CW // emotional turmoil, spiraling thoughts, internal conflict.
But there’s a side to you, that I never knew. All the thing you’d say, they were never true. And the games you’d play, you would always win.
Tanah Gajah, a Resort by Hadiprana, Ubud, Gianyar, Bali
Aurelian Altair Maziyar never felt such emotions such as a catastrophe in his 24 years of living.
Yet there he was.
His feet finally carried him to the exact place Katherine had instructed—exactly right at the veranda outside the lounge. His heart had been beating itself raw ever since he left his and Katherine’s villa, then the car, but he tried his best to ignore it. He kept psyching himself out, kept drumming the same thing into his head over and over again, because if he let himself think too much, there would only be unnecessary complications.
He focused instead on the sound of his own footsteps against the stone pathway, on the morning breeze brushing against his sleeves, on anything but the dreadful anticipation sitting heavily at the center of his chest.
Besides, he had already forfeited that part of himself.
The moment he knew he and Gemma would never become anything more, as she was about to get married and attached forever to another man, build a life with another man, belong to another man forever, he let it go. Or at least he told himself he did.
It was not his story anymore, and so he goes. But why does the universe keep circling it back to him? Why did it always find a way to place him somewhere near the edges of it all? Wasn’t it done already? Hadn’t he paid enough for every foolish thing he once wished for? How could he even begin to articulate all the possible explanations he would have to tell Katherine after this, when he himself could barely understand why standing outside this lounge suddenly felt like standing in front of a wound that never truly healed, merely learned how to disguise itself?
He only needed to wait for her—his Katherine. So he ground himself at the nearest wall he could tuck himself into.
The resort was still so hushed this early in the morning. It’s 7, after all. In the distance, he could see some staff moving around between the preparations for the wedding, their voices drifting in and out by the breeze. He took a quick look around, grateful that he didn’t spot anyone he might’ve known. The last thing he needed was another conversation. Another pair of eyes. Another reminder of where he was and why he was here.
He lowered his face, adjusting the cuff of his suit for what felt like the hundredth time, smoothing the front of his shirt despite there being nothing wrong with it, then busying his other hand inside his pants pocket, where he absently played with the candy wrappers he had carefully kept there. A ridiculous habit, perhaps. His fingers sought them out, fiddling with the crinkles from the sweets Katherine had given him. His Katherine. He would wait for her, no matter how long. But he really, really wished she could be fast right now. More importantly, he wished nothing bad would occur. For every passing minute seemed to stretch his nerves thinner, and thinner, until they felt one unfortunate incident away from snapping apart.
He waited.
And waited.
Until two of his candies—the grape and strawberry—already dissolved on the tip of his tongue, leaving behind nothing but lingering sweetness that actually felt strangely unpleasant to him.
As he swallowed the remnants of the taste, he finally heard the abrupt click-clack, click-clack of approaching shoes cutting through the hall. Relief arrived in his chest. *Thank God—*it must’ve been Kathy.
His shoulders loosened almost immediately. He straightened himself from the wall and braced himself to help her with whatever she was carrying, already preparing a sarcastic remark about how she somehow always managed to forget her things. But then—
“Arel?”