Before Time (The Time Trilogy Book 1) (8 page)

Impassioned:
I shared a lot of things with you last night; I could have shared this as well if I wanted to. One more thing; I’m sorry I spoke a lot. It’s just that I am not good at social talking anymore; I should’ve listened to you more.

ME:
Oh! Not at all, I liked listening to you.

Impassioned:
Another thing that I wanted to apologize to you for was that I had to imagine you as my girl in order for life and feelings to come in my words. I want to apologize for having suppressed your thoughts by enforcing mine upon you. Moreover, I am not good at talking to people anymore, but at least I try. There was a lot of nonsense, which I realized later.

ME:
No!! Don’t say that. You are hurting my feelings by apologizing for something that neither of us should be blamed for.

Impassioned:
I just said what I felt later, after the phone call. That wasn’t a very nice discussion for a first time. Anyways, I’m blocking your way, you can leave now.

ME:
I am not leaving now. I had to go out with Mom and she’s already gone.

Impassioned:
I am checking out myself. Thanks for your time.

ME:
No worries.

Impassioned:
Stay safe.

With that, he quit.

I was getting used to talking to him on mIRC. When he left, it felt like he took all the happiness with him. He was my very own Dementor. He was always on my mind; however, I tried to keep myself busy.

I switched off my laptop and picked up my favorite novel,
Almost Heaven
by Judith McNaught, from my table. I’d loved reading since I was ten years old. My maternal grandfather had inspired me. He was a great writer who used to compose poems for us when we were young. Whenever I picked up a story, I never left it before I reached the end, although I’d read
Almost Heaven
thousands of times. I’ve heard people say that reading a book repeatedly means that you are depressed, but I just like to relive my favorite stories over and over again, so that I could understand the meaning of something wonderful, of pure unrequited love, of being selfless and living for others. Moreover, I liked to fantasize about a happy ending for myself as well. I believed that I was incapable of love; an emotion that came so easily to my friends, but eluded me.

I think due to my love of books, I could see life more clearly, optimistically and positively. Although books are only fiction, they succeed in awakening something inside us that even we cannot understand. I mainly loved reading love stories, but when I read about Catherine and Heather in
Wuthering Heights
, their love-hate story, I was left with the same longing I felt when I read about Mr. Rochester and Jane in
Jane Eyre
. I loved the part where Jane had left him and she hears his voice over the wind; only if that could be true. I wanted to taste the love that they had tasted, to feel what it feels to be loved and how to love selflessly in return. It wasn’t much that I asked for, but it was something, at least for me. No doubt, I was optimistic.

I loved one thing about our friendship, and that was that we didn’t talk every day, although he was always with me, in my mind. I enjoyed that with him, and I didn’t know whether he enjoyed it or not.

Three days later, I had been away from mIRC all day, as my mom was depressed and I spent the day with her. She was sad that my sister would be leaving soon to join her husband and she would be left all alone. I spent time with her and reassured her that I would always be here with her. After all, where would I go, except to be with her? My parents were precious for me, although we always had arguments about one thing or the other.

I logged online at night that day. I knew that he wouldn’t be there, for he left at five p.m. every day. I scrolled through my messages, but he hadn’t even left me any. A little disappointed, I switched the window to our channel and was surprised to see him online.

ME:
You’re here at this time?

I checked the clock on my desktop again to check the time. It was almost ten p.m.

Impassioned:
I broke all my rules.

ME:
Why?

Impassioned:
I’m just tired of my monotonous life pattern, and secondly, it’s the weekend here.

ME:
I see.

Impassioned:
It must be your day time, I guess, and you must be as fresh as a flower’s dew.

ME:
It’s 10 p.m. at my end.

Impassioned:
Almost.

ME:
Yeah, almost six minutes.

Impassioned:
But, only the normal people follow this time. I can understand from your routine, you wake up at 4 p.m., which makes it your afternoon right now.

ME:
Well, I woke up early today, as mom wasn’t feeling well, so I spent my day with her today.

Impassioned:
Very nice; spending time with parents is very important.

ME:
Yeah, she was feeling lonely, that’s why.

Impassioned:
Did you help in the kitchen?

ME:
My sister is going to Canada soon and I will be left alone with her. No, cooking is not my specialty.

Impassioned:
Guessed as much.

ME:
I can cook only a small number of dishes. Anyways, I am going offline for a bit.

Impassioned:
So can I; whatever I cook is not edible.

ME:
Haha, I’ll be back.

When I returned, he was either away or had gone offline, for he didn’t reply to any of my messages. I returned to trivia and started increasing my score there.

At this stage, I had lots of free time to hang around mIRC, to fool around or much more. It wasn’t like I was only talking to him on IRC, but I wasn’t a private chatter. I used to have my fun on the main channel, where multiple users could talk at once. It was a good place to pass the time.

The next day, I woke up early again, and after having a mild breakfast of cereal, I switched on my laptop and logged in. I knew he must be online, and he was, but today I had no intention of messaging him. Over the last few weeks, I had observed that it was I who was always messaging, not him.

Impassioned:
Good morning,
he wrote on the channel main.

ME:
Thanks.

Sometimes, he used honey-coated words and quotes from Twilight, which he seemed to know I liked. Sometimes he would just bid me good morning and stayed away. Today, I guess was one of those. His sentences used to be so cheesy, and I used to laugh at them. Well, that didn’t really help me now, did it?

When people say that your life changes when you least expect it, they are correct. But then, you rarely know when your life might undergo a drastic change. It’s lovely to expect those changes to be for the best—but they often aren’t.

Chapter 6

I was reading a blog on my laptop when my cell phone rang.

“Hey, what’s up?” My best friend, Sarah, was calling to check on me.

“Nothing much, just reading old stuff. You tell where have you been? I have been calling you like crazy.”

“Well, I was out of town and couldn’t attend my phone. What’s the plan? Let’s meet up today.”

“What time?” I looked at the digital clock on my laptop. It was showing 12:45 p.m.

“How about I pick you up in two hours?”

“That sounds wonderful. I’ll be ready.”

“See ya, biatch!”

“Muah, bye!” I said and replaced my phone on the table beside me.

Sarah had been my best friend since our school days. We studied together, but then we got separated in college. Later, fate brought us together through an old school friend of mine. Here we were, together again after many years. We understood each other perfectly, but we differed like night differs from day. She was careless, with no understanding of how it was important to manage yourself and your time, while I was her total opposite. She liked to mess around with people, while I liked to keep a low profile, make few friends, and listen to what the other person was talking about. She would make the other person listen to her. Maybe our differences made us best friends forever; anyways, whatever her faults, she was definitely my friend.

We spent the day at my favorite spa, where Sarah and I visited regularly. Although I hated doing girly stuff with her, like going to parlors and spas, she always forced me to do it. This one was bearable, though. After the spa, we decided to go to Zefra for our favorite treat: mushroom-topped steaks. I returned home quite late.

When I logged in on mIRC after dinner, he was already online. These days, it looked like he never quit.

Impassioned:
Welcome, princess.

ME:
Thanks!

I smiled at his welcome. He was so sweet.

He greeted me on the main channel. He didn’t message me in my private stream; neither did I respond to him privately. I waited. Just then, my private stream blinked and I read the message. It was so funny, I copied it and pasted into his private stream. I snickered.

Cute-gal:
I’m 25 and looking for a dashing boy my age to get married to. Would you like to be the lucky one?

I rolled my eyes at that one. mIRC was full of this kind of crap.

ME:
Sorry, I’m a girl.

Cute-gal:
Oh! Sorry about that
.

Was she being sorry because I was a girl? Weirdo.

ME:
Why are you sorry? I’m not sorry that I’m a girl.

Cute-gal:
Well, I’m a girl and I’m living here alone.

So what? It was kind of funny the way she was telling me that she was a girl and alone. I thought that she didn’t believe that I was a girl. I snickered at that and pasted him the messages.

Impassioned:
Excellent. You saved a lot of my time.

ME:
Heehee. :D

Impassioned:
Taking him to cyber would’ve been a huge disappointment.

Cybering, that is, having sex online, was more like a make-out session for most people. To me, it was gross and repugnant.

ME:
Don’t tell me you were going to do that.

We were playing with a nick that had approached me in private, telling me weird stuff. On mIRC, it’s frequent that guys use girl nicks and girls use guy nicks, so we were trying to judge the gender of this nick from his/her chat.

ME:
He/She is now telling me that she’s living in Quetta while her parents are in Iran. Is this an invitation?

I couldn’t keep myself from laughing. The situation was funny and I was pretty sure that he was writing as well.

Impassioned:
Only if he asks about the color of the undergarments that you are wearing.