Chapter Two
The Writer~
"For the love of god, Kyler don't tell me you are scribbling bullshits again about that girl you saw at the subway eight years ago, that night?" Seera sounds exasperated, not that I care. "What is so special about her that it isn't about me? And from the way you describe her, I think I am better looking than her." She flips her hair, and I scrunch up my nose.
"We are not about to have this conversation again, Seera." I put down my pen and look up at her, just to meet two boring brown eyes burning a hole through me, "Our families decided our marriage, it doesn't mean I will marry you. And you don't even compare to her." I really didn't prepare myself this morning to have this conversation again with her. She wouldn't just let it go.
She slides into the booth before me, and I close my notebook, where I was scribbling about my first encounter with her, for the hundredth time. It never gets old, how she looked at me. How sweet her voice sounded. How her eyes shined like stars. How youthful and sweet she looked.
I can feel my heart ache at her lone thought. I want to see her again. I was starting to forget her face, so I hired an artist seven years ago to draw her face, so that I can look at her every morning I wake up, and every night I go to sleep. I even have a copy of her painting in my wallet. I sometimes stare at it and talk with it for a long time. She even came into my dreams. But the moment I reach out to touch her, to feel her skin against mine, she fades away.
"Tell me about her, Kyler—again." Seera demands, this is the thousandth time she has asked me to tell about her. She is jealous, it is regardless to say. She wants to know what is in that girl that isn't in her. What I find in that girl that I don't find in her.
Seera is beautiful. She has long sandy blond hair and brown eyes. She is tall and has a good body. Men like everything about her, but I don't. She wants me to look at her, she wants me to love her like the way I do the girl I saw eight years ago. But I have no heart to give her. She took it with her eight years ago after she shoved the money in my hand.
I chuckle. What kind of stranger gives a hundred bucks to another stranger? But she does.
"Now, why are you smiling like you fell all over again?" Seera crosses her hand over her chest and looks at me with a smirk, "Did I at least make you fall for me?"
I shake my head as I open my notebook again, brushing my fingers over the dark strokes that form letters, the letters that form words, and the words that form sentences. But no amount of words and sentences can convey what I feel when I think about her.
"I was just thinking about her…" I say softly.
Seera rolls her eyes and blows out a breath, "Tell me the one time that you don't think about. I bet you think about her even when you touch yourself." There is a hint of laughter in her tone, but I don't deny it because it is the truth.
I think about her like I am breathing. I think about her like my heart is pumping. She is in my everything. The fiber of my being. And she will be there forever unless she, herself tears my heart out and rips it apart to set herself free from there.
"Can't deny it." I sigh, my shoulder dropping, I wonder when it will be at last, when I get to see her again. Just a look… this is what I long for.
Seera wrinkles her nose and rubs her forehead, dejected, "So you tried to look her up in these eight years? Social media or something?"
In these eight years, I have tried to track her down on every social media platform possible. I personally stalked every schoolgirl in New York, in case she was a mutual friend. But I have found nothing. For four years straight, I have gone to the station every day and waited for her to show up, but she never showed up. I wonder what happened to her. But it doesn't demotivate me, if anything, it just strokes the fire inside me. I maybe desperate, but I am not hopeless.
"You said, she had two rabbit teeth in her front?" Seera asks, contemplating something.
I nod. "Yeah. They were the cutest thing I have ever seen."
She gives me a look and then says, "Maybe she got a brace to fix them. I will have my men check the appointment list of every dentist in the city for the past eight years in case they find something."
I don't want her to get braces to fix her teeth, because they are one of the parts that makes her this beautiful to me. But I don't mind if it leads me to see her again.
A slow smile spreads across my face at her words, "Really? You'd really do that for me?"
"Not for you," Seera scoffs, "But for me, I want to know what kind of girl she is to have you obsessed over her like this."
I grin. My phone suddenly starts to buzz against my thigh inside the pocket of my pants. I pull out my phone to see it's Keith. I pick up the call.
"Bar 7 am, tonight." Keith says curtly over the call, "Owen is coming as well." He knows that I don't like to talk all that much. Yes, I have started socializing a little in the past eight years, but still, there is a limit to what my introverted soul can go through.
"Right." I acknowledge and cut the call.
After that, for the next three hours, I get to hear Seera's endless blabbering about what happened at work. She talks, and I listen. This is how it works between us. Sometimes, when I find anything interesting enough, I note it down, in case I need it for a plot line or a sub-plot line.
Becoming a bestselling author means, readers have high expectations from your book. You can't write a book on a whim. Even if you don't want to write it for yourself, write it for your readers. In my case… I write for her…
***
"I didn't think you would be on time." Owen snickers, as I approach them. They are waiting for me outside the bar.
"I don't believe that I have ever given the impression that I am unpunctual," I say shortly. Talking with people was never a strong point for me.
"Now, now, let's go inside, it is very rare to have Kyler the writer leave the house for a night out," Keith says happily as he reaches for the bar door.
"That is because I have better things to do than drinking and getting drunk" Keith pulls the the door open and enters, and Owen and I follow suit.
"We can see that," Owen says sarcastically.
The bar is bustling with people and energy. It's much warmer here than outside. Everyone is chatting drinking and enjoying themselves.
But I can't hear the noises anymore. Everything has stopped around me, even my breathing and the pumping of my heart. Everything. My mind is blank or I am thinking everything at once. Because she is here. She is sitting there, on the stool before the bar counter. She is laughing, she is smiling.
And she is beautiful.