Yet Here We Are

The inside of the train seemed empty. It usually is at this time of the day, this time of the upcoming season.

"It's a good thing that there are a few people around, we can talk inside the train if you like."

He sat right next to me, with my brown satchel acting as a make-shift wall in between. Jacob's been looking through his phone for minutes with a soft grin painted across his mouth. I continued to look outside, observing the view and the silhouettes of the buildings the trains came across. The sun had completely vanished from the horizon, and the first drops of snow had fallen, yet the cold itself somehow doesn't want to be felt.

"Hey, Jacob," I whispered. "Do you think that we'll make it to the bookstore at this rate?"

"Of course, it's quite nearer than you think. Having any second thoughts?"

I never had any in the first place, because I had more the two thoughts and doubts the moment I saw you again.

"Not actually." I lied. "But I am thinking that you might be busy with something else." A maneuver to make this plan go haywire.

"No problem at all." He said with an ever-growing smile. "Besides," he looked at me, "It's my treat, alright?"

There was silence after that as he continued looking through his phone. The light of it gleamed across his face as his fingers scrolled and zoomed. I slowly felt the air around me clamped, removed. It was more than suffocating but less just to make sure I'm still breathing. Nothing new and nothing less, the feeling of about to swallow something big and choke. Something I was used to from the beginning, and something that haunts me for another time.

"Don't you know the stations and the places here?" He slowly dropped his phone in his wallet and snugged it like a sleeping baby, and then looked at me again, directly in the eyes.

"I'm just... not familiar with them, I guess." I hoped he didn't recognize my sudden avoidance of eye contact. I still couldn't let him look at me, let alone him to recognize who I really am. I had wished for a lot of things in life, but I hoped that my near appearance doesn't trigger something inside of him to wonder.

"I think you should travel more. There are lots of places here worth exploring. Tons of possible settings and inspirations for your future works. It's an opportunity if you think that much about it."

I slowly and subtly grabbed a new notebook out of my satchel and pretended to read something... important. Just to clear out the built-up haziness clogging my senses.

"As if I could travel more with how busy my schedule has been," I said, subtly showing him my long list of written organized schedules. That should give Jacob a clue that I am not willing to see him soon.

For my own sanity, and for his own good.

"But I think I may be able to that, the imagination part that is. Besides, I still got some left in me that is waiting to be written." I said, turning the pages of my scheduled notebook and marking things up that don't need to be marked. I side-eyed him in a short while.

He doesn't seem pleased.

"That would help, I suppose." He said. His smile faded as he looked above the ceilings of the train. "Good thing's AA station's just a few stations away."

And then there was silence, but more than the only things I could hear are the rumbling of the train from moving on the tracks. I didn't know how much I could handle, the tension of acting all real and natural, but all I knew is that I have to endure until I shake him off.

I had endured, the best way I can. And I am certain to keep enduring until this whole facade of mine is finally over.

"Just hang on a bit more, Zac. We'll get there soon." He said. The monotony sounds of his voice thinned the air around us.

The station we dropped off was nearer than anyone would expect it to be. The bookstore he was mentioning was also just a couple blocks away. It was even grander than it was before. Shelves of books, of all genres and types, were dominos that can't be toppled easily. They even sell other items on the counter, new ones that I had never seen before, new things that weren't there before. The business must have been booming ever since, and I wondered how long it had been since I also stepped foot in such a place.

"Zac!" He stood in front of one of the shelves, pointing at one of the sections, directly at a seemingly recognizable row of books. "Isn't this one of your books?"

"Yeah, the one I recently published. Those took quite some time before finally getting published."

He grabbed one and looked at my name, then suddenly turned to look at me. His smile suddenly widened as he touched the covers. His fingers glided across the etched carvings of words on the surface, turning its pages, and the fragrance of it wafting beneath our noses.

I caught a glimpse of his fingers once more, and I was sure this time that he was indeed wearing a silver ring.

"What do you mean by that?" He said. His shotted look almost made me drop on my knees; that almost caught me off guard.

The clock ticked and tocked. The leaflets of the pages of the books blew from a sudden gust of wind coming from the AC. The cold returned, something I'm familiar with, and something I'm comfortable being around. It was piercing through my jacket and crawled across my skin until it reached my nape and ended on top of my head.

It felt as if I was hit by a bolt of lightning under my feet.

I saw him staring at me with a blank expression on his face, like waking up from a dream. Or waking up from an already done nightmare.

"Oh... um... where's the pen anyway? Have you found it?" I said as I turned away from him, pretending to look for that new pen. If it really wasn't for that darn new pen that I won't ever come across to him ever again.

The flustered expressions I've shown him were seemingly not worth pondering. It was as if I was hiding something; it was as if I am keeping a secret.

"Yeah, right! I forgot. Wait here for a second."

Only for a few more hours, I thought, and this will be over and everything will soon return to the way I wanted them to be. And with that, I tasked myself to not leave any crumbs of memory for him to further remember me.

Yet here we are.

He returned the book to its shelf. The print of my name in it mocked me, let alone the title of it. I'm not even so sure what to feel about the words inside it. I stared at it as he scoured the bookstore. I stared in front of my books on that shelf as they came running back, those memories. They're like highlight reels of the past that I wished I could burn. Those weren't my proudest moments, to say the least, but the work I've done did offer something else.

I weaved them out of my own tales in life, something from the mind and the heart, the things that shouldn't be weaved once more.