Wednesday, 3:40PM

I got there early. I couldn't help the excitement takeover my schedule (and my life). I felt I was flying on my way to our meeting place and the butterflies kept flocking to my belly. I thought to myself, so, this is how love is. It changes the way you see everything.
Because the road to the restaurant looked more colorful than how I remembered it. The confetti of early fall leaves felt like the first snowfall. The gusting winds spoke poetry. The restaurant's chimes stopped being infuriating. And the smell of coffee was more amorous than roses and gardenias combined.

All of a sudden, the sun resigned from being the center of the universe I've always known,  and Jisoo took its place. I gravitated around her sweltering warmth. I was prepared to go blind; I was ready to get burned. Because I wanted Jisoo, and I wanted to melt in her so bad.

The weather that day however, was a travesty of love. It was humid and gloomy with fifty percent chance of thunderous heartache and scattered showers of dejection. It was just all-out supportive of my mood when I was at the restaurant, because
Jisoo didn't show up that day.
We weren't a couple in a clear-cut commitment, I convinced myself. But in the unspoken rules of dating, it wasn't wrong to expect her to not stand me up like that. She knew I would be waiting there for her, the whole night if I had to, and it pained me that she didn't have the decency to tell me that she changed her mind I found myself in one corner with tears blotching my favorite light blue dress. I thought it would be good luck to wear it, since it was our first day to be in one table as dates of each other. If it wasn't for the fact that it started crowding inside the place,  I would have stayed until it closed and ordered everything in their menu just so I won't feel embarrassed waiting alone.

I was strong, but not strong enough to take Jisoo's behavior nonchalantly. She was cruel like her smile that day when she said she liked me. She was unkind like the condescending air she always into the restaurant when she came. Her heartlessness was as enormous as her sweaters.

For three hours, I hated her until I didn't. I kept convincing myself that she might have caught something and fell severely ill. Or that she was punished by her parents, who seemed strict, and grounded her home. Or that she met an accident. It made me guilty, hating her without thinking of unselfish reasons that prevented her from coming. And so, after the hate was inconsolable concern.

I was crumbling inside as I shambled out of the place. I thought to myself, so this is how love is. It was so strong that it drove me to feeling so many things that ranged from great joy to great sorrow. It caused my mood to swing from magical elation to horrible despair.

I walked home bothered by my knees that were weak from the rejection. It was worse than when I skinned them in a high school when I was forced by my teacher to join a relay. I twisted an ankle a few feet away from the finish line but I continued running and plunged my way to the end. I won the race and I was still holding that white sash from the end of the track when they brought me out on a stretcher. I wasn't competitive; I was just determined, like how determined I was to not give up on Jisoo.

That night, my heart burned from worry and sadness. It's funny how it burned from the absence of my sun. Jisoo never missed Wednesday visits like how she never missed the Mondays and Fridays. Something was
terribly wrong.

Friday, 4:15PM

I didn't want to drop by the restaurant because for a day and a half I was battling with my disappointment that eventually turned to apprehension just to return to greater depths of distress. It was a tormenting push and pull of uncertainty. I didn't even put on a cute dress that day. I wore pants, a gray hoodie over a black shirt and a pair of running shoes, just in case I eeded to rush out of the place to prevent people from seeing me cry and be pathetic.

But she was there, being the black hole that she always was, unconsciously wielding her infamous gravitational attraction that I could never find the strength to oppose. She sat quietly with her coffee, her notebook and that Perrier bottle like nothing catastrophic happened to me two days ago.

I walked toward her, dragging my feet against the ball and chain that was my pride.

"Should I still sit here?" I pointed to the chair

I've been occupying across her for two weeks now. It was always pulled out of the table like someone has already been sitting there.

An icy cold sensation struck my heart just thinking about the possibility that she has met someone before me.

"Jennie, Im sorry."

"Okay, I'll just sit somewhere else."

"No. No. Please take the seat." Her eyes pleaded as she pushed the earbud into her left ear more forcefully than usual. It made me think that it might be her way of calming herself. I've heard of some therapeutic practices to allay anxiety. It was probably her way of blocking unwelcome stimulation. 

"I mean, I'm sorry about Wednesday.

"Were you sick?" She seemed lacking sleep but her voice didn't ring a cold nor a flu.

"No, I wasn't."

"Busy with school?"

"Hmm... I hope you didn't get into an accident." I peeked under the table to search for a cast or a bandage.

"No, nothing like that happened."

"Overslept?" It was a stupid question, I know.

"Until the evening? No."

"You got grounded?" I felt tears were about to spew out and I've never hated myself so much for being a crybaby until that day.

"My parents don't do that." Her voice was low, beautiful and calm. It annoyed me that I was falling for it in spite the hurt she caused.

"You didn't have money?" I doubted that, but every 'no' she replied to my questions cut through me. They were cutting deeper and deeper as I was running out of valid excuses to ask her.

"No. I don't need money."

"THEN WHAT?! WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU?? Because in case you didn't notice, you hurt me!" I snapped. Too quickly