Melanie's open palms came up and then flopped by her sides in query. Her eyes probed Paul's, requesting answers to the obvious questions, but he looked away defiantly, leaving her speechless and with questions unanswered. He began to walk away.

"and where are you going now?" Melanie asked but Paul shook his head and kept heading towards the hill that promised view of a beautiful forth-coming sunset. "Paul," Melanie called, this time, exasperatedly, rushed up to and eventually caught up with him. She grabbed his wrist and tugged. "Hey! What is up with you guys? I thought you were cool."

Paul stopped and took a deep breath before replying. "Not really . . . There has always been something there."

"What?"

He shrugged. "A spark? Something like a spark between us, not the good kind. It looks negligible, but sometimes . . . boom! It makes fire."

He demonstrated an explosion and Melanie imagined it and could only wonder and reply with a; "hmm." She did not like how it sounds.

"I don't really want to talk about it." He further said and stepped over a moist log to grab a branch from a shrub growing out diagonally from the side of the hill. "There are somethings that are better left unsaid."

Melanie wanted to protest and demand answers, but on second thought, she decided to ask what he was doing pulling his weight up to the hill.

"What are you doing?" She eventually asked.

"I've been wondering what the view of the sunset would look like from up there," He pointed at the top of the hill. "haven't you?"

"well..." Melanie looked unsure for a second and, shading her eyes from the sun's glare, she looked up the hill. It sloped steeply, to a height above thirty feet, was made of dirt and stone but was clad almost completely in greens – in shrubs and crawling plants that definitely would aid climbing. She contemplated for a moment, look back to the way Jake left for a second, returned her view to Paul, who was already carefully six feet above her and said, "Okay."

"come on." He called.

"Alright! Alright!" She replied, reached to grab a handful of strong leafs for support, placed a foot on the dead log and pushed herself up.

"Be careful." Paul added, his voice growing distant as he ascended.

-

"So like . . ." Melanie stopped to catch a breath and this made Paul stifle a laugh. "You don't like . . . like you haven't been to a real party before last night?"

"It all depends on your definition of a party really," Paul stood over her at the top of the hill with a god-complex, in an akimbo, and watched her be out of breath. "Sleeping could be the definition of party to someone."

"That's stupid." She opined breathlessly and struggled to get a good footing on a suitable dent on the hill. She pulled herself up. "Sleeping is sleeping and partying is partying." She moved, and Paul snickered at how she talked so powerfully and condescendingly whilst being in a very vulnerable merciful situation. "Sleeping is not partying and..." She groaned as her head popped over the cliff, and she reached out her mudded right hand for Paul to grab and help her up. "Partying is not – Oh my God!"

She exclaimed and her entire demeanor changed instantly at the sight of something that reached her core and shook her so much to a stricken state, to react with cupping her mouth reflexively to muffle a scream. She may have lost balance and lost her grip, if Paul did not hold her quickly.

He too was startled, but by her reaction, by the fact that being left to hold almost her entire weight without warning almost pulled him over the edge, losing balance. "Jesus!" escaped his mouth with a deep a gasp. His heartbeat quickened, and with the adrenaline her reaction stirred in him, he pulled her up and fell to his back as he did.

For her weight, something in his right ribcage area had strained, and it hurt, so he held it and quickly sprung and turned around, to see what Melanie had seen, to see what her eyes still locked on that quaked her entire body in mix of emotions that included fear, pain and grief, but all he saw was the view he expected to see and it was even more beautiful than he had anticipated. From his view, he could see in the distance, a panoramic landscape of hills and valleys and trees that bordered with the shoreline of a fine beach, which stretched out till the ends of the earth, at the point where the sky clasped the sea, as it held and allowed the display of the descent of the sun in the sunset. In all these was only beauty and grace and no horror, even the singular man made structure in the middle of it. It was a house, a white masterpiece, a house the color and shape of fantasies, engineered to edge a cliff overlooking the beach, providing the best possible view. Perhaps Melanie's reaction was nothing but deep admiration and astonishment at the sight of such divine beauty unworthy to be beheld by the unsanctified mortal eyes.

Was it?

He turned to her again, and in her eyes was something he could not see, something he could not possibly understand. Her face contorted into the shape of pain, lined with the wrinkles of trauma, as tears began to pour from her eyes. There was something about her cry that honestly scared him. It was mostly stifled and silenced so that no whimper escaped and yet the pain revealed itself so much; in her eyes, in her quaking body, in the convulsive movement of her face and body that looked like she did not breathe. Paul could not look or wonder any longer, so he rushed to and wrapped his hands around her, holding her tightly as if to stop her from quaking so much, as if the quaking could tear her into several pieces. He held her tight and with his muddy hand turned her face, away from the view and to himself. So she buried her face into his chest and soaked his shirt with her tears. He said nothing, she said nothing, and like that, they stayed for a while as she cried her pain out even though voicelessly. They remained that way, even after she had stopped a while later, and he rocked her in slow soft motion as if rocking a baby to sleep. He did not stop her, he did not ask questions even though he naturally had many and Melanie appreciated that when she stopped crying, relaxed on his body and just thought about the present and past.

"Are you not gonna ask me what happened?" Her voice eventually broke the silence. It came soft and quiet.

Paul sighed and took his time, before he replied. "I think you'd tell me either way, IF you want to" He said. "But if you would rather not talk about it, I don't want to pry or make you uncomfortable."

"hmm," Melanie chuckled weakly. "That's an interesting way to go about it." She said and pulled out of his embrace to sit on the dirt by herself. "and what if I want you to ask instead and would feel offended if you didn't?" She gave a sad smile.

"Well. . . do you?"

She shrugged. "I don't know." Then she sighed and turned her gaze to look, again at the scene. Paul followed her gaze carefully and found that it was set on the building. It was then that he began to notice that the yard of the house looked untidy, like the residence had been abandoned for a while and it was then that he began to realize that something horrible must have happened to Melanie and it may have happened in that house.

"That house," She began, pulling his attention. "I lived there for . . . actually, I can't say I lived there since I barely stayed there after the very first night when I returned from school and..." She stopped and Paul listened to her voice flow softly and so quietly he could barely hear her over the soft wind. She took in a deep breath as if to garner strength and continued. "My dad got a position to work for a big pharmaceutical firm, so there was more money so, first, he sent me away to a fancy boarding private school and then he bought that house over there when I was away." She nodded at the building and Paul turned to look at it again. "Anyway, my brother was going to get married and so I had to be home for that. I arrived that night, loved the house, loved . . . my life. I mean, who wouldn't? I was a teen and my family was rich, I used the latest IPhone and I had a house that looks like what I thought only existed on TV. But then . . . that night, that night when I arrived, some dudes – like thugs, but maybe more than that – came with their guns and well; my dad died that night, my brother got into coma and later died, his fiancée..." She swallowed. "she took her life after that." She said and Paul cringed.

At him, Melanie laughed like his reaction was funny and unnecessary, like her story was nothing but one of her stupid jokes, but her eyes were getting teary and even if they weren't, Paul had not forgotten her grievous episode from just a moment ago. He couldn't keep away any longer, he couldn't just watch make those saddening, joy-draining chuckles anymore, so again, he pulled her into another embrace. This time, Melanie reacted much more positively by putting her arms around him also. She clutched his shirt tightly and in the process, she had taken hold of his skin, her nails dug in and it stung him painfully, but he didn't care . . . yet.

For a moment, he let her cry, but then she reached around his body and wipe her tears, then she finished it up on his shirt before pulling away from the embrace. Her eyes had bulged and were red, but she smiled, a smile that tried to stifle pain, a mask that camouflaged her trauma.

"What?" She queried with a forced glee.

Paul stared at her with incredulity, with popped eyes and then he shook his head.

"Don't get weird," Melanie said and sniffed. "I'm over it. I swear."

"Melanie," Paul called cautiously. "Can I ask you something?"

She giggled. "Ask away."

"When did this happen?"

"like eight years ago." She shook her head. "I don't know."

"So, Junior..." He paused to take notice of her reaction. The mention of Junior caused her to swallow and sit up as if she was alarmed by it. "He's your kid?"

For a second, Melanie looked catatonic, like she had suddenly forgotten how to talk or move or even think. She was silent and Paul wanted to yell her name to induce consciousness into her again. But then, a second later, she squinted and began to cackled. "Boy, you're crazy," She accused him. "What the hell made you think so?"

"I . . . notice . . . stuffs." Paul answered. "I'm sorry . . . I – I just thought... Forget I said anything. Sorry."

"You notice stuff, huh?" Melanie jeered and snickered, causing him to feel stupid and withdrawn. He looked away and his aura faded and withered into cloudy grey, until Melanie added, teasingly; "You notice stuffs, and yet you did not notice me."

This time, Paul was the alarmed one. His eyes shot up and he grew visibly frantic, raising his gaze to look at her in bewilderment.

"you notice stuff and yet you haven't noticed that I'm madly in love with you?" She added and he remained speechless, with mouth ajar. "Oh wait!" Melanie placed her fist under her jaw, looking thoughtful. "Maybe I'm just kidding myself; maybe you actually did notice but like you don't feel the same. I mean, look at me. I don't blame you. I don't have enough hair on my head and I have more than enough on my legs, I don't even know how to apply lipstick." She shook her head as she spoke casually.

"Oh come one." Paul reacted in a scolding manner. "What are you saying? You don't need to shave your legs or whatever. You have like the finest pair of legs I've seen. They are like those long-jump athletes' legs."

"But you don't like them." Melanie accused.

"I like them. I like you." He retorted. "And you're so fine it would be actually hard to dislike you even if you have a bad personality – which you don't, except for your occasional excessive jokes and roughness – you're amazing. You should be a model. You, don't need makeup and all that shit. You just have to . . . take a shower and show up."

Melanie frowned. "Are you saying I stink?"

Paul's confusion grew. "No! No! how did you get that from what I said?"

"It doesn't matter anyway." Melanie dropped her frown and pouted. "You wouldn't choose me over someone like Ashley. I mean, honestly, look at her . . . and then look at me. Ugh!" She feigned disgust.

"it's not like that."

"Oh come on. Be honest with yourself. It's alright. I don't blame you, Paul, she's way hotter. Just admit it."

"I can't admit that."

"why?"

"Because . . . it's not true."

Melanie stopped and looked contemplative as Paul's heart raced, as his mind worked to figure out how to escape this quagmire.

"So you're saying or admitting that . . . I am hotter than Ashley."

Paul's mouth opened and that was just it. Nothing came out of it. He was visibly troubled and was stuck. He suddenly felt parched and could feel his body getting sweaty under his shirt. A moment later, she began a round of loud evil cackle.

Paul's mind got frenzied and he wished and prayed within that she would just stop – stop all he pranks and jokes and evil cackles.

"don't be so serious, Paul." She finally said. "I was just pulling your legs. You should have seen your face." More laughter followed and she shook her head.

Paul sighed and said, "Oh thank God!" followed by a soft courtesy chuckle.

A frown replaced Melanie's mien instantly and the quick transition startled him. "Thank God?" She mimicked him comically with a mock wave of hands at God.

He replied with silence and self-conscious reaccessions.

"So, what? If I wasn't Joking, this is how you would have reacted to the confessions of my feelings?" Again, Paul was lost at what to say and...

"Yo!" Jake's voice called from down the hill and took their attention. They spun to him quickly before he said; "We gotta go. I got a call. My Dad is back."

Paul's heartbeat quickened. It was getting exhausting.