[ 7 ]

OF WARMTH COMES DELUSIONS AND PAIN

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Track of the day: Beautiful Disaster - Jon McLaughlin

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The lecturer drones on and on. Various literature jargon, he spouts. Asyndeton, adynaton, anadiplosis – which sounds more like a disease than an example of a figure of speech – and others. The man hasn’t even reached the next letter and Irene can already see that some of the students have lost interest. Several on their phones, playing a game or sending text messages to each other. Some on their laptops have logged in to their Facebooks, checking status updates. Joy, sitting beside her, is doing exactly the same, but Irene continues to listen. She writes the terms down on her notepad, the black ink forming cursive letters, forming themselves into words.

The lecturer paces the lecture room as he speaks. He pushes his glasses up, watches everyone in the room and takes notice of their lack of interest so he clears his throat then declares, “Okay, listen up.”

Irene spins the pen in her hand. She hears the class come to life, shifting in their seats, giving their attention to the somewhat forty year-old looking man standing at the front with his blue shirt and his brown chinos.

“Looks like everyone’s had enough, so let’s end today’s class right here.”

The class erupts into much noise, chatting as each got up from their seats, of tables being folded, the wood snapping upright to its unused state, of zippers in bags whizzing like humming of busy bees on a floral meadow. Joy shuts her laptop close, stands up and waits for Irene to pack up her pencil case and notes.

At lunch time, Joy had agreed to meet with Irene – they frequently have lunch together nowadays, after having worked in the pub for a few months now. They sit by the table beside the glass wall of the cafeteria where the spring sun shone through, giving needed warmth on a still chilly afternoon. Joy, after swallowing her bite of spaghetti, looks at Irene then says, “You’re still hanging out with Wendy, I see.”

Irene nods. “What about it?”

“My friend, do my words just pass through your ear as if they are nothing? They’re advice. Advice.” Joy moves her fork up and down as if to emphasise her point.

Irene takes a bite of her sandwich – ham and cheese, something she quickly made this morning before she left for this morning’s lecture – and stays quiet, looking at her friend with an odd gaze. She thinks it bizarre that Joy finds Wendy a threat when after the events of last night, Irene has inclined to believe that Wendy is far from that. Way far from it.

“She been giving you trouble?” Joy asks, worry distinct on her words.

“You’re more trouble than she is.”

Joy scoffs. “What’s this? Am I hearing what I am hearing?”

Irene smiles smugly. Yup, you heard me right, my friend. And Joy returns it with a look flecked with disbelief as if she really is offended, but Irene knows it not. She laughs and Joy follows a second late.

“Joy,” Irene says, after both of them have calmed down. “You’re my friend, right?”

“Of course.”

“I know you’re worried about me. I hear you, Joy. Even I think that I should distance myself from Wendy.”

“But?”

“But…” Irene lingers on the word. She looks back on the past, the times when she has spoken to Wendy, when she has seen sides to her that others barely even see. She looks back on last night, when Wendy has gotten herself drunk, hurt herself from a thorny bush; when Wendy, seemingly out of it and barely awake, was actually a little bit sober, embracing Irene into a hug.

“Just…needed…this…after…all.”

She still hears the words reverberating within her. She still feels the touch on her body. They’re imprints. Wendy’s imprints.

Irene puts her sandwich down and looks at Joy. “I just can’t seem to get myself to.”

Joy sighs. She has that look in her eyes that she’s tired of this conversation. The look that says she’ll never be able to convince Irene at all.

“You really need to meet more people,” she says.

“I don’t have enough time for that. I have studying, work and you to deal with already.”

“You forgot Wendy.”

Irene rolls her eyes. “I don’t even have her number.”

“But you want it.”

Irene blushes then clears . “Well, me and Wendy are friends… I think.”

Joy eyes Irene and gives her a suspicious look. Irene instigates, dares Joy, “What?” she says, but she hopes Joy doesn’t notice. She hopes that Joy won’t see anything, find out anything. Not yet. Not now.

 * * *

“Boo!”

Irene jolts, nearly dropping the book she’s holding in her hands. She sighs exasperatedly, biting her lip, frustrated at being easily surprised at something that people normally wouldn’t be surprised with. That’s Irene. Easily scared, easily surprised. She’s not the type to be okay with these types of jokes. Joy used to do it a lot but Irene told her off. She didn’t think that Wendy would do the same thing. Do people enjoy playing pranks on others that much?

Irene glares at the culprit but Wendy just smiles at her, her dimple showing. It’s a tender smile and Irene cannot help but soften at it, wonders if the sun should be ashamed for being up in the sky, when something else better is right in front of her. She makes sure to hold onto this smile as well.

“Sorry,” Wendy says, hardly anything remotely apologetic in her expression. She goes to sit beside Irene on one of the outdoor benches in campus. The weather has been nice this afternoon, the spring breeze a calm on Irene’s arms that she decides to relax here, on this bench, reading a novel. Wendy, eyes fixed at the book Irene is holding, looks on with much curiosity.

“What are you reading?” she asks.

“Ah it’s—”

Wendy grabs Irene’s hands, lifts them up to show the book cover and reads out the title. “The Notebook. Huh.” Wendy gives her the eye, raises an eyebrow then says, “Really?”

Irene feels Wendy’s soft fingers, her warm touch, a warmth that Irene didn’t think Wendy would have, but it’s there, burning Irene’s senses afire, igniting her cheeks to a plump red that she hopes Wendy wouldn’t notice. She pulls her hand away and she thinks Wendy must have wanted to hold her hand because Wendy’s hand stays upright, as if in regret, the look in her eyes questioning, wondering. Irene shakes the thoughts off, shrugs it out. She mustn’t get deluded.

“I like you, sure, as a person. But not in that way.”

Right.

Irene clears . “What’s wrong with Nicholas Sparks?”

Wendy sniggers, but Irene doesn’t take it offensively. “The book is an exaggerated cliché of an impossible reality.”

“Oh yeah? Care to expand on that?”

“Well, simply put,” Wendy says, crossing her arms indignantly, “that kind of love just doesn’t exist. Love doesn’t transcend human complications and create miracles. There’s no such thing.”

“Such a pessimistic approach.”

“The book is not very realistic. That’s all I’m saying.”

“So, you don’t think love is powerful enough to pierce through an ailment that causes one to lose memories and for that love to make one regain herself?”

“No,” Wendy says succinctly. “I have not seen it happen with my own eyes so why should I believe it? Have you?”

Wendy got her there.

“I haven’t,” Irene says honestly, meekness there in her tones.

“Exactly.”

“That’s not really the point. In the same way that love is an abstract concept, we shouldn’t just disregard something just because we don’t see it. Besides, it’s just fiction. It’s supposed to be a personal representation of what one desires as a reality.”

Wendy gives her this look as if she has just heard the most ridiculous thing ever. “Please don’t tell me you’re a romanticist.”

Irene frowns at that. “What’s wrong with romanticists?”

“They’re a bunch of delusional fools.”

Irene stays quiet, something within her partly offended, partly guilty. Delusional. Fool. That’s her more or less. Exaggerating an impossible reality, hoping for something to happen, something to falter within Wendy, even just a tiny bit. She looks at the words on the book, words that now have meshed themselves together into a blur of uncertainty. She wonders if she can ever dissuade Wendy’s beliefs. Will she even be able to? Where does she start?

Irene hears the ripping of plastic then carton. She knows what it is. Wendy is opening her packet of cigarettes.

“Thanks,” Wendy says as she taps her cigarette lightly on her lap. “For last night.”

Irene looks at Wendy. She sees the plasters on Wendy’s cheeks, on her neck. Plasters Irene put on herself. They’re still there, untouched, it seems, and it gives Irene a little bit of hope. Like finding that single drop of water that trickles towards the tip of a leaf on a blazing hot terrain, encouraging Irene to go on, hold on.

Wendy keeps her eyes on her cigarette. Upside down and reverse, it goes, between her thumb and forefinger.

“And sorry,” she says, barely audible. “For giving you trouble.”

Irene continues to look at Wendy, noticing a faint change in there, in her expression. Something. There is something. A subtle, tiny something. Irene extends her finger, reaches out for the plaster, slowly, slowly.

But Wendy turns her head and stands up. “I should go.”

“Does it hurt?” Irene asks and by this point, she has lost all thought, all hesitation, the fear, the uncertainties, doubts whether it’s nothing more but delusion or actuality, all washed away by that tiny, little change in Wendy’s expression.

Wendy puts a cigarette in between her lips and lights it. She takes a drag and exhales the smoke. There it is, Irene thinks. Wendy is exhaling her worries, her burdens.

“You don’t have to apologize, Wendy,” Irene says. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

Wendy glances at Irene and it’s then that Irene sees it, something furrowed in Wendy’s expression. A knot of twisted pain, creasing Wendy’s beautiful features into that of something pitiful, where Irene suddenly feels it in her, the sympathy seeping through in her chest. Sympathy for Wendy.

Wendy is quick when she looks away. She waves a hand goodbye as she walks off, this time not looking back and Irene watches her, looks at her as she drifts away, yet again, far from Irene’s reach.

 * * *

Wendy sits on the niche of her apartment window. Just beside the kitchen – if it even passes as so with how small it is – is a long and wide window, placed as if it is embedded in the wall so that there is a space there, where ornaments or trinkets of significance can be placed if one wants to. But Wendy doesn’t have any of that. She refuses to have any of that. Not after what happened last year. So instead, she sits there, a cigarette in her hand, as she looks outside the window.

The line of smoke from Wendy’s cigarette hits the warm rays of the spring sun. Her eyes remain distant, melancholy imbued into her pupils as she stares off into her memories, into a past she doesn’t want remembering but cannot help but to.

Wendy feels it on her fingers. Through the rip in her jeans, on the skin of her knee, she feels the remnants of her mistakes. It’s a constant reminder of her past, a too big of a regret she cannot subdue or forget.

The pain lives there in her knee, deep within her bones, making its presence known on certain days. Rare occasions but when they come, they torment, haunting her like a ghost.

The flashes start soon after. It’s always after the pain. Wendy takes a drag of her cigarette but it’s too late. Her cigarette rarely helps at these times.

Wendy sees it. Jagged images, shaking as if quivered by her own anxiety: A lit cigarette on the asphalt floor. Around her, there is nothing but darkness and the cold. She shivers and shivers but no one is there. Not for her. The world turns upside down and suddenly everyone abandons her.

As Wendy sits on the ledge of her kitchen window, in the warmth of the rays of the spring sun, it remains cold. Her skin doesn’t know warmth, doesn’t feel it. It remembers nothing but coldness, feels nothing but the chill of that cold night, the mistake that echoes into her mind as regrets that she cannot shrug off no matter how much she trembles at night fighting off the chill that freezes her there, in the memories of her past.

Wendy knows there is no warmth for her anymore and even if there is, she knows she doesn’t deserve any of it. She knows she shouldn’t have it. She ingrains it into herself, breathes it into her body as she takes a long drag of her cigarette, and exhales the smoke, hoping to cloud these jagged visions of her broken past.

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A/N: I think the song I've put up for this chapter describes the Wendy of this fic perfectly so go and check that out as well. Anyway, I'm hoping everyone is not finding this fic too boring. I think I'm used to writing chapters like those in novels, since I hardly read fics nowadays so the pace is a bit too slow for most people's likings. Also, I've never gotten around to reading The Notebook, simply because I don't have the time. I've watched the film though... Upvotes and comments are always much appreciated, as I always say.