The Fray Theory: Resonance (3 page)

Elliot’s chest
deflates. “I guess.”

“Just hang in
there while I look into some options for you, okay? And summer’s just around
the corner! We can go to the night market, bike the seawall—”

“Ugh,
activities.”

“Alright,
fine
.
We can have one of those sarcastic movie review marathons you like so damn
much.”

Elliot smiles in
spite of himself. The first smile she has seen on him in a while. And it’s a
good one.

“I can’t believe
Dillweed had the balls to call you.”

“Texted.”

“You didn’t text
back, right?”

“No!” Neve says,
sounding offended. “Not yet.”

“
Yet
? Do
we need to go over this again?”

“I just want to
hear him out.”

“
Why
? Why give
him the satisfaction?”

“
What
satisfaction?”

“Even responding is
going to come off desperate. Like you’ve been sitting around, waiting for him
to reach out. Which isn’t
that
far from the truth...”

 “Look—I know,
okay?” she lies back down. “I do. But this could be my chance to finally find
out what the hell happened.”

“Neve. You were a
mess.”

“I know.”

“
No
… I
really don’t think you do. When we first met I thought you didn’t even have a
personality.”

Chuckling, Neve
swats him on the belly with the back of her hand. Not that he’s wrong. It’s
just hard for Neve to remember how it felt… being numb.

“And besides, you
got way too much to do before tomorrow,” Elliot adds.

“I know. I’m heading
to the gallery right now,” she says, then faces him. “You
do
know if you
skip it, I’m going to kill you, right?”

“Sssss,  yeah… I
was hoping to get my haircut..?”

 “Like—hunt you
down, and kill you dead.”

Elliot laughs.
“So, are you selling at a fixed price? Or doing a silent auction?”

“Auction,” Neve
sits up and scoots to the edge of the bed. “I figured it’s a good way to test
the waters… see what people think of my work.”

“Make sure you
have a Reserve Price.”

“What’s that?”

“Like a minimum
bidding amount?” Elliot’s brows soar, creasing his forehead. “The last thing
you want is for someone to bid three bucks on a painting you spent five months
working on.”

Oh God
…
Mom was right, what am I doing
?

“Yeah, no, I
will. I
have
.” Neve rises from the bed, feeling completely disoriented. “Um—make
sure you schedule a make-up exam before it’s too late,” she throws her purse
over her shoulder. “I mean it, Elli. Call them today.”

“Go away
already,” he pushes her toward the door with his foot, but she lingers.

“Are you
absolutely sure I can’t text him back? It’s been three years.”

“And two months.”

On
the green outskirts
of the university, Neve enters a quaint little café. The rich aroma of
freshly-ground coffee tickles her senses, enveloping her in memories of a not
too distant past. It takes her back to when she and Dylan would rendezvous here
at all hours of the day, almost every day. Back to when she thought of change
as adventure, and not loss.

She looks about the
space, taking in the changes.

The espresso brick
walls have been painted ivory, and the stainless steel counter has been
retrofitted with a thick slab of reclaimed wood.

But they’ve kept the
marble mini-tables and the black metal chairs. So that’s something.

With the baristas
engaged in idle chit chat, Neve bypasses the semi-obligatory purchase and
wanders towards the back of the café. Towards the industrial chandelier that
put this place on the map. Back then, she just couldn’t understand why Dylan
was so crazy about it. To her, it was just a thick, square block of wood with
mismatched light bulbs dangling from it.

But today, the mere
sight of it makes her want to burst into tears.

Beneath the
chandelier, a pair of worn-out leather armchairs bracket an old coffee table. All
three look like they’ve taken quite a beating since her last visit.

She sits down in
the armchair facing the fireplace. In the same seat she always took
whenever she and Dylan were lucky enough
to grab this corner spot.

It was always
such a treat. So warm and cozy.

With their books
sprawled in front of them, they’d sit here for hours on end, sipping their drinks
at a glacial pace while chatting about nothing.

And that was by
far the most precious thing this place gave them.

Time
.

Neve nestles
herself in the cushy comfort of her chair, reminiscing about the obnoxious
stories they dreamt up for their fellow caffeine devotees. Dylan would pick
someone at random and come up with an elaborate conspiracy theory. And Neve could
never resist a forbidden love affair between the unlikeliest pair in the café.

But today, their favorite
setting is nothing more than a refuge for the lonesome.

Neve reaches into
her purse and pulls out her old diary. The one she reads more often than she
cares to admit. The one she has long stopped writing in.

Ever since Dylan
disappeared without a trace, her collection of memories slowly morphed into a
safe. A secure asylum where she locked away her entangled thoughts and unruly
emotions.

It’s easy for Elliot
to dismiss Dylan’s text.

With each passing
moment, Neve’s decision to not respond is feeling more and more like a tragedy
in the making. So with hopes of stumbling upon some hidden wisdom, she runs her
nail along the edge of her diary and opens it to a random page:

And sometime next week, I will run into you at a café. And I
will hate myself for not having bothered with makeup that day. And you will
kick yourself for not taking the time to shave, even though you had plenty of
time.

We will both make and break unintentional eye-contact, trying
desperately to conceal our inner thoughts.

Mine, of missing you.

Yours, of wanting me.

You will strike an overzealous conversation with the barista,
pretending to not have seen me at all.

And I’ll burn a hole in the chalkboard menu with my
concentration, then pretend to text someone who cares about me.

We will each put on an act of just how well we’re doing.

Standing feet away, yet miles apart.

And then, we will strategically part ways to avoid
confrontation, and once home, sink into the nook of our comfort zones, feeling lonely,
rejected, and maybe even heartbroken.

Neve caresses the black ink that’s
bled deep into the paper. She was so sure of her imminent run-in with Dylan. So
certain it would be a matter of days.

She flips to another page further
in her diary:

To tell you the truth, I don’t want to move on. I don’t want
time to heal my wounds and wash away my feelings for you into nothing but faded
memories. I don’t want to become jaded, skeptical of love, and go on to
question everything because I now know the pain of loss.

It breaks me to think that I will never see you again. That
I’ll never have the chance to tell you what I thought the first time I ever saw
you: that I’ve never seen anything greener than your eyes.

The words on the
page blur beyond a veil of tears.

They made plans.
They were going to backpack through Europe after graduation, slumming it from
hostel to hostel on their own dime, as if neither came from a wealthy family.
They wanted to venture into the unknown with nothing but a map to guide them.

Instead, Neve is
sitting alone in a place which no longer feels like home, wondering how none of
it turned out the way she thought.

“Neve,” a
familiar voice nears.

Neve quickly
collects her amassing tears with her sleeve, and then looks up at the
silhouette towering before her.

Oh my God
…

Her heart drops
like a heavy apple snapping off its branch. Darkness frames her field of vision,
and her bones befall a deep ache.

Dylan
…

He steps into
Neve’s memory of his face as though walking into a mask.

His features are far
more defined than they used to be. His blood-red locks are longer, fuller, and set
ablaze by the sun’s warm gleam. And his hauntingly beautiful eyes are even greener
than she remembers.

What is he
doing here
?
What are
the odds
?

Dylan sinks into
the chair across from her, the fabric of his dark and stylish clothes tugging at
his muscles. He’s really come into his own these past few years.

 “It’s—” Neve goes
to speak, but her voice is much smaller than she expected it to be.

“I know,” he
exhales a shaky breath. “
Long
time.”

Act normal.
Act normal
. “How’ve you
been?”

“Good,” Dylan
nods. “Good, you?”

“Good, yeah.”

“Me too,” he says
in a way that reminds Neve of the night he confessed his love to her. And she
knew it was true, because his smile lingered in his eyes.

Like now.

When Dylan sneaks
a glance towards the front of the café, their broken eye-contact alerts Neve of
the silence between them. It is barely filled with the hiss of the espresso
machine breathing warmth into milk.

“So, how have—” Neve
clears her throat, realizing she has already asked this question. “What have
you been up to?”

“Just got back into
town,” Dylan says.

Silence.

Off Neve’s blank
stare, “military school,” he adds.

“Oh…” she
stammers. “
Here
?”

“West Point. It’s
in New York.”

New York
!?
You just upped and took off to New
York
!? “Wow, that’s—”
really unlike you
. “Guess your dad finally
talked you into it, huh,” she squeezes out a chuckle.

Dylan presses his
lips together and forces a smile. “Yeah, well—” he drops his head and starts playing
with his jacket’s zipper, “leave it to him to show love with discipline.”

Discipline
, Neve wonders? What could Dylan have
possibly done that would warrant being shipped off to military school? “Don’t
they make you shave your head?” Neve asks, her eyes narrowing.

“Not if it’s long
enough to tie back.”

She nods, unsure
of how else to react.

“So, how about
you?” Dylan asks.

And it hits Neve
like a late-night hunger pang: the compulsion to embellish the non-happenings
of her mundane life. But it’s
Dylan
… It’s
them
.

“Same soup,
reheated,” Neve indicates Vancouver in its entirety. “But at least I’m
graduating this term.”

“That’s great,” Dylan
nods with raised brows.

“Yeah. I mean—I
would’ve graduated already, but I ended up switching my major twice, so…”

“What are you
planning on doing now?” he asks.

And suddenly, it
feels cloudy outside.

“Med school, I
guess.”

“You guess?”
Dylan arches a brow.

“Yeah. I mean—
yeah
.
That’s the plan.”

“That’s awesome,”
he says, but it’s rather obvious he doesn’t really mean it.

 “Thanks…” Neve
looks down, feeling as though all topics of discussion have already been exhausted.

All but the one they’re
both tiptoeing around.

“So what exactly—”
Neve looks up to find Dylan’s attention misplaced.

“Hmm?” he quickly
flings his gaze back onto her.

“Everything okay?”

“Mmm hmm. Be right
back,” he rises and makes his way over to the front counter.

And without
warning, a tormented frown weighs down on Neve’s brows. A murky concoction of hurt
and disappointment is welling up inside. Did he just waltz back into her life
like it’s nothing?

Like she meant
nothing
?

And she suddenly
realizes that this is it: the long-awaited run-in that she, for three years,
thought was just around the corner!

Feeling
completely out of her element, Neve pulls out her phone and starts to text
Elliot:

She sends the
text and looks up just as Dylan rests two large mugs on the table.

“Here you go,” he
gently slides the latte with the prettier leaf art towards Neve, and then
retakes his seat across from her.

Though this
gesture is probably meant to remind her of what the two of them once shared, Neve
can’t help but think of it as an apology. An inconsequential apology for the
nightmare
he put her through.

Dylan licks his
lips and lowers his head. “You’re still mad at me, aren’t you?”

Mad
? Neve’s heartstrings tighten enough to
snap.

“I’m sorry—” she
slips her diary into her purse. “I have to go,”

“Neve, come on.”

“Look—Dylan, it
was great seeing you and all. I mean, at least now I know you’re not
dead
.
But this whole pretending like everything’s fine?” she shakes her head as she rises
from her seat, and then heads straight for the front door.

Don’t cry
.
Don’t you dare be that girl
.

Dylan springs out
of his seat and falls on her trail. “You have
every
right to hate me…”
he follows Neve out of the café. “Just give me a chance to explain.”

“No need,” Neve
says in full stride away from him, “got your message loud and clear.”

“I’m so sorry if
I hurt you.”

And Neve suddenly
finds herself pinned in place.

“
If
?” she turns
to him, her strangled voice barely escaping her aching throat. “
If
you
hurt me?”

Dylan drops his
head and slides his hands into his pockets.

“You just
left
!
You could have been lying dead in a ditch somewhere, for all I knew,” she leans
back onto the balls of her feet, and yet can’t seem to rip herself away. “
God
—I
had to hear from your
classmates
that you’d moved away! Not
moving
away,
moved
away! They all just stared at me like I was some psycho ex,
showing up at your class, looking for you!”

Dylan parts his
lips to speak, but at the sight of something in the distance, his face goes
slack.

Thrown off by his
sudden shift in demeanor, Neve glances over her shoulder, but there’s nothing
worth noticing as far as she can tell.

Just a
dilute crowd of haggard students.

“I’m sorry,”
Dylan says as he makes his way past her. “I have to go.”

“What—” Neve
practically whispers, the shock of his departure shielding her from fully
registering her reality—from accepting that he is in fact abandoning her for
the second time.

So she stands
there as Dylan becomes smaller and smaller, until she can no longer tell him
apart from the crowd. And despite the pain brewing inside, she stands her
ground and fights gravity’s resolve to bring her to her knees.