What am I going to do, now? Tell Riley that I'm not ready or go with the freaking flow, and let maybe a great guy become something more than just another hypothetical notch on the bedpost?

Watching the ground as usual, I didn't notice that Nikki was waiting for me at the bottom of the cascading staircase.

"Uh, oh..." Nikki retorted; glimpsing at my ramped thoughts of confusion plastered all over my bare face. "... Ya, got that I just got kissed for the first time..."

A sigh exhaled exaggeratingly at the thought of that.

"...like a lady should be kissed by her sword carrying knight." She continued.

I, on the far-sided hand, wanted nothing more than to barf up every bit of dinner.

Somewhere along the way of my ascending age and observation of a primal and diabolical relationship between my own mother and a nutzoid man, (whom I never had much contact with; not that I inherently cared to have much communication, by my own forsaken will to do so) I reluctantly refer to as 'father;' and being the repetitive, effortlessly charmed receiver, of sharply anointed arrows from a handful of gruesome guy's trigger readied bows - I must have shoveled out to my own fleshy grounds, that instrumental... pristine developed notion of a tired, drawn-up fairy-tale, shamefully boasted amongst every romance novel known to woman... feeling.

The feeling that love exists beyond what our eyes can see at any grief-stricken moment; when all else fails... love will prevail, bullshit! I wanted little to zero interaction with that... in all truth sparing detail... I couldn't; I barely made it out of the last time I was caught in the storm of loves unassuming and torturing nature.

It's as almost conclusive that my heart's relentless pursue was nothing more than cursed; a path winding beneath a canopy of deadly wrapping arms and poisoned thorn bushes whipping at me; at every chance a light could be seen towards the end of the vast darkness.

"So, how did this particular knight's kiss stack up to those transcending ones of the past?"

"Nik, your letting British Literature go straight into to that nifty and gullible head.... though you're learning something, which is rather astounding considering that you revolted inclusively all English classes in High School."

Since silence never was a strong suit for her. I guess that shut her up. She let that subject flop - thankfully.

"It's only been a week of hard adjusting...and you're already floating in a sea of knights with big swords. Wake up... this is reality! Life doesn't work that way."

Catching a breath

"... and his kiss wasn't all that great, by the way." I scolded walking by her; stomping my way up the stairs. Not even bothered by my haphazard rampage, she bolted to my side, proceeded with her non-conversion to having the attention on myself - at least - for once.

Seeing as I had no certainty of gaining much by her chatter of the nightly creature mow-downs and whom may have entered her moisture of enormity. I went on with my stance against all that's incorrect with this world's inaccessible appetite for another's touch.

Starring forward, not a thought to if Nikki was truly listening - suppose, I didn't have a care - it became a habit to talk aloud even when she happened to be around.

"I've seen too many girls, and some truly, great guy friends, wind up zombified with a barely beating chest cavity, that most sum up to be termed 'a heart', by an enhanced mouth charmer of a guy - who couldn't keep their Johnson safely tucked away in their pants." I continued to banter.

Bantering out-of-control was my middle name; I call it passion with cause.

"Are we calculating by experience?" She asked, wonders may never cease - she was capturing every word spilling.

"I swear do guys ever speak with their minds or morally rely on their penis envy?" The quiver almost - almost - snuck around the corner of the hallway, sneaking its creepily, taught path along the wall and closing in on daggering a long-awaited tear from a dried-up duct.

Snapping heavy eye-lids closed just before the evidence still suggested I carried a blood drop of lover's remorse; squeezing a telling lump down; swallowing it back, I found my voice again, "... It's not another trip or memory I want to go down as another failure, or keep."

What was left unwrapped and untold had my insides snarled in a game of a sinister resemblance to twister, with the truth centered by the single tear to escape under my left eyelid. There is no hiding the belief of surviving an equivalent heartache as before. You will not come back from it.

The realization sung like a choir screaming straight out of hell; protruding out sticky limbs like a clematis plant and attaching its tendrils to each convening cell willing to listen. I wanted nothing more than to let the desolate feeling go and completely let it die.

"Oh, it do!" she busted out in sudden quip which thankfully, at the same time, took a hold of my spiraling mind.

"What do?" pooling out of my mouth.

"Those kinds of guys and those situations do happen..." Taken a step forward while harnessing her sleeveless arm onto my pocketed right one. "...You just haven't found the right one, Danni... not everyone can't be like my Ben, ya know."

The moment she began glamboring on, I had the inkling she was about to spill anything to make my mood even more grimaced.

I glanced over to find her face pricked with a devastatingly handsome smile. Her expression immediately spoke up to tell me she was in one of her lala dream land stories. It's never an intention of my own will to cave whenever she effortlessly slides into her own mishegas, and even more so, to shlep me along to dine as well, but now wasn't the time nor the place.

"Ah! Nuh-no... Oh! Nuh-no!... I don't want to hear that Ben's so sensitive... Ben's so girthy... He's 'obnoxiously puurfect.'" I sassed.

"When you have crap spitting out like that, it makes me wanna rather puke up razor blades through my clapper... I'm just so not in the mood!" I deadpanned as the irrationality slowly subsumed to a small amount of sudden awareness, as several chattering voices swallowed any breath I had left.

"Well... ya' betta get in some other mood, cause we're about to walk into class." Evincing the gap, and my flap, which compelled me to metaphorically pick up my bruised ego along with peeling up the lower half of a jaw that smashed into the stained concrete a few, short seconds ago. How graciously perfect to begin this semester. One for the books in how to properly cause humiliation.