chapter 2: soulmate who wasn't meant to be

 Play date

It’s been almost a month since I first met Mark. I have felt so many emotions, I have never felt before. When I am around him there’s comfort and happiness and when I am not around him, I feel lost and weird. I did not know how to comprehend what was going on in me, we were just friends talking with each other, smiling at each other, understanding each other- so why did that feel so intimate? Maybe I was just not used to this, and it’s surreal for me, but what do I know after all I am just a 16-year-old kid, right? but the fact that it has not even been a complete month and I have grown so close to him scares me because I never let people enter my mind or my conversation until I believe them to my heart, feel their truth in my veins, and usually, people fail, and I could never call them my best friend. Maybe because I don’t have a good experience associated with “best friends”, I hold myself back from ever getting attached and I am also a poet, the irony. Like I said I never write poems from personal experiences because I don’t really have one. I don’t want to get hurt again and I shall not get attached to him this soon.

It was October- the best month of the year and it’s better when you live in Connecticut, autumn becomes the love of your life. Autumn made me more poetic than ever, the falling leaves on the road, people walking and leaves making crunching sounds, it’s cold but not cold enough to wear more than one layer of a sweater. Oh god, I love fall everything I love to enhance in this season more- the books, the museums, the smell coming from coffee shops, and the smell of freshly baked loaves of bread from Mrs. Hampton’s bakery and how can I forget music coming from my favorite vinyl store. I and mark shared our love for autumn just as much. Every day in school, as I entered Mark gave me my pumpkin spiced latte and I gave him his cinnamon chocolate croissant it was the best feeling because it was as if I am eating autumn. It was the beginning of the new academic year, which meant that the children of the drama club and literature club had to collide and prepare a play by the end of the month, it is THE play of the year and we have always won. As I was president of the literature club and Mark was new in school, I let him, in the club. Some people objected to that and told me I was being partial to him, but I was not, really. We were doing Hamlet- one of my favorite plays, well in the poll I rolled for only the plays I love and somehow Mark guessed that and gave me a sharp smirk and nodded across the room. Oh god, whenever he smirked why did it feel like something is happening in the pit of my stomach, something fluttering? 

We started practicing for the play after school, in the school theatre and it became Mark’s and my job to bring out coffee from the coffee shop, while waiting at the shop and drinking I realize that it was as if we were going on a date. Once he even put his hand on mine, but I repulsed it immediately but hid my emotion just enough to not get it noticed by him. We would practice for hours and in between breaks we would talk and talk and ignore everyone’s existence, unintentionally. But how was that even happening? My friends started to get suspicious of us, they thought as if we were secretly going out. It has been a week since the rehearsals started, finally, Saturday rehearsals got over and tomorrow was Sunday- break day but just soon as I stretched my arms and was going to take off- Mark came to me and said feeling blissful “Hey Anne, I was thinking that we should go to the vinyl store you know, the one you love and well tomorrow is off for rehearsals also so…” “you and me?” “Yea, obviously who else?” “Uh no I thought like…” he starred into my eyes as if he was trying to decode what was I thinking- well I was thinking of all the rumors and me not wanting to get attached to him so quickly and he smiled painfully as if he understood what was going on in my mind and said, “are you really going to get affected by what other people say about us? Anne, you are not like this come on. And about the other thing-“ he stopped and just smiled and said “Monday then? With croissant and coffee?” I nodded and smiled. But I felt as if my stomach was coiling up while someone set fire to my favorite Fleetwood Mac vinyl. Just then it occurred to me, was I getting attached to him, that his emotions affect me? was I really falling for him?