Page 33 of Nodus Tollens
8
WREN
I’ve officially concluded that I was going to murder Hayes Decker.
That’s right, only three days after our less-than-desirable encounter, he’s managed to weasel his way into my brain and make life a hell of a lot more complicated for me. Day one after running into him, I arrived at my dorm after classes and found a pack of blue Skittles resting against the door with a sticky note resting on top of it. At first, I thought maybe it was for Kate because no way would anyone be leaving gifts for me, but I couldn’t have been more wrong as I read the note.
Adding some more blue to your life until you get sick of it and realize yellow is more your color.
X, Hayes
At first, my heart leaped at the gesture. No one’s ever done anything this sweet for me, and for a moment there, I basked in the sensation. It was all strange and new, frankly exciting, too, but realization struck me like a slap to the face. I couldn’t like this. I couldn’t let him persuade me with gifts and notes. No way.
Hayes Decker wasn’t going to get past my walls. Not now. Not ever.
With my eyes narrowed on the way-too-fancy handwriting that couldn’t have been his, I tried to decipher what the hell he meant. Yellow? What did he mean by it being more my color? It didn’t make sense, and I didn’t spend a second longer trying to figure it out either as I crumpled the note in my palm and tossed it in the trash. The skittles I kept, though. They were a favorite of mine.
Then on day two, I wasn’t expecting to see that he had left me a few more items at my door. This time, though, it looked like he put some thought into what he laid out. A blue stuffed dolphin sat on top of a basket filled to the brim with various other blue items. Pens, mentos, a blanket, he managed to shove every blue item out there into a tiny little basket. I began to sense a pattern here with the blue, and my heart once again jumped, but this time, I fully embraced it.
On the side of the basket, another note was waiting for me.
Sick of blue yet? I hope so.
X, Hayes
My throat clogged from the emotions that ravaged me after reading the note. Both flutters and annoyance skated through me, and I had no clue which feeling I felt the most. Entirely too engrossed in whatever I was experiencing in the pits of my soul, I almost didn’t notice when a light smile graced my lips, and right then, I knew which one my heart leaned toward the most.
Day three was the day I knew I had to get rid of him once and for all, or at least make him see that I wasn’t the girl for him. A small notebook was propped up against the door, and of course, the front of it was blue. When I didn’t find a sticky note anywhere, I opened the notebook to the first page and found his handwriting.
Blue,
Are you good with words? You seem like you would be. Maybe you write poems? Or maybe you have a diary that you keep under your pillow, and somewhere in between the pages, there’s a mention of me? At least, if you do have one, I hope I am written somewhere in there. Perhaps with a couple hearts above my name?
Joking…
Not really, but I thought selfishly that maybe you’d share your words with me? Your thoughts? Honestly, you could draw a picture of an octopus in here, and I’d be fucking ecstatic to see it.
Share your day, your ideas, your anger, and I’ll share mine.
P.S. This doesn’t make us friends. (Even though I want nothing more than to be your best friend.)
P.P.S. Please tell me you’re sick of blue.
My god, who was this man, and why did he have to be so damn cute? The last thing I needed was to develop more feelings for some hockey player that was way out of my league, but he was continuously making this much harder than it needed to be. He was frustratingly persistent, and yet I didn’t want him to stop. Because tomorrow, I’d without a doubt have Hayes Decker on my mind and wonder what blue gift he’d leave for me next.
Back and forth I went, between right and wrong. Between love and heartbreak because everything about us wasn’t meant to be, and that thought only made me angrier. Where I should be angry at myself, I wrongly took it out on him.
How dare he come into my life like this and screw it all up. How dare he make me feel things I know I shouldn’t. It’s as if he’s prying open a healing wound and deliberately making the pain worse and harder to bear. With no chance of healing or getting better. He wanted to inflict as much of himself on me as he could, without even considering the consequences.
Consequences he had no clue about.
Hayes Decker was someone I could never love, and the sooner he understood that, the better off he was. So, that’s why I was here, trying to rid myself of the handsome hockey player who so grudgingly entered my thoughts, but not even a steaming cup of coffee could clear him from my head. Tucked into the corner of my favorite little coffee shop, I sat with my legs huddled and my eyes focused on the bustling traffic outside the dewy window. Rain pattered rhythmically against the sidewalk as the chatter of patrons filled the space of the quant cozy shop. It was a favorite place of mine. Not too far from campus, but just far enough where I wouldn’t find a bunch of classmates hanging around. It was somewhere I could focus without distractions. By now, my normal three-hour coffee visit would be wrapping up because I would have spent the whole time working on homework. Not today, though. Nope, today I was too busy daydreaming fictitious scenarios in my head that had a hundred-to-one shot of ever happening.
I then used the tip of my finger on the mousepad to revive my computer screen, and a whopping ten words filled the Word document. After reading the short sentence, I smashed the backspace button to where it now only had nine words.
Fantastic.
On a dramatic groan, my head fell back until it smacked the wall behind me. A flash of pain vibrated down my neck and spread throughout the rest of my body. I was distracted. More than usual. To the point, I struggled with a simple short essay that I could normally put together in less than an hour, and it was all because of a certain blonde-haired, dimpled-faced man.
