|| This book comes with a playlist. You can access to it from the external link or following this one: https://8tracks.com/belwatson/h-s-playlist ||

• • •

    I take a deep breath and close the door behind me. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. To be completely honest, I'm scared. I don't know what I'll find today, what will happen. I don't know if I'll ever come out of this alive. I might as well get kidnapped and sold in the black market. I don't know. I have no certainty that this is a good idea, that I'm doing the right thing.

But I'm doing it.

I'm leaving my home knowing that I'll meet him. If it's a him. I don't even know his name, he could be a she for all I know. Or a pervert that's trying to find a new slave. I don't know! But he could also be the guy that's made me smile all these months with simple words and a smiley face. He could be that person I've been waiting for. Once again, I don't know. But I'm taking a leap of faith and actually doing this. Wherever this takes me.

It might sound cheesy, but I feel like I'm doing the right thing.

So I close the door and stop to look ahead. I need another deep breath before I put one foot in front of the other. It's a cold autumn morning, the wind is cold but it doesn't chill my bones. I nuzzle a bit inside my scarf to keep my nose warm and make sure my wool hat stays where it's supposed to be. And after that it starts.

I don't know exactly what's going to happen. He didn't tell me much when he proposed we should meet. All he said was "I think it's time we should meet." And I agreed because I also thought it was time. That doesn't mean I'm not nervous. I'm shaking and that's not only due to my terrible pulse. He set a day he thought we both could make it. All he asked from me was the whole day.

So it's a Sunday, like any other Sunday, with the difference that today I'll meet a stranger.

But he doesn't feel like a stranger. Not for me, at least. We've been talking for months now. Well, "talking." I've never heard his voice nor have I seen his face. As I mentioned it before, I don't even know if he is a he to begin with.

So I walk to the place where everything started. He didn't mention to meet him somewhere else, so I'm assuming it'll be where everything has happened. It's funny because I know we could've met long ago. After all, we both visit the same place every day. But I've never stopped to wait for him, although I could've. He's never waited for me, either. So I guess it's because none of us wanted to break the charm of our dynamic.

So I walk, feeling a lump in my stomach, a nervous knot that makes me anxious. My hands are shaking more than usual so I keep them in my pockets. I don't dare to buy a coffee on my way because I'm scared I might spill it. I couldn't have breakfast at home because I was too nervous. I couldn't bear the idea of putting something in my mouth. Not even a cup of tea. Now I think that was a bad idea because I feel the emptiness of my stomach more than ever.

I get to the park that I walk past every day. The same park everyone in this small city visit, where you always see someone running, or someone with their dogs. There's always someone around. I follow my usual path and finally stop when I get to the bench where it all started. The same bench in which one day I decided to sit down because I was too tired and I was carrying too many books and I was stressed and I couldn't find my phone. The same bench in which I've sat every day since that day, five months ago.

It all started with a post-it. Yes, a simple, all too common, underestimated post-it. A small piece of yellow paper with a few words scribbled, meant to anyone. But I found it. I sat that morning on this very bench and found it.

• • •

I was late, as how it tends to happen. My classes were about to start and I couldn't skip anymore classes. I had done that far too many times. But my last year in Uni was proven being more difficult than what I anticipated. With my friends gone, all for different motives, I had been left alone. It's not like they wanted to leave me behind, it was like they couldn't wait and I couldn't leave everything behind and follow them. Because of my own problems I had to put on hold my life and they carried on, reason why they graduated before. Now they are pursuing their dreams in another, bigger city, whilst I have to still finish my major.

It's so much harder when you're alone.

But even if I was late for class, my phone was ringing nonstop and I feared it was my mum. Maybe I forgot something important or maybe it was just the phone company offering me a new plan. I couldn't know until I found the bloody mobile. So I sat down in the first bench I found and started rummaging through my belongings. This is when I missed my friend Moni and her expression of disbelief because I couldn't find anything in my own backpack. That would never happen to her, with her obsession for having everything organised. Every pocked contained certain things and she could find anything with her eyes closed. I wasn't like her.

I finally found my phone just when this stopped ringing. And to make it worse, it had been a random number, which probably meant it wasn't important. I sighed in frustration. And you know Murphy's Law? It always comes when you think things can't get worse. When I looked at the time on the clock and saw I was fifteen minutes late, I also noticed my coffee tumbler had spilt its content inside my backpack.

Just my luck.

"Oh, well done, Macarena!" I scolded myself as I started taking out all the things and trying to clean the mess. I could say goodbye to my first class because I was certainly not going to make it. I would have to talk to Professor Fiorentino to forgive me for, once again, missing a class. Just when I was really trying, things had to go wrong.

And as I cleaned my stuff I started to get angry and more frustrated. Why did these things have to happen to me? Why couldn't it be just simple and easy for once? As if fighting every morning to find the strength to get up and actually carry on with my life wasn't enough, I have to deal with an ordeal of bad things happening to me on a daily basis. Someone really enjoyed messing with my day.

With a frustrated sigh I just left everything on the bench and closed my eyes. The icing of the cake would be if I got mugged now. But with my luck I better not think those things or it might happen.

When I opened my eyes I saw something at the end of the bench that I hadn't seen before. A little yellow paper, a post-it that wasn't mine. I had a few in my pencil case, but they were purple. That one wasn't one of my belongings, but it was there like a neon sign. It was like suddenly all I could see was that post-it.

I reached out to grab it with a frown on my brow, wondering what was that little thing doing there. The first thing I saw were some words and I blinked three times to put them into focus again and finally read them.

And that was it. A simple note, left by a stranger. Words that I had heard so many times. Words that my friends kept telling me over text messages every other day, but for some reasons these felt more real. These words felt like there were said only to me, although it was clear that the note was meant for whoever could find it. But I found it. I, among all the people in the city, found it that morning, when I needed it. When frustration was starting to get me, when I was starting to feel that life was just too cruel with me all the time and when I was letting the monster within me win one more time. I found those words and that smiley face.

And I smiled back.

I opened one small notepad that Mila had given me before she left and pasted the post-it there. The smile didn't disappeared from my lips and I kept staring at it for a good few minutes.

Sometimes no one can reach you. Sometimes you don't want to be reached. Sometimes you just want to be left alone in the darkness of your thoughts because no one can possibly understand you. But other times a friend can reach you. Other times a stranger can move you. And others simple words can actually touch you.

"I can do it," I told myself and closed the pad, the smile still on my lips.

So I put everything inside again, I cleaned the mess, hung my backpack over my shoulder and left the bench. I didn't make it to the first class, but I wasn't going to miss the second. I managed to get up that morning and it wasn't going to be for nothing.

• • •

And that's how I found the first post-it, when I needed it the most. I still have it and it's that same post-it the one that's brought me here today, hoping to find not a piece of paper, but a person this time. A person that's been by my side for five months but that at the same time hasn't been here. A person that is special to me. And I want to meet that person, the one that's made me smile even in those days when I'm about to give up. I have to admit that sometimes I've left my bed not because I knew I had to go to classes. God knows that's not nearly enough motivation for me. But I did get up because I wanted to find a note.

But today there's no one in the bench. Not a guy, or a girl, or an old man, or a creepy person with a ski mask. No one at all and I can't hide my disappointment. But what was I expecting? A sudden prince charming waiting for me to take me out of this dull life? Someone who would take me in adventures? The person behind the post-its is probably just someone who wanted to make people happy, anyone, and for that he left encouraging messages where he could.

Disillusioned, I sit down in the bench and sigh, not ready to go back home. Not until I can get over the crush of my hopes. But then I look up to the trees above this bench, the trees that are slowly getting naked as they lose their leaves. And from a tree I see something that it's not supposed to be there. A white square handing from a branch like a horrid spider going down its web. With the difference this thing doesn't look disgusting or terrifying.

I squint my eyes to see better and I notice it's an envelope. Curious, I stand on the bench and try to grab it but I'm not particularly tall. I'm only 1.61 metres. So carefully, I stand on the back of the bench, praying not to kill myself, and finally grab the envelope in my hands.

I survived! And for a clumsy person like me, this is an achievement. I bet that if my friends were here they will be clapping for me.

I miss them every day.

-:-:-

Hello! Long time since I posted new material here. This is a book I'm working on and which I'm planning on submitting to the Hot Keys contest. So I'll need your feedback to improve it. If you like it, vote and spread the word!

Follow me on twitter so we can talk there! @BelWatson all your feedback will be highly appreciated.

Bel, xx