Testing Waters

The second chapter of "but that's not love!"

My father drove the girl home, the same morning, but I never really got her name. I ended up wasting my entire Sunday sleeping off the rest of my hangover and went to school the next day.

The next day, when I finally had managed to bring my body to school, I saw the same girl who had saved me from the freezing waters. I wanted to talk to her, and thank her which I never got a chance to do either, but I noticed she was speaking to somebody else. She was speaking with a boy to be more specific. It made me feel uneasy, but I never really understood why. 

During lunch, I wanted to speak to her again, and there she was, sitting alone on a bench. She seemed to be eating a Rye-bread sandwich, how healthy. I walked over and sat next to her. “Thank you” Why was my voice so small, did she even hear what I said?

She looked at my face, and I felt extremely small, she then asked me “did you say something?” I became shy, and said, “no, I was just humming a song”. What just happened? What the hell was this feeling, I could barely speak to her, and my stomach and head felt light, and I didn’t really know what was going on. Now that I think about it, I had almost constantly been thinking about her when I was laying in bed through the Sunday. What was going on? Is this what the others refer to as ‘love’? 

If that is the case, then how do I break this weird curse of mine?

I looked at my watch and realized that I had a class and that it would begin in two minutes, so I stood up and decided to walk to that class. It was mathematics, but I had a more important matter on my mind that the Pythagoras’ Theorem.

 Her, what was her name? Why did I feel this way about her? After the mathematics class, I didn’t have any more classes for the day, so I decided to go home early. To my surprise, the girl I had been thinking about was leaving the school at the same time I was.

She was walking about ten meters in front of me, and she hadn’t noticed me, yet. I ran up to her, and when I finally had reached her, I managed to ask her “Who are you?” She stopped and looked at me. “Me? My name is Ilya. And you are?” “I’m Johnathan, nice to meet you”

She glanced at me, it kind of freaked me out, but in a good way. We decided to walk home together, and then I realized. She was my new neighbour, the girl who moved in about four days ago. This is why I only vaguely remembered seeing her at school. What was with this crazy coincidence? I was in a state of shock, but I was actually quite happy about it.

She invited me in, but it seemed as though she had an ulterior motive, however, I decided to accept her invitation because she wasn’t the only one with an ulterior motive. The room was very light. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing, but it was really lacking in colour.

“Sorry about the mess, I didn’t really expect any guests” “Mess? What are you talking about, your room is almost spotless.” I look around, in the room there was a bed, a desk and a chair. In one of the corners was a brown armchair.

“I’ll go down and make some tea, please make yourself comfortable.” And so I decided to walk to the end of the room to sit in the armchair. It was very comfortable, and when Ilya came up five minutes later, I asked her “what brand is it? It’s very comfortable”. She looked at me with a bittersweet smile.

“My father made that chair before he passed away, it makes me happy to see someone else enjoy the work of his hands” I suddenly felt a cold shiver down my spine. “I’m sorry for your loss. Are you still grieving?” “No, it’s fine, he passed away five years ago, in an accident.” I look at her with pity and take a sip of my tea.

There is a weird tension in the air. I barely dared to talk to her, but then she said “Don’t worry, it’s fine. I don’t want this to change anything between the two of us because I like how things are now.”

What was with this girl’s words? They felt soothing and comforting, with an underlying tone of pain. I couldn’t help but relax when I heard these words. 

Author's Note

The second chapter of my first project, please hit me with everything you've got!