A Wife for the Billionaire
Chapter 76: RICHARD

Chapter 76: RICHARD

My emotions were going haywire as Lanke drove away from Green Avenue.

The peace and tranquility did nothing to the chaos that seemed to be brewing within. I don’t even know whether to call it that.

Chaos, I mean.

There was no true way of discerning my feelings. They came as if as one, waves of regret, crashes of pain, subtle ripples of happiness, drops of sadness, tsunamis of rage and currents of memories buried underneath the white sands of the depths of my mind. They all rose to the surface.

Conversations. Happy and sad.

"I think I love you"

"... of all the girls, why did it have to be her?"

"... you are just like them, shame on me for allowing myself fall for your lies"

"Indeed it’s a shame, try to protect yourself and your emotions better in the future."

"... you have three days to put an end to whatever it is you have with that girl"

Voices.

The deep cutting base tone of my father’s. The questioning tone of Claire’s. Mel’s, usually singsong and melodic, but that day, it cracked and stuttered like a broken record. Mine, barely recognizable to my ears in ringing pitches of ecstaticity during the happy days and tones of sharp iciness on that fateful day.

Sounds.

The buttery sound of her laughter. Her gentle voice, like the whisper of the evening breeze. The high tone it takes when she’s animated. The wrecking sound of her sobs that day. The silent drops of her tears. The tapping sound of Claire’s stilettos. The loud clicks of my father’s Oxford soles. The silent breaking and cracking of my own heart.

Images.

Mel’s gold curls, haloed by the sun. Her beautiful smile on ever rosy lips. Her smaragdine eyes. Her pink cheeks when she blushed. Her dimples when she laughed. Her royal bearing. Her white dress on our first date as if she was about to be led to the aisle. Her small figure as she crouched before me, crying. The reddened face of Edward. Claire’s pleading visage. The unforgettable look of hate on Mel’s face that day. The first time I saw her, sitting alone at the cafeteria, her face - red and her eyes - puffy.

It all came crashing and cutting like the shards of a smashed mirror.

I tried closing my eyes, but that made it even more haunting, as more images spinned over the blackness of my vision.

I ordered Lanke to increase the volume of the mixtape playing on the radio, but even that couldn’t dull out the sound of her cries echoing in my ears.

Her name was Melissa Borders. She had transferred to our school after the tragic death of her parents.

Daughter to the famous John Borders and Erica Swiss, two of the top attorneys in New City with their very own law firm, Swiss & Borders.

I remember watching the news of her parents death on the TV, it was a gruesome sight. Their car was almost unrecognizable after the series of somersaults that had been orchestrated by the crash of a big lorry from behind them.

Her parents were popular and among the top in the social circle of the New City elites.

The video of their car as it somersaulted over and over had trended for weeks even after their death.

But Melissa was the true spectacle, she had been in that car. She was heralded as one of the greatest miracles of the 21st century. Her parents had died with faces so bloody and twisted that many, not even herself could recognize them.

She had been going to a boarding school in London, but after the incident, she was enrolled into our school after she began living with her uncle and his family.

Too overwhelmed by the wrapping tentacles of change, she had found herself crying her heart out at the ladies room.

High school has always been cruel. In fact, it takes more than the average to survive high school unscathed.

A student heard her crying that day and like wildfire, the news had spread through the school. And the Trinity, Jess Beckham, Karen Tank and Laura Keyes, the meanest girls in the school had capitalized on such experience, naming her ’Weeping-Mel’. Especially as they felt threatened by Melissa’s presence. She was beautiful and came from a rich family, suffice to say, she was the kind of girl who could usurp their reign of popularity.

With such experience, Mel’s chance to ever climb the ladders of popularity was lost. On the very first day, she became a pariah.

She didn’t even seem to care. I guess losing both parents in a twinkle of an eye and somehow surviving even when all odds were stacked against her, could mar one for life.

The first time I saw her was on that first day after her crying fits and the spread of the news. She walked with her tray as if dazed, as people snickered and called her ’WeepingMel’ as she passed.

Like a zombie, she walked to an empty table and sat.

That was when Aaron said,

"Apart from being pathetic, she’s kinda cute"

I looked at her then, like really looked at her. She sat close to the glass windows, her hair, golden and curly, was haloed by the filtered light of the sun. Her red lips were moving as she munched on a bite from her sandwich.

Her face were flushed red and then her eyes met mine,

Green and sparkly like purest emerald gems. From where I sat, I could tell they were still glazed by tears and that she was struggling not to cry again. Her vert eyes were swollen and rimmed with a dark shade of crimson.

With an expression that said, "What the hell are you looking at?", she glared at me before turning her gaze to the windows.

I was 15 then and that was sophomore year. Four years after the news that my heart was a mass of bloodied weakness. After I forced the news of my condition out of Doctor Tex and my parents.

Four years lessened the blow, but it didn’t erase the fact that my life was a ticking time bomb that could blow at any moment.

At 15, I had known girls. In fact, it was my humble self who deflowered the Trinity. But I didn’t know what love was, the feeling was foreign to my cold weak heart.

But that day as I stared at the blond haired girl, my heart for the very first time, pulsed with strong beats.

Being myself, I waved it off as nothing. I was too good a player for feelings. Days rolled by, Mel kept sinking deeper into depression, her uncle’s kids tried to keep her company at school, but I knew because I kept watching her.

It was wild that I felt content just by looking at her. She hardly spoke, but she was all that the Trinity talked about. From their ramblings which I always pretended not to be interested in, I discovered that Mel had been like the queen bee in her last school.

She practically ruled the place even at such a young age. Seniors avoided her, juniors feared her and teachers adored her. But ever since the incident, she became a shell of who she used to be.

I pitied her then and perhaps I still do. She was one of those persons that I allowed my cold weak heart to feel things for.

I imagined how different she would be then, active, vibrant rather than this ghost of herself. But it didn’t stop me from liking her or watching her.

Then I was ignorant to the concept of death, especially concerning losing a loved one. Papi, my grandfather had died when I was ten and to be honest we weren’t really close nor was I old enough to really understand the loss. But dying - that I understood.

Perhaps it was because I was also dying. Slowly, but surely I was withering away. And I think that’s basically the same thing. I understood her pain, and more than anything I wished to alleviate that pain. To kiss away her tears and try to resurrect that girl she had been before the incident.

It would be hard, but I was willing to try.

It was easier said than done, I was more than willing to get to know her, I ached to know what brewed in her mind. She may have been silent, but I knew she still thought and I wanted to know those fragments of her fractured mind.

But my legacy and reputation hindered me from taking any step. It was a blindfold restraining me from looking too long, and a whip lashing me from saying much about her or asking much.

I was the captain of Skyline Central High School basketball team, the Central Chargers.

Unlike most high borns like me, I wasn’t a fool who slacked in high school simply because I was privileged or fluked my grades because I was good at basketball. In everything I did, I strived for excellence and as much as I also flaunted that rich lifestyle. It was all a restraining factor for the one thing I really wanted. Melissa Borders.

To be continued.