22.
“Hey, Angela! Sharon!”
The two girls turned around at the sound of their names to recognise a young man moving through the crowd towards them, his robe and hood marking him another fellow graduate.
He smiled at the two girls as he came close, an easy smile that was almost infectious, even so much as to break through the melancholic haze that had enveloped Angela for weeks, and rouse her from her thoughts.
“Hey Jason, how’s it going?” Sharon grinned up at the tall figure. “You’ve grown since accounting.”
Jason shrugged and continued to grin. “I guess,” he said, before switching his gaze to Angela. “I hear you got the internship. Congratulations Angela.”
Angela shrugged and smiled up at Jason, her smile displaying a warmth that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Thanks, Jase. What about you? Weren’t you going for a finance one?”
“More than one,” Jason laughed easily. “I got the only one I applied for that wasn’t overseas in another country.”
“I’m sorry? I know you wanted to travel as soon as you could.”
“Aw, yeah,” Jason waved his hand in a dismissing manner. “I’ll go in a few years. This’ll give me a chance to save up some money, get some experience, find the right girl...”
He looked at Angela then, a meaningful expression on his face that was lost on her as she’d dropped her head in thought, not really paying attention. Noticing this, Sharon surreptitiously smacked herself in the forehead at her friend’s density of the situation.
An awkward silence that only Jason seemed to notice settled briefly, before he cleared his throat and tried again.
“Anyway, some guys are having a party tonight to celebrate, and I was wondering if you wanted to come?” Jason directed his offer to both of them but Sharon noticed how his gaze only left Angela once to look at her with an almost pleading expression.
Briefly, Sharon was at a crossroad, wondering if she should try to tell Jason about Tuyen. Tell him what? Her mind asked. Did they ever end up dating? Besides, something’s happened between the two. Doesn’t take rocket science to figure that out. Maybe this is just what she needs… Smiling to herself as she made her decision, Sharon began to back away from the pair.
“Sorry, Jason, I already had plans, but I think Angela’s free.” Her eyes twinkled as Angela lifted her head to look at her friend in confusion.
Winking, Sharon mouthed the words, “You’re welcome,” before pretending to recognize someone in the midst of the crowd and moving off.
“So how about it, Angela?” Jason’s grin lost some of its ease and became more hopeful. “I’ll pick you up at eight?”
Turning back to face him, Angela opened her mouth to say she couldn’t go, before she stopped herself.
It wasn’t until after she’d started avoiding Tuyen that Angela became aware of how she’d been declining the few (but still existent) dates that had been offered to her since her laughable courtship with the angel had begun. It hadn’t occurred to her during the fact, but since then she had begun to wonder if she’d been doing it as an unconscious attempt to make more of her relationship with Tuyen than ever existed.
Trying to validate something that she was only imagining.
Her almost instant decline for any such invitation had become such a habit, that Angela actually had to stop now and rethink the situation. It had been so long since she’d been on a real date, Angela wasn’t even sure if she missed it or not.
Still, she thought to herself, I could do worse than Jason. He certainly does have a lot going for him. Angela looked more seriously now at the figure before her.
He was tall and reasonably handsome, with sandy hair that he kept as tidy as the rest of his figure. He was almost military in the standard of his appearance; something he was well aware of and often joked about when she’d first met him in her freshman year.
He hadn’t been interested in her then, though… or had he? Angela had been in the car accident that took her parents’ lives less than a year before she’d started her tertiary studies. Emotionally, she’d still been recovering from the mental hurt of her orphaning, and had probably missed any advances Jason had made at her.
Just as she had almost missed them this time, caught up in her self pity over the angel.
At that thought, Angela felt a brief flare of anger at just how much an effect Tuyen still seemed to be having on her life.
Damn it, no one died this time!
Making up her mind, Angela smiled up at Jason, trying her hardest to make the smile more real.
“Sure Jason, I’d love to go with you.”
His grin widened once more with pleasure. “You will? Great!” He glanced away for a moment as someone – his mother, Angela guessed – called his name, before he turned back to Angela and gave her a wry shrug. “Well, hey, I gotta go do this whole photo thing with my folks, but I’ll see you tonight?”
“Okay, great.” Angela nodded as Jason turned and went back to his family, the smile fading as soon as his back was turned. Sighing softly to herself, Angela looked around at the crowd to see if there was anyone else she recognized, before she removed her cap and left the campus park.
When she got home, Angela sat on her bed and looked at the envelope Tuyen had given her. Her curiosity prompted her to open it, to see what he had to say, but something – the prevailing hurt and anger, perhaps – made her hesitate.
Not now, she thought. Not yet. Moving off her bed, Angela knelt beside it and pulled out a box she had stored under there, now filled with most of the gifts she had received from the angel since they met.
A week after Tuyen had shown his true form, Angela had gone through her room and taken down everything of his, hiding it under her bed as if trying to hide all her memories. Opening the cover of the top book – Greek Mythology – Angela slid the envelope into it and returned it to the box, replacing the lid and sliding it back under her bed.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Getting up from the floor, Angela began hunting through her wardrobe for something to wear for her date, trying to ignore just how bare her room now seemed without Tuyen’s gifts.
And failing completely to notice how she hadn’t even considered removing the feather that still hung around her neck.
The Beginning
0 comments:
Post a Comment