Meeting Again

Shy shyly has her head bowed down with her eyes looking at the floor before looking up again.

She wondered to herself if this could all be just an illusion or a dream.

A dream that you have to wake up from to the stark reality of how life is supposed to be before.

"Samantha," she hears her voice being whispered to her.

Knowing that this is not a dream, that everything before them was not a dream, it was real.

When she's silently staring out from the bedroom window at night, she would sometimes think back to that night when he saved her.

Wondering to herself inside: Was he just a dream?

She thinks to herself, hoping he would one day come to find her or stumble upon her in the everyday scene of life.

Looking into those piercing eyes that catch her full attention, she slowly mumbles out her words, "Hi."

Almost bemoaning herself inside for saying such a quick introduction, her eyes look at him with wonder, "How did you know I was here?"

Just looking into his eyes made her forget that she was with all these people looking at them right now.

"Well, your friend Jeanette called," Jon had a playful smirk on his face as though exchanging a joke between the two of them. "She...is quite an interesting person."

Samantha was confused by what he meant by that, then she got an intuition, as she asked with a bit of hesitation, "Did she...Um...told you about me?"

She could not help herself from yelling at Jeanette inside now in her mind for ruining any good impression between her and Jon.

At the same time, she feels happy to have a friend like this who helped her do something, giving her that extra push she needed.

Smiling at her mischievously, she sees Jon extend his hand upwards towards her face.

This makes her hesitate, not knowing what he is planning on doing.

But she didn't move as she felt her ears getting entirely flushed from the nervousness she was hiding inside.

"Don't worry, it was all the good things about you," Jon whispered into her ear as he moved towards her with a small step, closing in the proximity between them, just the two of them in that small distance.

Reaching his hand out, he brushes a strand of hair on her face between her ears.

At least in his mind, Jon doesn't see these things that Jeanette told him as bad.

He finds them funny and fascinating.

It only made him more curious about Samantha, the story of who he is, and the life she had before.

But before they could get any closer to talk more, Samantha heard a deep voice containing a slight tone of anger calling behind her, "Who is this, Samantha?"

She turned around to see the familiar figure of her last boyfriend, Samuel, standing there and watching with undisguised jealousy at the two of them.

Jon's first impression of this guy is that he looked pretty like a peacock, with dyed yellow hair and a golden chain around his neck.

He intended to dress in this striking way to catch the attention of everybody that might pass on the street.

"You have quite an interesting taste," Jon joked with her, whispering into her ears, just audible enough so that she could hear.

Samantha didn't feel like responding because she also questioned herself why she liked this guy back then in the first place.

After hearing Jon whisper to her, she knitted her eyebrows slightly and gave him a slight eye roll.

When she first met Samuel, she thought he was pretty charming in the way he was also so confident in himself.

But, only later did she notice that this was not the kind of confidence she liked.

It was a drunken pride trying to cover the insecurities Samuel felt inside.

In the same way, when she is with his friends, she doesn't feel like he genuinely values her. Instead, she is just his 'girlfriend' in the way one would name an object for a showcase.

To be that girlfriend for her, she always felt this need to be a different person and dress in a more fashionable way.

Jon could sense from her rigid body language that she was not feeling like herself.

Maybe it is from fear or the habits of those memories, but he knows that this guy was probably someone close to her before.

In that instance, Jon grabbed her hand into his, which caught Samantha by surprise; she wondered why is he suddenly holding her hand, looking at his layback smile as though telling her everything was going to turn out fine.

And she trusts this feeling that she gets from him; the restlessness and anxiety in her heart dissipated.

"Honey, who is this? You haven't introduced this classmate to me before," Samantha tried to contain her smile. She heard Jon acting as her boyfriend at this moment.

In the next moment, Jon extends his hand out with a warm smile on his face as though greeting a friend of hers, "Hi, nice to meet you."

Seeing the affectionate way Jon treats her made the jealousy in Samuel's heart grow even stronger.

He grabbed his hand in front of Jon with a giant step, squeezing it tightly to showcase his strength.

Instead of answering the question, he boldly asked back, "Who are you?"

"I'm her boyfriend; it's a pleasure to meet you," still maintaining that layback smile on his face while also exerting his strength back, "You're Samuel, right? Her ex, I believe?"

Crack.

Samuel tried to hold back the pain that he felt, especially when he heard his knuckles cracking from the exertion by the force of Jon's handshake.

It's like his hand is being minced by steel bars squashed together or the weight of a granite piece stabbing together.

As the captain of the wrestling team in college, he's pretty proud of his strength, which he uses to defeat all those opponents and first-year students trying to take his throne.

"Ah!" Gritting his teeth sharply, the sound still whispers out after feeling his bones being crushed instantly.

The sound of pain still seeps through his shut teeth of Samuel as he tries to suppress the pain he feels inside; to him, it is quite an embarrassment to be so rudely defeated in this manner.