Playing With My Heartstrings (22 page)

Chapter 15

The pretty, quaint meadow became a vivid picture inside my mind; after having walked through several wide, bumpy paths, the pasture, whose luscious green grass had been licked wet by a sudden spell of rain, was in sight and my pace quickened, thrilled to be getting nearer towards the destination. It seemed like a precious, little secret that I'd kept to myself: no other people were in sight and the only sound that filled the air was birds singing a cheerful tune, alongside a couple of owls hooting quietly.

This meadow was my piece of heaven - much more glorious than the yearly slice of celestial chocolate fudge cake I'd picked for my birthday since I was five - and I wanted to enjoy it all by myself, without a single person being aware of my actions or thoughts that ran through my head during my short-lived stay. It
was mine and, despite my recent dawning of realization to selfish actions, guilt didn't bother me at all. I would only keep it for just for a little while.

A minute later, I arrived at the old, silver gate and fumbled around for the handle, which was so rusty that it took at least two strong tries to move it, before opening the gate and entering the meadow. It was just the way I'd imagined it as I once did in a dream/romantic nightmare: bundles of flowers, both wild and tame, had shot through the grass and glowed gently against the twilight sky, which brought a tear, overwhelmed with pure beauty at the magnificent sight, to my eye.

Light pink carnations - one of the flowers which were blessed with the gift to place a massive smile on my face - shone brightly beside a patch of vivid red roses (the ultimate romantic flower, I remarked in my head) and a bunch of stunning violets took my breath away, all of which were lightly scattered around the meadow, along with humongous lots of preppy daisies, too.

Just as I was on the verge of leaning down onto the light blanket of grass, a voice - quiet and almost as peaceful as a whisper - caught my utmost attention, sending my head around into a dazed spin.

"Nice here, don't you?" the voice said, with a faint hint of humour. Then it - he, as I quickly realized - chuckled lightly, somehow coming nearer towards me.

"Joel," I gasped, breathlessly, reversing my head to catch a blinding glimpse of the light dazzling on Joel's fair complexion.

"Hey." Joel grinned, talking in a relaxed tone as though we were the best of friends, not sworn enemies. "How're you doin' here?"

I gulped, putting on a Hollywood-false smile in place of a wary frown. "Fine, fine," I remarked, nodding light-headedly.

"I'm surprised that you're camping here so soon after the last time," Joel commented, taking a quick look around his heart-stopping surroundings, "though it doesn't seem to be so much of a wonder if you can visit places like this."

I didn't bother to muster a half-hearted reply, instead focusing my energies on the flock of birds playing a unique rendition of an unknown tune and looking up at the darkening sky, which was rapidly progressing towards a stunning eclipse.

"I know why I'm here, Sadie," Joel stated, flatly. "Although you didn't mention much in your text, I worked out the hidden message fairly quickly."

My eyes darted to Joel, who was casually rolling back and forth on the tips of his denim blue Converse, a passive expression covered all over his face like a mask.

There wasn't really a 'hidden message' as such, unlike what Joel initially presumed. I blankly confirmed that I wanted to see him in the forest where we first met and take it from there - I never made any mention of what I feared he was thinking, which assumedly was about my so-called love for him. Uh oh.

"What do you mean?" I asked, plainly, donning a masked charade.

A half-smile curled on Joel's once-kissable lips. "Don't you know?" he wondered, flashing his dazzling set of perfect white teeth. "You still love me, so that's why you wanted me to come here in the first place." He declared his words as a statement, without any traces of doubt or querying - oh God, what was I supposed to say in return?

Unfortunately, biting the bullet and hoping for the best appeared to be the only reliable option left, though I still dreaded to use it.

"Joel," I said, my voice noticeably wavering, "I never said anything like that in my text. Never."

However, Joel buried his head in the sand and continued to babble on about us getting back together as though this dreadful blip of misery had never come to existence.

"Look, you don't get it!" I snapped, a sharp, pointy knife cutting through the air, plunged in hostile tension.

Joel glowered, a snarl succeeding his gleeful smile. "Just come out with it, Sadie," he said, with a world-load of boredom.

I bit my tongue anxiously. This is it, I reminded myself, as butterflies began to flutter around my junk food-filled stomach. I straightened my body and willed myself to look in Joel's blank, dark eyes and admit the truth which had long been concealed. "I don't love you, Joel," I blurted out, a sob rising from my choked throat. "Not after I saw you kissing that girl in the park, who I suspect is your girlfriend."

Panic flashing on his washed-out face, Joel stammered out a needless response. "I-I'm no l-l-l-onger with K-Kate!" he exclaimed, throwing his hands into the air. "I broke up with her two days ago when I realized that I love you!"

I snorted loudly, disgust forming an unpleasant taste in my mouth. "So you've broken another girl's heart in order to get together with me?" I smirked darkly, no humour amusing me. All fears of breaking the hurtful, yet honest truth distinguished, replaced with a boiling fury. "What a surprise, isn't it? First you left me in a forest with absolutely no explanations or reasons, a few days ago you've dumped a girl who probably loved you as madly as I once did - and now you are begging me to become your girlfriend!"

"Love is meant to be crazy and wild, which is what makes it so special," Joel affirmed, apparently taking no notice of my ferocious rant, which only fuelled the burning fire inside my speedily beating heart. Nothing - or no one - was going to even attempt to get in my way before all of the once-swallowed venom was spat out, though preferably not on the much-admired flowers I adored.

"Hello, don't you mean yourself, the only who has taken a trip to Crazyland whilst stopping off in the wild, unleashing your untamed side?"

"No, I just meant love was crazy and wil-"

"I couldn't care less about your lazy, utterly pointless responses!" I shouted, a near-deafening echo of my heated yell shortly following. "You will never be truly aware of the amount of hurt, misery and excruciating pain you have caused me - your one-time lover - over the past few weeks! I've been through hell and back because of my obsession with you, yet you simply turned your back on me and looked the other way!" I coughed audibly, as my throat became raspy and painfully dry, like I'd just caught the annual sore throat doing the rounds throughout the country.

"I'm sorry, Sadie," Joel said, his long-awaited apology finally reaching my ear waves.

I sighed, sadly, and turned my head away from Joel, as I suddenly yearned to be lying on the sofa at home, complaining about the lack of interesting TV shows with a bored Cassie on a sleepy Saturday night. Some chance of my gaining a Charmed-inspired power to teleport myself into my messier-than-normal-for-a-lazy-teenager bedroom, to my disappointment.

Luckily, breathing deeply and counting to ten relieved some of my anxiety and a little, teeny-weeny thrill rushed through me as it dawned upon me that I'd remembered to bear Mum's wise advice in mind, even during a moment of distemper.

"Joel, if you honestly ever cared about me - and, judging by the way you've treated me since, like, forever, there has been a strong lack of it - why are you getting the wrong idea now?" I frowned, deeply, my back still turned away from Joel. "You haven't even considered taking my feelings into consideration, only caring about yours."

"No, no, you've got it all wrong!" Joel protested, his silent-as-a-lamb spell eventually broken.

"In whatever way have I misread your signals?"

"I care about your feelings, too," he told me, "otherwise I wouldn't be displaying any compassion towards you."

Ew, too OTT, I thought. At this rate, Joel would probably have picked up an acoustic guitar from the wild green bushes and started to croon a song by my mum's favourite boy band, Westlife, yowling like my cat, Tinker, whenever I'd accidentally trod on his fluffy, tabby-coloured tail. The embarrassing image made me turn scarlet - totally not in a cute way.

"Joel, let's stop beating around the bush - I think that both of us are guilty of that," I said, diminishing all previous images of soppy, Valentine Day-appropriate songs. "Just tell me the truth which I've been longing to hear: were you going out with Kate when you and I went camping together that weekend?"

Finally. The long-desired truth was about to come out. "N-no, not e-exactly," Joel admitted, anxiously tripping over his speech. "Kate and I-I had had a fight and we were giving each other a break to see if our relationship was worth saving." Joel sighed. "I was in a really bad p
lace at the time; when I stomped into the cafe one afternoon, I was amazed to see you there and then an idea popped into my head. As my dad never developed an interest for it, I had never camped underneath the stars, feel a warm summer breeze touch my bare arms and sleep inside a tent, surrounded by nature in its spellbinding beauty. And you were the perfect person to hang out with," he added, with a hint of a half-smile.

"Then what happened? One night we shared a magical kiss, then the following morning you were nowhere to be seen."

A wary frown was inscribed on Joel's lips, darkening his majestic features (though it no longer attracted me like a swarm of bees to a pollen rich flower). "As you fell asleep, I started to panic about what I'd done," Joel replied. "Yes, I did feel twinge of something during the moment, but confusion began to set in and I worried about how Kate would feel if she knew what I had done."

Just as my mind had regained a few ounces of serenity and I'd managed to keep my head fairly level, bitter annoyance flared through my pounding veins. "Perfectly understandable if you'd kissed a girl who didn't mind snogging a boy who was cheating on his girlfriend, but I'm not that sort of person," I hissed, as venomously as a poisonous snake. "You must have realised that I wasn't aware of your relationship with Kate, surely?"

Joel swallowed a nervous gulp, scared stiff by my vicious jeer. Good - I'd fully gained his attention, whether he was terrified to utter a single word or not. "Maybe, I don't know! Not a lot of people know Kate because she attends a different school."

This piece of information grasped some interest. "Oh really? Is she older than you?" I inquired.

"Same age."

I placed my hands into my cropped jeans pockets, wrapping my chocolate finger-long fingers around a lip balm and compact mirror. "So, have you told Kate what happened between you and I?"

"Not yet," Joel confessed, shrugging his broad shoulders, "but if I did, I wouldn't utter or give a hint to your identity."

I burst out laughing. "You completely sure of that? She would've been blind to not witness my dramatic flee from the park a few days ago - Kate must've guessed something was up!"

Joel shook his head. "No, she was focusing on me; don't worry, she didn't see you at all."

As my back started to ache sorely after standing up for a prolonged period of time, I made a hasty decision to sit cross-legged on the soft grass, stretching my legs relaxingly. Ah, that felt miles better. "Instead my boyfriend yelled my name and summoned me to the cafe for an all-crucial talk," I said, sarcastically.

A gasp, overwhelmed with utmost shock, escaped Joel's outstretched lips, surprise dawning in his eyes. "You've got a boyfriend?" he questioned, shaking his head in doubt.

I rolled my eyes. "Oh what, I'm not entitled to one?"

"Sure, sure, you are," Joel said, then crouched down onto the grass, opposite me. "I was almost certain that I saw a guy running after you - what's his name?"