The Fragile Ordinary(100)

Angels and demons didn’t exist.

Its only charm was in its boardwalks,

Where sand and sea always kissed.

Before you,

I preferred the dreams I could buy;

A plethora of worlds to explore.

Lose myself in the beauty of a lie,

Have friends who never keep score.

Where there’s truth in true romance,

And uncool shy girls become heroes.

Where days are filled with thrilling happenstance,

And people have answers nobody here does.

Before you,

I judged without truly knowing,

Let people slip through my hands.

Saw someone flashy and outgoing,

And determined they’d never understand.

You made me see everyone’s layers,

All their secrets and fears.

Proving we’re all merely players,

Who smile through our tears.

Before you,

I believed real, true, glorious living

Was in adventure, was in the extraordinary.

But I’ve learned that time is not so forgiving,

And the real beauty of life is in the fragile ordinary.”

There was a hush in the air when I was finished and I was afraid to look up. But then someone started to clap and then someone else, until it was loud and warm and pushing up against me, forcing my eyes upward.

“Go, Comet!” I heard Mrs. Cruickshank shout, and watched as my dad and Mr. Stone beamed proudly up at me as they clapped their hands together high and hard. Vicki appeared as stunned as I felt as she clapped.

Strangers grinned and whistled and put their hands together in appreciation for me, and I was so shocked that I almost missed him in the crowd.

Tobias.

Hope flooded upward from the shuttered depths of me. All the hope I’d tried to keep buried inside, because hope had hurt me so much in the past. But I’d come to discover that hope was an uncontrollable creature, and it danced through me now, seeing Tobias here.

I stumbled off the stage, accepting praise, stunned, bewildered even, as I tried to make my way toward Tobias. Suddenly my path was blocked by the tall, rangy body of the owner of Pan. He was an older guy, perhaps in his midforties, with a strawberry blond beard and hair he wore up in a man bun. In the past he’d only ever smiled at me and made me a hot chocolate.

“Comet, right?” He held out his hand to me. “I’m Joe, Comet. I hope you start coming around to read more of your poetry to us, rather than sitting all the way in the back with a hot chocolate.”

Surprised but delighted that he knew who I was, I blushed. “Sure.”

“Good. I look forward to it. I enjoyed what you had to say up there. Cool name by the way,” he said before stepping aside to listen to the next person up onstage.

I stood stunned for a moment by his praise, but just as quickly as his positivity had warmed me, I remembered whose praise I really wanted. As I searched again for Tobias, the warmth leached out of me when I couldn’t find him. Panic suffused me until Vicki found me. She frowned. “He stepped outside. Tobias. He’s waiting for you.”

The panic receded, but I wasn’t so distracted that I didn’t see the dismay on her face. “What’s wrong? You hated my poem, didn’t you?” My euphoria over the reception of my poem died. It was great to have strangers like it, but I wanted the people I cared about to like it more.

“Do I keep score?” she blurted out.

For a moment I was confused until I realized she was quoting my poem. I took her hand. “I was talking about Steph and her competitiveness. And I used to worry a lot that the two of you would want to stop hanging out with me because I didn’t want to go to parties. I didn’t feel very understood, but that wasn’t on you, Vick. That was all me.”

Seeming relieved she nodded thoughtfully and then gently pushed me away. “Okay, you can go talk to Tobias now.”

I laughed but it was almost hysterical. The mic crackled behind me and realizing someone else was about to read, I quietened and tried to make my way through the crowds before the poem began.

Tobias stood outside the door, staring at the traffic, and just the sight of him made my heart start banging away in my chest even harder than it had when I stood on that stage.

I stopped in front of him, and he straightened up into attention. “Hey.”

“Hey.”

He scrubbed a hand over his head. “I loved your poem.”

“It was about you.”

Emotion glimmered in his eyes and he seemed to swallow hard. “Yeah.”

“You came.”

“You were right. About everything. The day you called me out, you messed me up. The idea of you thinking I didn’t love you ripped me apart and I didn’t know why, because I wanted to be angry with you. You didn’t do anything wrong, but I wanted to be angry with you because it was so much easier than being angry with myself.” He exhaled heavily and quickly, like he couldn’t get enough air. “When I got home that afternoon my mom kind of went off on one. She was worried about me and she said we were moving back to the States.”

My banging heart stopped.

I was sure of it.

The horrible emptiness in my chest couldn’t be anything else. “You’re going back to America?”

He shook his head quickly. “God no. As soon as she started talking about it, planning, I freaked out. As bad as I feel, as guilty as I feel, about walking away from Stevie when he needed me, the idea of never seeing you again scares the hell out of me, Comet. I’m sorry I made you think that I blamed you. I never blamed you. You were right about me blaming myself, though. I didn’t just walk away from Stevie when things got hard with him because it was what I felt I needed to do to protect you. I did it to protect me, too. Losing my dad and learning the truth was hard enough, I didn’t think I could deal with Stevie’s problems, with Carole’s sickness. So I walked away. Not only did I walk away, I got myself a pretty great life. A beautiful girl, a new team, great friends. And Stevie watched me get all of those things while I pretended like my friendship with him never happened. That’s on me. I just didn’t know how to admit that to myself, so I pretended that choosing you was where everything went wrong.