Words Unravelled

Chapter 2

I had finished yet another book, so I needed to head to the library and find something new. When I got there, what I found was horrible. My breath hitched in my throat. There he was. Grey Marie, the boy I secretly loved, laying on the floor in a puddle of tears. I slowly crept towards him.

"Grey? Are.. Are you okay?" He turns over a little so I can see is his face. His face was red and puffy, telling me he had been crying, his eyes swollen and bloodshot, saying he probably hadn't slept. He wiped his eyes quickly and sat up.

"I-I-I uh," he reached up and scratched the back of his neck, "um, yeah. I'm, I'm okay. I think. My, uh, uh, grandmother. She, um, uh passed away last night." I watched with true intent as the boy I knew as hard as a rock and the star athlete fell apart right before my eyes.

Grey used to have a reputation at school. I had heard the rumors of the things he did to girls. He played with their emotions, made them fall for this fake side he created to get a girl's attention and right when the girl thought he had fallen for her, he would dump her right where she stood. He was known for never falling in love. He never let his true side show, yet here he was crying in a library right beside me.

"Grey," I kept my voice soft as if I was nervous I'd scare him away if I talked in a normal volume, "you don't have to do that. You don't have to put up walls to block out fear. Not here. Not in the one place where there's advice for everything, every emotion, every action, there's a way out." He looked up into my eyes. My heart fluttered seeing him in such a vulnerable state.

He leaned into me and buried his face into my shirt and he cried. I don't know how long we sat there. I don't know how long I was silent for. I don't know when he had stopped crying, but I did know that this feeling felt right. He lift his head and wiped away the last, single tear and looked over at me.

I was reading some book I had grabbed off the shelf while he was crying. I felt his gaze on my face, so I looked up from my book and towards him.

He was watching me, not staring creepily, but watching me with fascination. I smile at him shyly.

"You're, you're, um" he started snapping his fingers trying to remember my name, but I made it easy on him.

"Shae. My name is Shae." I smiled and went back to the story of the girl who had been murdered by her neighbor and was stuck in-between heaven and earth. He seemed to be staring at me again.

"How do you that?" I looked up, confused. He could obviously tell as he started to, to laugh. "How do you lose yourself so fast, yet come back so easily?"

It was a feeling I had never been able to explain. I had always felt it though. As if my future was different and I could find my answer in the pages of a story. I had always felt that way, but I didn't realize it was true.