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Chapter 52 – Unexpected Guests

I wiped the tears with the back of my hand but they kept on coming. In my room, Kidnap kept on pawing at my feet as I cried on a corner, hugging my legs. He whined lying down close to me and nudged my hand with his muzzle.

“I just did the right thing, Kidnap,” I murmured in between the sobs. I didn’t think it would be this painful since I knew this would happen anyway.

Erasing my memories of Leon wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Every corner of my room had something that reminded me of him.

My phone rang for the seventh time but I didn’t pick up. Everything should be okay after some time. Like Becky said, I’ll be good as new in no time.

At the back of my mind, I wondered if Leon already read my letter. I had too much to tell him but couldn’t bear to say it all personally. Maybe it was fear that I might break down in front of him and lose what little sense was left in me.

My own words reverberated inside my head as I headed out of my room, catching a glimpse of Matt’s Valentine card sprawled about the floor along with the other stuff I intended to give back to Leon.

Dear L,

Do you know that breakups statistically increase during spring breaks, Valentine’s Days, two weeks before Christmas and in summer vacations? It doesn’t make any sense but I guess all I wanted to tell you is that I’m glad I met you. By the time you’re reading this, I’ve already broke your heart.

I’ll always miss you’re smiles and the way you scrunch your forehead when I try to say something funny. I was thinking maybe you didn’t find any of my jokes amusing. You just laugh because I look stupid, right?

You see, you and I are too different. Your world’s just everything mine isn’t. I know you how much you love your music. It’s your life. And I don’t want you to give that up. I’ve already done enough damage. I might sound selfish but know that I don’t regret anything. Having the chance to love you was the greatest thing that ever happened to me.

Leon, do you know that sixty-eight percent of people think still think about their ex? And I will be thinking of you more than you could ever know. But I’m letting you go.

Always,

Sarah

Kidnap trotted beside me as I made it to the living room. Dad straightened on the sofa and lifted his gray eyes from the music sheet he was reading.

“You talked to him.” It wasn’t a question. When I nodded without a word, his gaze softened, putting down the music sheets with a sigh.

“I’m okay, Dad,” I said firmly before he could ask.

Winfred looked unconvinced. “Sure, sure. Come talk to me when you’re not in denial anymore, okay?”

Very straight to the point. “Okay. But it may take a while,” I said nodding vacantly as I marched to the fridge and opened it. “Denial is a miser’s paradise.”

A wry smile painted on his face. “Sure thing. Let’s not wait ‘til I’m old, deal?”

“You’re not that old Dad,” I said stooping down to reach for the shrivelled, almost brown apple with a sticky note on it saying off limits. It was the apple Leon left on my table one time he sneaked up to my room. I didn’t eat it and kept it like a remembrance (I know, it’s creepy in a stalker-ish way) inside the fridge for several months which was utterly stupid, now that I think about it.

“Yeah,” he folded his arms on his wide chest. “But the gray streaks on my hair are telling me otherwise. Tomorrow,” he bartered.

I glared at him. “Dad! I don’t want to talk about it. Next year, maybe next month—“

“The day after tomorrow.” He entered a staring contest with me. First one to blink loses.

“Next week…” I mumbled exhaustedly. And I thought Mom was annoying.

“Saturday,” he said still not blinking. That gave me six days.

It was me who gave up. “Can I go if I say yes?” I demanded, secretly dreading to have the talk with my Dad. He knows me so well even after so many years. He’d know if I’m lying which sometimes made me wonder if I was such an open book.

He answered with a winning smile and pointed his chin to the door as he picked up his music sheets.

Grudgingly, I marched to the yard and found the hole from where Matt dug our secret box. It was time to let go. I dropped the apple into the hole and buried it with my bare hands. I must’ve been still crying because the soil became slightly damp when I finished. Truthfully, I didn’t get the whole logic of my actions but it made me feel a tiny bit better.

“Sarah.” It was Winfred knocking on my door. “Becky’s here… with some friends.”

“Hmmm…” I grumbled which was my way of saying “leave me alone,” burying my face under the sheets.

Ironically, the door swung open and I heard footsteps coming in. A weight shifted the side of my bed.

“Sarah!” Becky squealed loudly on my ear making me scoot up from bed. It made my ears ring as though my eardrums just exploded.

“Ugh! Don’t ever do that again, Becky! You see this?” I pointed at my normal-looking left ear. “That’s blood trickling right there. It’s a concrete evidence of how shrill and annoying you are by nature!”

Clasping her mouth with a hand, she blurted out a hysterical laughter.

“What’s so funny?” I demanded grudgingly.

Becky tried to straightened her face but burst into laughter again before she could even speak.

“What happened to your face?” a familiar voice said from the foot of my bed. Almost instantly, I knew it was Nathan. He stood there with hands in his pockets, wearing a nerdy suit—thick-rimmed glasses, a red beanie over his head, fake braces and complete with a nerdy backpack—perhaps, so no one would recognize him.

Impulsively, I pulled the sheets up to my nose. “What are you doing here?” I demanded, watching him snigger quietly.

Louella sat on the foot of my bed curbing a smile. She looked so beautiful and elegant in her pink dress that she was a bit out of place. “We’ve come to visit,” she said putting down a bouquet of white stargazers on my bed.

All the while Becky kept on laughing like a maniac who just swallowed a tank of nitrous oxide (which is the nerd term for laughing gas), exchanging meaningful looks with Louella and Nathan who seemed to be having a hard time holding back a chuckle themselves.

“What’s wrong with you people?”

Nathan’s laughter finally filled the air. It gave me the goose bumps. He laughed a lot like Leon but in a mad-scientist way. “What’s wrong with your face?”

Louella nudged him on the ribs and bit her lip.

My eyes widened realizing the cause of my embarrassment. Not again! I groaned and marched bitterly to the stairs.  “Dad!” I called at the top of my lungs, my pitch raising a notch. “Kidnap’s did it again!”

The puppy clearly had gone bananas. No. Maybe he had a grudge on me because I broke up with Leon. What else could it be? Leon was his original owner so he was taking revenge. For a few days now, he had been demonstrating a weird habit of burrowing at the yard for hours. Then he’d go padding up to my room and stamp my face with his filthy paws. Every day, I’d wake up with my face muddy and grimy as though I had fallen asleep in a hobo hotel.

I heard Mom and Dad’s muffled laughter downstairs. “Okay!” Dad replied sympathetically though it was obvious that they were enjoying it.

“Maybe he’s got the rabies!” I shouted back and the chortles worsened. Silently cursing, I stomped back to my room and glared at Becky and Nathan. “Ugh! Look at my face!”

Nathan brushed the tears on the side of his eyes. “Look at your hair!”

Once I got out of the bathroom and examined myself in the mirror (thrice) to make sure that I looked less horrible, I joined them in the kitchen. Kidnap lazily sprawled on the floor. The second I sat on the kitchen table, he lifted his muzzle, snorted and trotted away without even looking at me.

“The dog’s got some issues,” Mom said still holding back a smile. She seemed to smile more now that Dad’s back.

Nathan, Louella and Becky shot meaningful looks at me.

“W-what?!” I said through a mouthful of homemade pizza. Even Mom’s cooking got better to the point of edibility since Dad came home. “I didn’t do anything!”

“Aww… he just misses Leon,” Becky murmured to Louella who nodded in agreement.

My eyes twitched at the mention of his name. Just hearing it sent a stabbing pain in my chest. Becky seemed to have noticed my spasm and clammed shut.

“Oh and believe me,” Nathan started as he picked a pineapple from the pizza and nibbled on it. “The puppy’s not the only one in this house who misses Leon.” A playful smile pulled up the sides of his lips and I had the sudden urge to tackle and choke-slam him.

“Oh… is that why you’re here?” I retorted raising an eyebrow. “To spend some brotherly quality time with him?”

I knew I just hit the bull’s eye when his smirk disappeared for a fraction of a second then pulled up again. “We’re here to make sure you still haven’t tried anything ridiculously funny like hang yourself on a tree or gobble up rat poison or—“

Nathan cut himself in mid-sentence and gulped when he saw Mom’s forehead crumple.

I snickered. He was afraid of something after all. For example, Mom. “Naw… I was thinking maybe I’d try that on you first… Just to see which one’s more effective.”

“Sarah!” Mom’s voice hit a couple of notches up.

“Mom, can we talk?” I sighed. “Alone, please?”

“Oh… sure. I’ll be at the garden,” she muttered before mindlessly heading outside. I could just wonder how she’d be able to cover up all those holes Kidnap dug out for the past few days.

Louella placed her hand on top of mine. “We’re worried about you… and Leon.”

“I’m okay,” I said trying to convince them and myself but mostly myself.

“You’re just saying that, Sarah but you don’t look so good.” She was right. I looked horrible. I mean more than the usual horrible. At night, I kept wide awake crying until exhaustion claimed me to sleep. “Leon wasn’t doing any good either. Maybe it’d be better if you two make up.”

“What she said.” Nathan smirked nonchalantly. “You’d think he’d be so worked up and furious and kicking right after you dumped him but he just went straight into coma. Not literally, of course. But still, it wasn’t any fun picking at him when he doesn’t get angry anymore. And he kept blabbering to me civilly,” he shuddered at his words then spoke with a small, high-pitched voice moving his hands like makeshift puppets. “Sarah would change her mind. She would, would she? Do you think she would? I miss Sarah. I wonder what she’s doing now. Do you think she’s thinking of me?”

Grudgingly, Nathan slammed his hands on the table and let his head fall on them. “It’s really annoying, you know? Plus, you might not want to wait longer. Who knows? By the time you change your mind, you’d be chasing him into some mental asylum.”

“Shut up, Nate,” Louella threw him a glare which he ignored altogether. “So what now, Sarah? As much as I hate to admit it, Nathan’s sort of reporting the news as it happens… in a much exaggerated way, of course.”

Becky nudged me. I just looked down and tried to find the words to say but couldn’t. Leon was miserable again because of me. It was all my fault. I thought I did the right thing but now…

Nathan groaned exasperatedly, his head still on the table. “Who wants a lunatic for a brother?”

Ugh. It just dawned on me how much he cared for Leon, in a creepy, frustrating way. “I guess it runs in the blood,” I chided with a half-hearted smile.

“Wait. My Dad’s not crazy, you know.” Curiously, he lifted his head from the table and he didn’t seem offended. He called Arthur Dad. That just made me smile. “Maybe we got it from the mother’s side.”

Discomfited laughter filled the kitchen for a moment. He had me thinking. Have I really done it for Leon’s sake? Or because I was just afraid that he would leave me someday anyway? Was it because I was afraid of being hurt? If then, I just made the stupidest mistake ever. Suddenly, I wasn’t so sure anymore.

A few soft knocks on the door roused me from my deep thought as I watched Louella and Nathan cross the street to Leon’s house from my window.

“Sarah?” Dad called. When I opened the door, there was a sad little smile on his lips. “It’s Saturday.”

“I know,” I sighed and watched as Dad sat on the edge of my bed. I followed and flopped beside him.

“What are you thinking now?” he asked, putting his big arm under my head.

“That I thought I did the right thing. But I think I might be wrong. Or maybe it’s wrong to think that I’m wrong because the truth is that I’m really right… Does that make any sense?” I smiled bitterly.

“You’re confused,” he said nodding.

“Exactly.” He knew me too well. If it was Mom talking to me, she’d probably send me straight to Doctor Jensen, my psychotherapist. In a package. With a ribbon on top.

Winfred gazed at me, his gray eyes with bluish hint on them. “You know what? Sometimes, overanalysing things won’t help at all. You use too much of your brain and it’s not healthy at all.”

I lifted my head up and assumed a British accent. “It cannot be helped Sir Winfred Claude de Byrnes. Unfortunately, you have fathered to a nerd.”

His eyes narrowed a bit and imitated my accent. “I genuinely reckon that it runs in the blood, Princess. You deliberately contemplate on circumstances far more than necessary, I’m afraid. And I cannot relinquish the impression that you inherited such trait from my side of the family.” Dad pulled me closed to him and I buried my face on his chest laughing.

“You know Leon’s a good kid. I practically watched him grow up. He’s responsible… in some ways, and he tends to let his temper get the best of him at times but I’d rest in peace once I’m sure that you’d end up with him someday.”

“Dad,” I nudged him on the side. “You’re not that old. You’d live up to a hundred and by that time, Mom would be an old nagging crone.”

His husky laughter filled the room as he rubbed his ribs. “Rhetorically speaking, of course. What I’m saying is… that oftentimes, you’ve got to use that.” He pointed his finger on my chest. “And learn to follow it.”

“Leon has a whole other life waiting for him. I don’t want to take that away. I don’t want him to blame me someday because I held him back.” The sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach worsened.

Dad laughed again and nearly crushed me with a bear hug. “That, you got from your mother, no doubt.”

“What?”

“Your stubbornness.” He pinched my nose. “You always worry about this and that; acting like you’re so strong and mighty even if you’re just hurting yourself.”

“Try living with Mom for ten years. It’s contagious.” I smiled at him. I couldn’t be more grateful and content that Dad was back. In fact, I dreamed of this day a thousand times before.

Flinching infinitesimally, Winfred’s eyes gazed at me. “Point taken… But Sarah, don’t let your fears keep you from being happy. I guess what I’m meaning to say is, don’t wait for ten years like your Mom and I did.”

Blankly, I nodded, thoughts racing. I had never been more confused in my entire life. But at least I had an idea what to do next.

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Such great reactions from the last chapter and I thank you all for being with me til the end *chokes tears* and well... I couldn't thank you all more... See you in chapter 53.

I have sample covers for the book two--------------------------------->>>>

so yeah... please tell me what you like the most :) and here's a song I really love. PLAY IT-------------------------------------------------------->>>>>

p.s. I'm happy and sad at the same time for some reason. :()