Destination Beautiful

Well tomorrow had come. And I was coping quite well actually. My brother Steven had surprised Cathy, and well all of us, with a surprise birthday visit. It felt so good to be rejoined with my brother for a while again. For my part, he was the man in our household. Yeah sure there was my dad, trying to keep us together. He tried hard and meant good, but still it was Steven who’d been there in the rough years. Steven was probably the only one too, who knew how I wasn’t okay, even if I seemed to be. It was a sad goodbye, when he left town to go to college. But an understandable choice. I don’t think I’d doubt very much if I were given the chance to go too. But now he was back, and staying for the weekend.

It was not until the afternoon I sort of broke down. After I’d helped Cathy cutting her birthday cake, with the sprinkles she wanted on top, I now sat down on the couch quietly eating my piece. Or more like, absent-mindedly staring and playing with my fork.

“Hey,” Steven said as he sat down beside me on the couch. I looked aside and faked a smile.

“D’you want to go out for a bit? It’s okay you can go, I can handle things here,” he said.

“But.. the kids,” I started, looking around to see Cathy play with her friends.

“I can handle it, dad’s around somewhere too, you go and get some fresh air, you need it.”

I sighed and put my saucer, with the hardly touched birthday cake on it, down on the table in front of me.

“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “I just need to get it out of my system, so I can be in my birthday mood again.”

Steven nodded. “Don’t worry too much okay?” He whispered as he gave me a brotherly hug.

“Thanks,” I said, getting up and leaving the house.

***

After about 30 minutes of mindlessly walking without any destination, I found myself crashing down in one of the seats at Starbucks. I felt so tired suddenly, and any source of energy was more than welcome now. I blew over my coffee, waiting for it to reach a drinkable temperature, when I heard a voice beside me.

“Uhm, excuse me, is this seat taken?”

I shook my head.

“Okay.”

I looked up for a moment to see who was talking to me and saw a black haired guy with piercing green eyes right in front to me, smiling politely. I smiled back at him, or well at least I attempted to, before drawing my attention back to my coffee.

“Hey, mind if I sit here?” he suddenly asked.

“Go ahead,” I mumbled. I wasn’t much in the talking mood right now, but if he wanted to sit there, well, I wouldn’t stop him.

Billie Joe sat down at the girl’s table. It didn’t took him too long to realize, when he saw her, that she was the exact same girl he ran into yesterday. Well, she ran into him actually, not like that mattered much. Looking at her, he felt that same sense of pity and sorrow he had felt yesterday afternoon. She looked miserable. And Billie Joe, even though he was not sure why, wanted to help her. She seemed so alone and upset about something and that made him sad, for he knew what it was like to be alone and upset. But why was he so drawn to her? There were other people in this world being alone, other people with problems that upset them. It was probably just the way she’d looked yesterday, the way she turned around and disappeared, as if he had frightened her. He hoped he hadn’t. He took a close look at her. She had a pretty face underneath her tears, but she didn’t seem to notice. She didn’t seem to care one bit about how she looked, or maybe she was one of those insecure girls.

His mind drifted off to Adrienne, who was 2,000 light years away somewhere in Minnesota. She sure as hell was a pretty girl, his pretty girl. He wondered how she was doing. To Billie Joe it felt like it’d been ages since he’d properly spoken to her. Sometimes he wondered if she even still felt the same way about him as he did about her. It was always him calling, and it was always her to hang up first. He sighed. ’I miss you..’ he thought as he reached over for his cup of coffee.

With my eyes I glared over my cup of coffee, inspecting the guy. Why did he went to sit here while the place was practically empty? I’d get my answer soon enough, because he started to speak suddenly.

“Did I scare you yesterday?” he asked.

I looked up.

“What?” I asked confused.

“Yesterday remember? You ran into me and,”

I took a closer look and suddenly recognized him.

“Oh,” I said. “sorry.”

“Nono that’s okay, I was just wondering. You.. you seemed quite upset,” he said and he looked at me.

I looked down. Usually I was pretty good at hiding that, so why had he, a guy I don’t even know, seen it? Of course, I’d been crying. But it was only just some tears. Might as well have been a contact lens or something.

“Yeah, well..” I started, but I soon quit, for I felt like I wouldn’t be able to speak normally.

“Nevermind, I didn’t mean to sound pushy or whatever,” he said.

I was silent and sipped a bit from my coffee. Was this guy actually concerned for me? He didn’t even know me. But he sure seemed like he asked with good intent. But I couldn’t just go and plain tell him. It’s not like he was a shrink or something. Not like I would ever go to some claimed professional anyways. It was just something I had to grow with, and it would probably get more and more easier as Cathy grew older.

We both seemed to be absent-mindedly staring into the distance, obviously somewhere else in our minds. Every once in a while I’d look in front of me, secretly gazing at the mysterious guy in front of me, while taking sips from my coffee. Our eyes met for a second, and god, I couldn’t help but notice how green his were.

Suddenly, he started to speak again.

“Do you ever feel like something of you is missing?” he asked. “Like, something gets taken away from you, and you just feel like you’re not complete anymore.”

There it was, he’d hit it. Right on the spot, without even a single word from me. Was I really that obvious? And if I was, why was he the first one to let me notice? It was silent for a moment, before I answered.

“All the time..”