As she stood on that same familiar corner, waiting for him once again, she almost got up to leave a hundred times. But in the end she knew she couldn’t, she wouldn’t. So instead, she just sat there, contemplating how she ended up here once again. How her life for the last three years had literally come full circle.
As he turned the corner and started walking towards her all
she could do was take a deep breath. Her head felt differently than her heart,
which contradicted the feelings in her stomach and left her genuinely confused.
It was just easier to be angry with him. She didn’t want him to know how much
he hurt her and honestly she didn’t want to think about how much she hurt
anymore. So instead, she settled
on angry.
Angry that he called.
Angry that he didn’t see how much this hurt her. Angry that it didn’t hurt him
more. Just angry.
He approached with a careful smile and a shy “Hey Liv”, as a
way to test her current mood.
Sticking with angry she replied with a low, yet sturdy, “hi”. Picking up on her current mood he gestured
to the park across the street, “shall we?” Without another word she began to walk towards a bench,
their bench. Hidden between two
willow trees, it would be very hard to spot to someone who didn’t know it was
there. They had come across it
late one night on their way back to the dorms.
Olivia had just finished
telling Sam that one of the reasons she chose Virginia was because of the
beautiful willow trees scattered throughout the campus. She had considered it to be a somewhat
embarrassing truth and at the time, was rather surprised that she had decided
to share the small secret with him.
After she finished her story, Sam walked off the path and into the park
without a word. She watched as he
started jogging towards one of the trees.
Olivia was confused but she happily chased after him, all the way to the
largest willow tree at the far end of the park. Once she got close enough, she
saw Sam had taken out his pocketknife and was carving something into the tree. A small smile came across her face as
it occurred to what he was carving.
She wouldn’t dare check to see if their initials were still
there. She had settled on angry and she wanted to stay like that. Unfortunately, the thought of that
night was making that task increasingly more difficult.
To be continued....hopefully.
This is incredible! The entire passage is suspenseful and had me wondering what it was that Sam had done to Olivia to make her angry and what would come of their relationship! A great use of dialogue, too!
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