A Fated Trip

He was nothing special. Floppy blond hair, a 'Justin Bieber' cut gone-wrong. Blue eyes had never really done it for me either; unlike the dark and mysterious chocolate-brown eyes currently boring into the back of my head. I had them memorised. His eyes were perfectly framed with a long curtain of dark lashes, casting long, faint shadows across his beautifully defined cheekbones.

And the most beautiful smile you had ever seen.

Stop it.

Don't go there Connie. Not again.

I had to stick with floppy haired boy; and I say boy, because he barely seemed sixteen. Giving him a seducing smile, I pulled on his hand and took him towards the door. Not even knowing his name, but not even caring.

Standing determinedly, an obstacle intercepted my path.

I froze.

"Get out of my way Alex." I glared at his face, trying to sound sure of myself, yet avoiding all eye-contact. This meant a lost cause, if it wasn't already...

He didn't budge. Of course he didn't. He hadn't changed that much - no sudden loss of stubbornness. I gripped harder to my red herring's hand, determined to prove some kind of point that I was past this.

"Alex, seriously. Move. Don't do this tonight..." He could hear the plea in my voice, the slight waver of uncertainty that meant I'd lost this argument.

"This isn't you Connie. I won't let you ruin your life like this. You can't keep pretending that you're somebody you aren't! You don't fool me."

That was it. The final straw as they say. It was all coming out tonight. I didn't care who was watching, or who was listening. I looked around the club to confirm my thoughts, but only a couple of people around us had noticed the tension in the air. Only a couple looked now, but I was sure that more would stare, as soon as I began...

"You don't have the right to say things like that anymore Alex. You don't know who I am anymore. I know I've changed. Hell, I had to! I had to change because no-one noticed me. I had to change because if I didn't, I wouldn't be able to move on."

He just stared pleadingly at me, He didn't want to be embarrassed any more than I did, but he knew me too well to know, I'd not finished.

"It used to work for me - not being confident and outgoing. People only saw you so it didn't matter. I could be my own person, I never had to give in to any of the pressures. I never had to be like the other girls. How people saw me didn't matter to me. Do you know why I cared so little? Do you have any idea?!"

Just bowing his head, he had lost all words to say. He couldn't even look at me, whether it was through embarrassment because of how he'd made me feel, or because of the scene I was making, didn't matter. I'd been storing up so many words in my over-frazzled brain for such a long time now that I owed it to myself to finally speak out. I was sick of seeing his face every single day, everywhere I went, around every corner in this city I had a memory of him. Of us. And I couldn't take it now; his silence only urged me on.

My rising volume and increasingly heated tone, had attracted more curious faces and ears, eager. Eager to see a generic 'lover's tiff' to uplift the already mundane night ahead of them. Well you know what? Nothing in my life had ever been 'generic' until now. So tonight was the perfect opportunity to turn that around and leave behind this crushingly painful, memory-riddled city. But right now I needed closure, and the universe was granting me that by putting the boy who'd ripped my heart to pieces right in front of me. And tonight, he was silent.

"Because it never mattered what anyone else thought. You noticed me. You wanted me for the girl who was herself. The girl who tried to be no-one else. You loved me. That was all that I ever needed Alex, all I ever wanted and you just ripped the rug right out from under my feet."

That hit a nerve. I saw the pain flash over his eyes. The guilt lined his face, crinkling his forehead in regret. But I'd gone past caring. He needed to hear this. There was so much anger and hurt seeping through my body and I had always known it's source, and today, I was going to set it free.

After three months, I was finally going to talk.

"Now I'm just lost. Alex, how do I be myself when the only person who ever loved that girl was you? And now not even you notice me. Not even you want that girl. That's why she had to go. I had no choice..."

A beautiful pair of chocolate-brown eyes looked up at me, a single tear escaping. His trapped emotions - his raw and real emotion - escaping from their confinement.

After three months, he was finally going to feel.

"You gave me no choice. This is the person you've forced me to become."

I looked away from him, settling my eyes on the door at the far end of the club. I reckoned I could just make it outside without breaking down. So I ran. Leaving my red herring behind.

Leaving him.