After his marriage with another woman, I heard Senior Rizal was taking a break from his study. Then, I heard nothing. Nothing about him, but talks about me were spreading like wild fire in the campus. Almost everyone was looking at me with pity in their eyes, some even openly mocked me.
First week was the hardest. I had to answer the questions from people who showed their concern towards me, but most of them only wanted to know the story. I told them, we broke up before he got married. Only some of them knew the truth and I didn't feel the obligation to explain more to those who didn't know.
The following weeks came as a breeze through my already painful and tiring life. Even though I didn't have to answer to questions, I still had to deal with the stares people gave me. Through times, I finally managed to get used to it and people started to believe me, that we broke up before Senior Rizal got married.
And I couldn't care less for them.
"Everything's good at campus?" Tom asked as soon as he met me in front of the dorm.
I nodded, walked into the dorm without saying anything. The last time I spoke to him in front of the dorm earned me a suspicious stare from my dorm mates who happened to be in front of the dorm as well. They thought I was shocked and went a bit insane because of the pressure and they insisted to accompany me for almost a whole week, talking to me about other things other than romance, sleeping in my room with me, even advising me to move on quickly.
I seriously thought I would go insane with how they looked after me, but deep inside my heart, I felt really grateful. Another one who almost felt insane with their existence was Tom. He complained repeatedly to them, telling them that there was no way I would go crazy over Senior Rizal leaving me when he was still there with me. Of course, his complains went into deaf ears –only I could hear him. No matter how hard he yelled at them to leave me alone, they couldn't hear them.
With them insisting to accompany me, we lost our time together. He would only huff in rage and flew outside to leave us girls alone.
But, he had never attempted to scare them out even once. He said, even though he didn't like them taking me away from him, he also felt grateful that they would support me. He even felt great when they talked bad about Senior Rizal.
When the time came where they were sure I was okay, Tom was so happy he accidentally knocked on my book till it flew and fell near their feet. They were about to go out, but because of that they stopped. I broke in sweat as I tried to find an excuse to them. Luckily, they believed when I said I was chasing away a fly with the book and it flew out of my grasp.
With so many things happened to me, I couldn't care less about Senior Rizal and the issue about me out there. With Tom besides me for almost every time now, I almost forgot that I used to have a boyfriend named Rizal.
I guessed I moved on pretty quickly.
A month after that, I met someone on my way back home late at night.
He was Senior Rizal.
Dressing up casually, I noticed he looked slightly thinner than he was before. His eyes lacked the vigor he usually possessed. His charming and gentle features matured a lot in a month. He must have been through a lot to change drastically. But, I also noticed I didn't feel the butterfly I used to have when I met him.
"Hi..." He greeted me awkwardly.
"Hi." I replied before I continued my steps. It was a good thing that Tom was not accompanying me this time.
"I want to talk to you." He said hastily as I walked past by him.
I stopped, and turned around to face him. Mix emotions came swirling inside my heart. Gritted my teeth, I tried to suppress the anger that threatened to come out.
"Please..." He begged.
Swallowing my anger, I took a deep breath. "Fine."
We went to a nearby park. He bought me a cup of hot vanilla latte and a cup of black coffee for himself from a coffee stand in the park. After saying thanks for the drink, I took a sip slowly. He sat besides me, maintaining a metre distance between us. Silence fell between us for a couple of minutes.
"I'm sorry." He broke the silence with these words.