Counting Down The Days To Go

I strolled out to the school car park alone and headed towards my car. Mike had purposely sat far away from me during the classes that we had together. It didn’t take any brains to know that he was pissed at me. Some kids looked at me weird because Mike and I had all along been sitting next to each other in all the classes that we had together for the past week.

Mike was so pissed that he refused to even look at me. I caught his eyes once though, but my glance was returned with a cold, hard stare. Yeah, he was definitely angry at me.

My silver phone vibrated into my hand, signaling a message.

“Yo. Hurry up.” It was from Aiden again.

I walked quickly to my car and crawled out of the school gates with dozens of other cars.

About fifteen minutes later, I strolled into Coffee Bean. Looking around, I spotted a familiar mop of black hair in a corner of the shop. It was no doubt Aiden as he was wearing his favorite checkered hoodie. His back was facing me and he looked like he was sipping his coffee so he didn’t know that I was coming up behind him.

I was in no mood to scare anybody this time, however, so I simply gave a small tap on his shoulder and went to sit down opposite him.

“Long time no see!” Aiden said with unmasked excitement.

“We just met two days ago at Peter’s party. Remember?” I said with a roll of my eyes. I was seriously in no mood to be joking and fooling around with Aiden today. If I find out that this meeting had no importance whatsoever, I was totally prepared to just walk out. I don’t even care about Aiden’s feelings at the moment because I was feeling like absolute crap.

“Someone is in a bad mood today,” he mumbled. “Want to go buy a cup of coffee or something?” He said in a louder tone.

I shook my head. “So, what’s so important that you want to meet me so urgently?” I asked.

“Hmm… do I have to have a reason for a simple coffee break with you?” Aiden said.

“No. But today was just a bad day for me and I’m not really in the mood to just talk and joke around, you know?”

“Ahh… the Monday blues?” He asked with an eyebrow shooting up his forehead.

“Not exactly.”

“The new kid?” He asked. “Mark or something, right?”

My eyes widened at the mention of “the new kid”, how did Aiden know?

“His name is Mike. And how did you know anyway?”

“News travels fast in this small town. Word is that you’ve been hanging out with him. A lot.”

“I was assigned to bring him around on the first day. But he lives like 2 minutes away from me and his car wasn’t here yet so I’ve been giving him rides. And we have a lot of classes together, and since I’m one of the few people he knows, we sit together a lot.” I explained.

“Oh. So you guys are nothing more than friends?”

I wish. “Nope. Nothing more than friends.” I said instead.

“Good. Here I was, worried that you didn’t love me anymore because of some new kid that shows up in town.” He said.

“I’ve never loved you and you know that,” I said sleepily. Sleep sounds good right about now. I just want to sleep all my troubles away. I folded my arms on the table and leaned my head down on them.

I felt Aiden’s hot breathe on my ear as he said, “But you will.”

I shivered and looked up to see his face very near mine.

“You wish.” I simply said before closing my eyes again. I heard him sigh and lean back against the back of his chair.

We spent a few minutes in silence. He was sipping on his coffee whereas I was taking a small nap.

“We’ve known each other for many years now, Crystal. Don’t you think that maybe it’s time to upgrade our relationship?”

I scoffed at his choice of words. “ What a great choice of words. You make our friendship sound like a MacDonald meal.”

Aiden and I battered on for about half an hour with mindless conversation before the both of us decided it was time to leave. We went off in our separate cars, not without Aiden giving me a small peck on the cheek of course. That guy sure was a friendly one.

***

I heard something vibrating right next to my ear and I turned to my right, trying to open my eyelids and saw my phone flashing wildly. I had just received a message…from Mike?!

I scrambled to sit up and opened the message, trying to read in the dim light in my bedroom.

“Meet me at Valerie’s Park in twenty?”

That was the simple message that ended with a question mark which showed that I had a choice to go. I rubbed my tired eyes and looked at the clock, 8.08 PM. I had slept for around 3 hours then. I reached home around 4.30 and after taking a quick shower, I decided to take a nap.

I groaned as I went to my closet and took out a t-shirt with Power Rangers on it, and a random pair of purple shorts. I had to make full use of the weather before fall officially arrives.

I quickly brushed through my hair and decided not to wear any make-up. Valerie’s Park was a small neighborhood park that was only about 5 minutes away. I slipped on a pair of flip flops and walked to the park.

It was dark and I was getting kind of spooked out. As I walked through the gates of the park, I realized that I didn’t know in which part of the park he wanted to meet me at. I looked around and saw benches circling a small fountain, which was the main attraction of the park. A small plaque in front of it says that it is a wishing fountain, one of those fountains that you get to make a wish at by flipping some change into it.

I walked towards the fountain and saw a figure sitting on one of the benches.

“Mike?” I called out, my voice barely above a whisper.

The figure turned and it was too dark for me to see his face but I heard a reassuring, “Yeah, it’s me.”

I walked over to the bench and sat down next to him.

After what seemed like an eternity of silence, I decided to say what I’ve been meaning to say for the whole day.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

The both of us laughed as we said the same thing at the same time.

“I really am sorry. I was such an asshole. I embarrassed you in the cafeteria and I really didn’t mean half of the crap I said.” He apologized.

“I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have done that to you. You were right, you are allowed to like whoever you fancy and it is none of my business. I shouldn’t have snooped into your private affairs.” I apologized too.

“And you know I didn’t mean to ignore you the rest of the day. I was just feeling so bad for being so mean to you when you were so nice to me all this while. So I thought you were angry at me and decided to just sit away from you. I guess I was just a coward because I didn’t know how to apologize to you.” He continued on.

“Me too. I just felt so bad and I thought you were angry at me. And just to clear things up, I do consider you as my friend. You are a really cool person and although I’ve known you for a very short time, you are one of the nicest people I’ve met.”

“Yeah, until today that is. I wasn’t very nice back there in the cafeteria.” He said.

“Well, you’ve apologized and I’ve apologized so everything is cool, right?” I said, hoping to just stop talking about this. It was getting kinda awkward with all the apologizing and stuff.

“Yup. Actually, I called you out here tonight not just to apologize. I just want to make it real clear to you that it’s not that I want to tell you, it’s just that I don’t think I’m ready to tell anyone yet. I'm not sure of the feelings that I have for this girl myself. That day on the phone with Amanda, I just wanted to make things clear to her once and for all so it just slipped out. Can we just pretend that I never said anything about having a crush on anyone?” Mike said softly.

I nodded in understanding.

“It’s alright. You don’t have to tell me now and I’m never going to force it out of you again.”

He smiled. “Thanks.”