Chapter 2. A Cloud Covered the Sky

Back then, most of my friends said I have a blind spot for him.

They were wrong.

I saw it all.

The lying.

The cheating.

The women.

But I had this stupid resolve— that I was the girlfriend.

The one he held hands with and walked around with— introducing to people that mattered.

I was the one he would run to at the end of the day.

After all of those women, he chose me.

He came into my life as sudden as a cloud appearing from nowhere and covering the sky— my sky.

It probably wasn’t the first time I saw him but it was the only time I became aware of his existence. I was on my second year at the university. I couldn’t remember exactly when and where I first saw him but suddenly he just got inside my sphere.

He seemed to be everywhere like the wind begging for attention.

 It was only then that I noticed him.

By the hallways, the canteen, that little corner I shared with my study group.

I always saw him.

One time at an organization in school where I was a member, I saw him again talking and laughing with the other older members. I thought to myself maybe I just didn’t notice him before but he had always been there.

He was good-looking, I couldn’t deny that but that time I was more focused in my studies than paying attention to the opposite so I didn’t even bother. Besides, I always saw him talking to some other girls and most of them were hardly like me—this uptight nerd in her own little world. To say that I wasn’t attracted to him, though, was probably not true at all. It was just that I never wanted to be in a relationship— there were better things to do than flirt my way out of the university, or life.

Then one time at the coffee shop outside the campus, I sat alone engrossed at the report I needed to finish. It was in the middle of the morning that there were barely any other students inside. That was one of the moments where I enjoyed solitude. Like every other days that I was there seeking silence and embracing my concentration.

But he walked in.

And he brought chaos into me.

Our eyes met for a fraction of second. Although that teeny tiny second did not steal my air but inside me, my heart leapt a bit. That small moment was captured inside me like a still image. It was only for a second but it stirred me.

Until he looked away—

He looked at the menu board up ahead and strode across the room to the bar. I dropped my gaze back on my laptop screen.

I sighed.

Perhaps I had that tiny crush on him. It was not something abnormal about me or that somehow made me less weird. I do get crushes every now and then but they were all just that. The strangeness of it was actually, I was thinking of having a small crush to a boy like him. It was normally smart-crush for me, never like ordinary girls who had crushes on jocks.

I sighed again.

Contemplations like those were useless and a waste of time so I decided to focus on my paper. I got in the groove in no time. My concentration is no joke. The world would probably crumble around me but I wouldn’t even notice once I focus into something. And that was what happened for a couple of minutes until I unconsciously took my cup of tea and brought it near my lips. My eyes lifted on the process—shot through somewhere in space in front of me.

That was when I noticed his reflection on the tinted glass wall. He took one of those side tables mounted on the wall with the view of the outside filtered by the dark mirror. I took a good look at him for that moment knowing that he wouldn’t know that I was watching him. He took little sips from his tall glass of Americano, his features darkened in that reflection like an ominous shade telling me to take caution.

And then he looked at me.

For another second we looked at each other’s reflections on that tinted glass.

Both aware that each of us was watching the other. Suddenly,