We Only Breathe For So Long

Days were not as thrilling as they were before. I guess it is owing to the fact that I wasn’t as busy as I used to be. Jessica miraculously won a trip to Cancun and she decided to keep the bookshop closed until she returned in two weeks. Work kept me occupied for more hours than university did. I decided to concentrate fully and solemnly on my studies for these two weeks to come. When you are in high school, your teachers tell you how hard university level is until your ears bleed. I could not believe that they were all proved wrong after the first few weeks I enrolled in British Columbia. Sure, the workload was enormous but nothing that time management couldn’t control. The best of all was that you were free. If you do or do not do something, nobody cares! As long as you did what you were required to do, teachers would not mind how you did it.

Besides spending quite a lot of time getting my head in my studies, I took this opportunity to be around the house more often and communicate with everybody more – one thing that I have not been doing much since the beginning. After my half an hour ‘ride’ from British Columbia, I arrived home. I sensed nobody was home with the exception of Sophie since most of the lights were on in broad daylight.

“Kylie?” she shouted from an unknown room.

I placed my keys and bag on top of the table by the entrance. “It's me,” I replied. “Where are you?”

“Library!”

I walked past my room and to the library. This room is probably the biggest one in the entire house. The walls are high and replaced with bookshelves. You cannot actually see any walls. How many books are there? No one knows. Hundreds! I never knew where to start looking when I wanted something to read. Sophie was sitting on the floor close to the far left corner shelf with multiple books surrounding her. She had a pen in hand while she flipped the pages of a thick book she had on her lap.

“Research sucks.”

I chuckled. “I know. Need help?”

“I’m all right. It’s not that bad, you actually learn something when it’s not by means of the Internet. Books are more entertaining.” She looked up, smiling.

“Couldn’t agree more.” I said, reaching down the floor to sit close to her. “Homework?”

“Yeah, have to do a speech about philosophy.”

“Uh… that’s tough!”

She chuckled. “And it’s not even punishment, it’s actual homework.”

I patted her small back and offered her an encouraging smile, “it could be worse.”

She nodded in agreement and continued to study her book in search for ideas and answers. I picked up the next book in her pile of philosophy related books. The writing was minuscule.

“You have to use a magnifying glass to read those old hags,” she said, handing me the magnifying glass with a smirk.

I took it and placed it on top of the tiny words at a certain distance. It was talking about Aristotle - his thoughts and findings in philosophy. This is an interesting topic and it does make you think upon it for a while but the quantity of pages in the book weakened my will to finish reading the first couple of pages.

“Hey,” Sophie said, “let’s go to the show tomorrow? It’s Wednesday and I know you don’t have much to do.”

Until this point I had forgotten that she was not satisfied with one show, she wanted to see and go to as many as she could.

“Can we go to another one? At a later stage?” I asked, kind of pleading for her to change her mind and let it go without any further questions of why I would deny going with her.

Of course, life is not a fairytale so that totally did not happen.

“What’s happening between you and John?” she asked, curious and almost demanding.

“What do you mean?” I played dumb, forgetting Sophie is not dumb to the point where she could not see that I was trying to avoid the subject.

“Well, your phone is forever ringing and I never hear you answering it. He called me a few times to know why you don’t pick up your phone and asked if you’re okay and he showed up here thrice when you were in university. It’s either something happening or he’s just doing it for fun.”

I groaned, not wanting to have to explain myself to Sophie. She would not accept ‘nothing’ as a response or a short summary of what had happened. She would interrogate me until I gave out every single bit of information I knew myself.

“I don’t actually know. We were getting along fine, hanging out often and all. Then one day he speaks to me as if I were indifferent and a piece of trash. I got mad and went over to the bus at four a.m. so I could shout my lungs out at him. I didn’t know where to go so I went to Eric’s house afterwards. Cutting the story short: I yelled and John and had a make out session with Eric within 12 hours.”

I sighed as I let my frustration out. I looked at her and her mouth was shaped like the ‘O’ letter. “I know, maybe I shouldn’t have shouted at him...”

“You kissed Eric?” she asked, not sure if she had heard right.

“Yeah, it was an impulsive mistake.”

She threw her head back and let out a chuckle. “He is so hot! What are you on about Kylie? Kissing him would have never been a mistake. Not now, not ever.”

I laughed softly, not completely embracing her train of thought. “Well, I think it was. We weren’t thinking much when it happened.”

“Point is that he kissed you first so it is exactly what was in his mind.”

“Things aren’t quite like that Sophie. People make mistakes, no matter how good they may sound.”

“Is he a good kisser?” she asked, eagerly.

I chuckled. “Unfortunately… yes.”

She laughed. As she opened her mouth to make another comment on the matter, I quickly spoke in order to turn the table on her this time.

“How’s Kennedy?” I said, wiggling my eyebrows.

She blushed a little as she always did when his name was brought up. “He’s well. I haven't seen him since the show. Which is upsetting. I guess we’re never seeing each other besides when we go to shows. He told me he liked me.”

I almost chocked on my own saliva. “As in, like you?”

“Uh-hum. But then he mentioned the fact that I’m much younger…” she concluded as her tone went from content to upset.

I picked up her mood almost instantly and held her hand firmly. “It’s okay. He isn’t wrong though and you know it.”

“Yeah, I know. But c’mon Kylie, some married people are ten years older than each other and they are well. I know eight years is a lot and I’m way too young to be with someone but still… I just wished it wasn’t like this. What are the chances of a band member liking a fan? One in a billion! I’m that one.”

“I really thought it was just one of those teenage crushes that you had.”

“That would be an understatement.”

“Hey,” I said while lifting her chin up, “don’t lose hope yet.”

She smiled faintly at me and continued to use the book on her lap as a way to distract her from her thoughts.

I did not find comforting to know how she truly felt inside about it all. It is kind of weird to see such a young girl liking an older boy so much. Maybe she did not love him but maybe she did. I do not believe teenagers know what deep or true love is. Hell, I did not know it myself. It still troubled me how she could get the one guy she likes to like her back. Meanwhile, I was sitting in a lake of emptiness with feelings for John in which he did not have himself.

I headed towards my room and took a burning, hot shower. Once I had finished, my skin was red and the bathroom was filled with steam. I put on my pajamas and crawled in to my bed. Tonight I could sleep because this time my mind was too exhausted to even wonder about his name and my phone was on silence.