break him beyond repair. It would break him so that he would give up on life.
Tears rolled down his cheeks in the dark. Why did things have to be so complicated? Why did the feelings – the wild, untamable feelings – he felt stirring deep within him have to be stirred by a girl he could never have? Why did it always happen to him?
He couldn’t answer any of the questions. He didn’t know why. He didn’t have answers to anything anymore.
***
Nari stirred as the sound of someone’s sharp intake of breath woke her. Was someone crying?
She sat up, rubbing sleep out of her eyes and slipped out of bed, her shirt, which was a bit too big for her, slipping over her shoulder as she did so. She shivered in the chill emanating from the concrete floor.
Walking to the front of the room, she checked each bed. Vanessa first. She was asleep. Then Kallie and Ali. Both of them were asleep as well.
That left Chenn.
Chenn.
Why would he be crying? He had seemed so strong to her. An unflappable force that none would shake. So why was he the one crying?
She approached in silence, her footsteps noiseless on the concrete. Sitting down on the bed beside him, she started to rub his tense shoulders and back. “Shh…” She murmured.
He rolled away from her hands, sitting up. His tears glinted in the moonlight streaming through the windows.
Nari sighed, staring at the tears. She reached out, wiping them away with gentle fingers. “Chenn… Why are you crying?”
His brilliant sapphire eyes stared back at her. “Because I… I’m…” He shook his head. “It’s not your problem.” He murmured, voice hoarse.
“It is now. You’re my friend, and I’ve made it my problem.” She pulled him out of bed. “Here…” She whispered. “We’ll go somewhere deserted to talk. How about the kitchens?”
Chenn nodded. “Fine…”
***
They sat in the kitchen, silent for a few moments.
Then Nari spoke, breaking the tension. “Chenn, why were you crying?”
He looked away, taking a deep breath. “You weren’t supposed to see that or know.” He looked down.
She frowned. “Everyone cries at some point, Chenn… Even me. And people see us cry sometimes. It’s not pretty, and it doesn’t feel good, but… Well, it happens. Why would that bother you?”
He shook his head. “Because… I just… Life has been so confusing for me since you arrived…” He admitted.
Her frown deepened. “What do you mean?”
“It just… has…” He met her gaze for a moment, then dropped it again. “It used to be that I forced myself to get up in the morning. Life wasn’t worth it. It was just one long string of things all day long. It varied some when I moved to West Base. I had different things to do. But it was always the same. Get up, get through the day, and go back to sleep wishing I hadn’t woken up in the first place.”
Nari bit her lip, looking away. “I…” She fell silent, not knowing what to say.
Sometimes, it was better not to say anything at all. Her words could not fix this problem. They would only be hollow and meaningless to him. One could not fix loneliness, grief, or loss with a few nice words. Those wounds had to heal in time, on their own. Nothing would change that.
Chenn cleared his throat, continuing. “But when you came, I had a reason to get up… I wanted to be friends with you even then. Ever since I banged into you in the dining hall on West Base, I’ve been intrigued. You didn’t respond to me like all the other girls. You didn’t faun over me or fall down at my feet, eager to do whatever it took to make me happy. Instead, you brushed me off and continued with your life.”
“And? That bothers you?” She raised an eyebrow. “I’m a puzzle you can’t solve? That’s what you were crying over?”
“No!” He flushed. “I don’t look at you that way… I never did, really… You just… interested me, that’s all. There’s a difference. Anyway… When you came here, we got off to a terrible start. I… I feel awful for how I treated you.
"I wanted to be friends with you, but I’d spent so long pushing people away that I had no idea how. I was scared, to be honest. I didn’t want you to reject me like everyone else had…” He paused. “So… So I rejected you first because I thought there would be less pain that way.” He whispered, running a hand through his hair.
He stopped talking then, letting his eyes flit about the room.
Nari gazed at the room too, taking in the grey walls and concrete floor, the pristine grey marble counter tops, the metal sinks, and the small stack of unwashed dishes beside the main sink. Her gaze went back to his face, observing it as the moon’s glow through the wide kitchen windows cast shadows on the contours of his jaw and cheekbones.
She reached out then, accepting this man into her heart as a friend for the first time. He wasn’t just a friend in name. He had grown on her in the last few days. She had come to see the real him. And she wouldn’t reject him because she found the real man he was a beautiful thing.
Lurking under the surface, there was much pain and sorrow – he had been broken, and more than likely, prison had done that to him. But that pain and sorrow drew her. She wanted to help him heal because it was the one thing everyone else denied him – if she was honest, the one thing everyone denied her as well. Perhaps, together, they could heal and become complete again.
She pulled his hands into hers. “Chenn. I won’t reject you.” She whispered. “You know, before I met you – before you became my friend – life was hard for me too.” She stopped, remembering that she couldn’t include Andrew in the things that had helped her heal because he had supposedly been abusing her. That lie had to stay in place to the last. “I… You know, I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this of my own volition because I wanted to… But… I had a sister, you know. And…” Nari stopped. “I… I don’t know how to tell the story. But… We were very close. And then she was killed by a boy out on the streets one day. It was her… her…” She stopped, eyes filling with tears.
Staring at her hands, she was silent for a while, uncertain if she should continue. “It was her birthday and mine. We weren’t twins, but she was born on my birthday. And… It was the worst thing that ever happened to me. After I lost her, all I had was my dad, and then he was gone too...After they was gone, I didn’t want to live anymore.” Her voice cracked, and she started to cry.
Chenn’s eyes filled with tears too, and he pulled her into a hug. “I’m sorry… So sorry… I know words won’t make it better or bring her back, but I’m sorry.” He whispered, voice tight.
Nari buried her face in his chest, letting her tears come. For some reason, with Chenn, crying wasn’t embarrassing. It felt natural and releasing to cry in his embrace. When had that happened anyway?
After a few minutes, she got control of herself. She whispered, “And because of you, I want to live now… So… You’ve complicated my life too, but I’m thankful you did because if you didn’t, I’d still be living in a life I hated…”
***
He cradled her in his arms, a soft, but pained, smile breaking over his features. She was thankful to him for being her friend. She cared.
But guilt was stronger than his joy at finding that out. Her sister was dead because of him. She had given up on life because of him. He didn’t deserve to be her friend. He didn’t deserve her acceptance or appreciation. He deserved her hatred.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face in his shoulder and sighing. He felt the steady rise and fall of her chest against his, her breathing deep and even, and he realized she had fallen asleep. It didn’t surprise him. She’d had late night kitchen duty that night, and she was exhausted.
He shifted her in his arms, putting his arm underneath her legs and the other around her back to steady her. Then he carried her back to their dorm, laying her down in her bed before crawling back into his.
He fell asleep within moments, one thought in his head. She accepts me, but for how long?