BROWN SKIN | BOOK 1

|| C H A P T E R . 19 ||

There was the joy of a love interest that came with keen pleasure and affection, the joy of doing something good out of an act of kindness, the smile that hurts your mouth so much from stretching. They were all fragments of a state of happiness and I caught a glimpse of it when it only lasted for a good minute.

We forget joy sometimes, joy, to me, gets lost in sadness, jealousy and resentment. A subtle darkness that creeps up in our bones and finds comfort there, where we think it belongs. I wonder why we love to hold on to that so much more than joy. Joy probably thinks we are cheating on them. Loving the sadness and allowing it to affect us the most as joy turned out jealous. Joy was mad it's been replaced by something we turn to cope. Just because we were weakened and broken down to a point joy couldn't be a coping mechanism. But I do know one thing, joy did come first when it didn't have to. Joy was so innocent and pure to the world, we believed it could shield us from these negativities.

I stopped believing in joy when I became corrupt.

Corruption led me to believe it was my coping mechanism from now on too, misery was a reflex and hopelessness was second nature.

Does joy get lost because it was a small fragment of living, engulfed in the negative? Or do we miss joy so much, we want it back because we were never meant to be stone faces and blank stares? I wonder why joy left me when I needed it the most. . .

I could count the good times on my hand like it happened only a few days ago, which it probably had. See, there were many different joys and happiness I can encounter.

The same noises at the White Marbles restaurant surrounded me as I passed by customers greeting unkindly with accidental shoulder bumps and "I'm sorry" mumbles. I haven't seen her grey hair in a while even though it hasn't been that long ago.

For some reason, that put me at ease.

"Surprise, surprise seeing you here again. Thought you fired yourself there for a second." Connie said, talking with a wooden toothpick in her mouth and her usual nonchalant voice. The toothpick was the only thing that really switched up her persona the past couple days.

She never got tired of money, counting it in case it all went to waste or gone missing from her pocket. Her tone never took an octave too high nor too low, her blase attitude consistent with the way life goes. I dearly missed that too.

There were a couple things I wanted to address to her, like it was my birthday, it really was, like one that was worth celebrating. Also, Beau and I are. . .something, there are too many stages to relationships nowadays, I can't keep up with it all. Relationships aren't the same back then. We could be more yesterday with intimacy and less of friends tomorrow, I don't know. . .

"I covered for you if you didn't know, but I'll give you a week from now on."

No smirk or smile lightened up her face, but her support was enough to fill it. I rolled my lips in, pressing them together to keep myself from grinning with glee but couldn't stop myself.,Picking up my apron, I thanked her without a hug - too much physical touch could weird her out - and got down to business. I don't know what for really, getting down to business, why I continued to have a job when I quit dancing. The car wash incident wasn't the problem either, it was the build up that led to me wanted to give up on fighting to stay. The director will find a replacement anywho, and that made me a little upset how you can be forgotten so fast. Maybe I just came to the realization I'll never be as good as the rest of them or could pay off the travel competition expenditures in time.