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#textme

It was the seventeenth of November dated two thousand and eighteen. The Saturday night that I had finally gathered all of my guts and texted you. I'd been thinking about it since Wednesday evening which was when I got your number. It took everything in me not to freak out, but I promised you that this was exactly when I would text you. But what was I going to say?

Kira had managed to convince me that a simple hi wouldn't kill anyone. But here was the thing, a simple text could cause my heart palpitations, which really could kill me.

I took a deep breath and sent you a text.

Your quick responses slowly eased the pacing of my heart, but they didn't stop me from nervously pacing around the room. You were probably seated in yours, your face calm and collected with the usual amused expression you had on your face whilst you looked down at your phone.

I replied back with a response that involved mentioning how my father was torturing me via text and in a joking manner, accused you of doing the same to me. "I knew it. You just wanted me to smoke weed so that you'll be entertained." I had sent out to him.

That text referred back to the time we were at the library. We were always at the library, it became kind of our thing.

Our corporate law class had ended and I had an hour worth of a break, knowing that you had a break too I decided to ask you what you had then.

"I'm just going to study." Your hands quickly moved around the things that were placed on your desk and you skillfully worked your way around your bag whilst you looked at me.

"Oh, all right." I nodded and smiled. "I'll see you around then." And I had let go of the classroom door that I had been holding onto whilst I waited for you to respond and made my way down the stairs with Ella.

"I'm going to walk you to your English class," I told her. We long passed all our classmates and made our way down the second set of stairs that were right outside the building. We walked in silence.

"Lyla!" I heard a male voice call out to me from behind and I stopped in my tracks before turning to look back. It was you. You were walking down the stairs, your feet quick and precise as if you had been trying to catch up with me for a while now. Ella and I waited for you to get closer. You stopped dead in your tracks on the last step.

"I'm going to the library now, would you like to come?" You asked me. I was taken aback, not expecting an invitation to keep you company at all, but I gladly accepted.

"Sure, just let me walk Ella to class and I'll catch up with you. I'll meet you there all right?" You nodded and began to walk towards the building in the opposite direction.

Ella nudged me. "So, the library eh?" She had a smirk on her face that I really wanted to wipe off.

"It's no big deal," I muttered under my breath, as I stepped up the entrance onto the next building where Ella seemed to be having her next class.

"He doesn't usually do this, sooo. God, if he were actually talking to me, I would play Cupid for you guys."

I rolled my eyes at her and then asked the obvious. "Why isn't he speaking to you? That's all you guys did at the beginning of the semester."

Now it was her turn to roll her eyes. "James, he's, how do I put this, overly sensitive and complicated. He gets wrapped around the littlest of things. He always has."

"What do you mean?" And when I had asked that I wish I had taken it to heart and reminded myself of it every moment that I spent with you.

"Well the case here was that, I took this class with the same professor he took it with and I had mentioned him because I remembered how much he had loved her. I told her that maybe he'd pass by and say hello or something like that." She was now seated in front of me whilst I stood and listened quietly, my arms crossed over my chest.

"He got mad that I'd mentioned that, claiming that he hasn't had the time to do that and that I've placed him in a position where he now has no choice, so now he's just not talking to me." She finished, her fingers fixing the scarf wrapped around her head.

My first instinct was to defend you. I stopped myself. I had no reason to, I didn't know your side of the story, all I knew back then was that she was right. You did blow things out of proportion. How did I manage to tone down every single thing that you had ever done onto yourself, other people, and myself?

I wasn't sure what to respond to that. A part of me wanted to tell her that you'd probably had a reason for the way you had dealt with things, but I couldn't even think of one. To me, it all just sounded silly and immature.

So I settled for not saying anything at all. It didn't seem like a masterful situation, I let it be.

I excused myself from her and walked towards the library. I was feeling two striking emotions. Excitement. Lots and lots of nervousness. I was nervous to the point where you had brought my tremors back. I wrapped my hands into fists at the handles of my backpack to stop them from shaking and tapped my foot quietly in the elevator.

Glad I was in it alone, I looked at myself in the mirror. I wish I hadn't. My sunscreen was melting off of my face and my hair was sticking to it. It was November and the heat showed us no mercy. At this point, climate change wasn't a joke anymore.

I was stressed about the biggest thing when the elevator stopped and the doors opened up waiting for me to step out; I didn't know where you were sitting.

It was easy to find your thick framed glasses at the last corner of the library at that time of the morning. It was after 9:30am. There was no reason any one of the student body would remember that they are students in the first place let alone find themselves studying at the library this time of the day. It was too early for them to even be awake, the level of seriousness in this place was astounding.

You sat at the head of the table, all the seats by your right side were occupied. I placed my things at the table, and your eyes found mine.

"Hello." I had managed to squeak out. Mentally face palming myself, that noise must have been incredibly annoying.

You were a lot more enthusiastic and managed to squeeze in a little conversation, whilst you were working on something. Some sort of certification or examination. All of those kinds of things everyone was doing these days. It was an interesting thing that you were doing. But it wasn't something I would find myself doing.

My eyebrows furrowed as I shuffled through my pen case, my fingers quickly motioning through the stack of pens that I had stuffed in it. I had everything you could ever think of, and to think that I had forgotten to place the gray zebra double sided mildliner in there.

"What's wrong?" You asked me, your hand still against the desk by my notebook.

I frowned. "I forgot my zebra mildliner."

"The what?" You looked so confused, your frames down your nose. Your perfect, uncrooked nose and I could not begin to exaggerate the urge that I had to let my hand just take its action and having it push it further up your nose. But I couldn't do that.

"It's my highlighter." I sighed. My shoulders were sagging. I needed it to get the borders done so that I could sell the notes that I was working on.

You bent sideways and I could hear the zip of your bag coming undone before you pulled out a pen case. It was weird, you having one. You didn't look like the type. You seemed like the type of guy that would always carry a pen or two around all the time.

You took out a yellow highlighter and I wanted to marry you right then and there. I bit my lower lip and scrunched up my nose. Apologizing, I said; "I need that specific highlighter. I don't like using the fluorescent ones, they kind of hurt my eyes."

I don't know how our conversation went from highlighters to me complaining about my father and stressing about tutoring in another language, but you were laughing and looking at me with those chocolate brown eyes. They were twinkling and crinkled on the side.

You looked at me and you said, "You should smoke weed."

I laughed so hard I thought I would choke on my own laughter. "What? So that I could entertain you?"

"No!" Your hands flailed around, exaggerating your point beyond comprehension. "It's not for me at all, just for you to stay relaxed."

I remember that till date. I remember the whole of us till date. Everything between you and I. How could I ever forget?

I looked down at my phone and smiled at the memory as I proceeded to text you.

You spent the next hour trying to convince me that I should make a living out of being a stand up comedian. You talked about how you've met so many people in your life who've been through things but no one had a way of humoring them like I did. It wasn't difficult for me. Everything I've been through, it's all a part of my story now. I didn't have to hide anything.

Talking about what I've been through the way I do, just makes me accept it even more and makes me feel like I've gone far and have done well with everything that stopped by my way and there wasn't a moment that I wanted to spend regretting that or asking why it had happened because there was a reason and now, it didn't matter what it was. It didn't, not until I met you. I hadn't known how one person could just ruin everything.

But that night, you were just a boy with dark frames and freckles who tried to convince me that I'm a good person and you weren't buying the evil act. You were right. I am a good person. But I wish you had seen that when you were supposed to.

Your goldfish died on that day and I remember telling you how I used to cry every time I had a pet that died. You made fun of me, claiming that I really wasn't dead inside and you were happy that I cried; told me that you'd never thought you'd tell another person that.

I argued that contrary to my actual heartbeat, I do have feelings. I was talking about the picture of my EKG that I had once showed you in our corporate law class. My heartbeat was that of a dead person. I had joked how it was beyond the best thing in the world, to literally be heartless.

You told me you understood that people weren't nice and this was understandable. We were all joking at this point, at least I thought you knew that I was.

"Wear your glasses when you drive, kay? You're too pretty for prison." I read your text out loud and laughed. I told you how I thought I'd fit right in and how I'd want to tell those Russian badass stories in there. You claimed that I wouldn't survive there for a day.

When I told you how that wounded me, you said that I was too good. You always said that before. It was a thing, and deep down I knew that. But a part of me just wanted to convince myself that there had been something wrong with me from the start. You refused to believe that back then. I wish you had all that faith in me throughout.

"Why the mazafaking fuck would you want to go to jail?" My phone screen read. It was funny, how you were so different in person than you were over text. I liked that back then, I felt like I could see all the sides of you, one that was more comfortable around me than usual.

I then proceeded to tell you the story of the Russian old guy that I saw on the news when I was a kid. Where he would create fake bills and use them in stores with cameras on purpose so that he would get into jail. He was homeless and he wanted to go to jail because it was an easier way out. Prison provided him with a roof over his head, food, and daily activities with no death penalty since his crime didn't inflict harm on other beings. He was one smart homeless man.

You seemed like you wanted to hit me on the head through a text. You sent me multiple emojis of a boy face palming himself. I bit my lower lip to stop myself from grinning like an idiot.

I proceeded to explain to you how proud of myself I had felt. Dwayne texted me saying that Cara said yes to his date proposal and I was beyond ecstatic. I felt like a proud mother; like a good human.

It was after my  Strategic Finance class was over and I had stayed behind to converse with a couple of my classmates. Whilst I was explaining something with my typical use of hand gestures my thumb pulled at the hem of my shirt and when I lifted my hand up, my shirt went with it. I flashed everyone in front of me. The first thing you had asked me was if Marsden had seen me.

I don't think he had. That seemed to bring you some sort of comfort.

That word did not suit you. Cursing didn't suit you. It was something you had managed to use too much of later on and not for the right things. I wish I had known.

You had sent me an example of what was in your gallery. It was a three combined image of some woman from a tv show that read: if you love someone you have to let them go. if they come back, they're yours. if they don't, you stalk them.

I began to tell you I support the stalking part. You agreed with me.

"Unless it turned creepy, like my ex." I sent out, a part of me regretted mentioning him because he wasn't worth that kind of attention. But I did have a point right there.

I didn't want to seem like that kind of girl to you. The kind that was only talking to you to find a stranger to rant about someone else breaking my heart because the truth is; Bryce never broke my heart. He had just managed to disrespect me and treat me like shit.

"I think you'll marry a Russian doctor and be really happy." My lock screen read. It was difficult to explain to you how I had to marry someone from the same nation and religious sector as I was, but that conversation was for another time.

It wasn't the entire truth. You weren't on the verge of both, you are the epitome of negativity but you tried so hard to beam out positively I didn't want to mention anything.

When we sat outside that Wednesday evening you had spent a good Forty-five minutes talking about how Dr. Marsden went into detail about your love life. You believed that you could never charm a woman. I couldn't even begin to list the number of times you had caught my attention let alone how I caught feelings for you.  

"Dr. Isiah Marsden said that someone like me, with my personality and behavior, would never find someone right now. It would be in my early or middle thirties until I find a woman for myself." You had said, your elbow resting on the back of the bench we were seated at.

I looked at you intently, trying hard not to focus on the cupid bow on your upper lip and I said, "Well, he is definitely wrong."

"He's not wrong." You argued, your arms now crossed over your well defined chest. A part of me wondered how you could tolerate being seated on this bench outside with not only a sweater, but a heavy velvet black jacket. It brought me some comfort that it was not zipped up to your neck. Meanwhile, I was shrugging off my black leather jacket from my shoulders to now only be seated in a white tank.

I felt your eyes move down to my arms before they settled back to look at me. Adjusting myself, I was now facing the little bushes across the path walk whilst you were by my right side. It was rather dark, the cool air breezing through my tied up hair. I closed my eyes.

"He is more than wrong." I disputed, turning my head towards you and raising a brow. "For all you know, you've broken plenty of hearts."

And mine too. I wanted to add, but I couldn't. I had gathered that evening that he was one of the most self-deprecating people that I know and it was something I said too often about myself.

"What about you?" You catechized.

"What about me?"

"You said you're unhappy with yourself. What are all of those things? Let's list them and eliminate them one by one." You were so confident that you could do that when you had mentioned it.

I shook my head and laughed, my leg now crossed sideways on the bench made out of white stone and my arm resting on the back of it as I leaned my head against my fisted hand. I snorted. "No."

"I'm not letting it go until you begin."

And that's how it was between us. Always. I never wanted to say no to you so I would eventually give in and agree with whatever it is that you wanted me to do, even the littlest of things.

When I snapped back to reality I noticed that you had sent me an image on iMessage. I open back our chat and almost snort out the water that I had been drinking.

"I'm not exactly sure, but I have this idea in my head and it's like, I believe that; At least in my case, for example, every time I meet someone or anyone I communicate with I always give pieces of myself to them. There's always the giving and that we all consist of pieces of each other. We believe that we always give, but unintentionally we take those pieces from others too. Every bit of our lives that we share, you give them a piece of yourself. And I just want to turn that into a young adult novel. There'll obviously be a boy and a girl, and I'll see where it goes from there." I texted back, my hands were starting to get clammy. I didn't talk about my work often to someone, especially before anything was ready, so I was really nervous about the entire thing.

You had thought that it was really beautiful and wanted the main character named after you. You exaggerated on the point of how you really really loved the idea and that we should talk more about it.

"Let's call it the pieces theory; Lyla's theory of relativity-"

I interrupted that series of text messages by explaining how I got this idea when I was working on a collection of prose titled Daddy Issues. I talked about how the main character had given someone all of her pieces.

"I want to show you that part. Do you mind?" Texting from my home screen was a lot easier to avoid my current last seen from showing to all the other people that would be swarming my inbox on how I should be doing their homework or their project work.

You asked me to please send it to you. And so I did. I took pictures of the two pages that had the piece of prose scribbled on it and it read;

My father always put me after
After what he needed
After what he wanted
Just after
But you?
You weren't any better
I was your second choice
You picked her over me
And every time I pick on her details
I couldn't tell why you would choose
Someone who would hurt you
For ice could freeze you over
Your heart already black
Over someone who gave you all of her pieces
Who you meant everything to
Everything

I could say that, without a doubt, it was one of the most drama free and peaceful conversations that I had ever had in the past couple of years. I wish I had know that that was to change with you. I wish I had known where I went wrong.