29

The night before my depature, I had beers with David and Mauryn and sure enough they hit it of well. David and Mauryn both have similar views about life and souls. And I guess if anyone was to say how auras click... this was one of that instances.

We drank and talked and laughed all night. There were tears, Mauryn hugging me telling me not to leave just yet. And the next moment she was already making plans to come visit me at my home town.

David just sat there drinking his beer and making jokes all the time. I caught him looking at me with watchful eyes a couple of times. Once when Mauryn was in the toilet I asked him why he kept looking at me that way.

“Bella, remember once I told u how beautiful ur smile is? That time you were careful about it.. and tonight you can’t stop smiling and you are glowing and I just can’t stop staring at that beauty.”

I felt my face hotter. His eyes staring into mine was soft, caring, fatherly like. I realized that this past month, David had been the father figure i had always needed, the father i never had.

My eyes got misty, before a tear could drop, i wiped it off. David carresed my hair and said, “You have come a long way Bella, you have filled my heart and cheered my soul. I will miss you dearly, but it is time you went home.” He smiled

“I...” my lips quivered. “Thank you...” I muttered softly. That was the only thing i could say, where in all honesty, i wanted to thank him for my new life. I wanted to let him know, he was the one who cheered my soul, who placed the smile on my face, who gave me wings. But thank you was all i could muster, and i guess that was enough for him.

When Mauryn came back from the toilet, i told her all about the box of candies. I thought she would ask if she could try one, to my surprise she smiled and said “you need that one box of reasons once in a while, I sure as hell had mine”

Whatever lessons Mauryn had learn in whatever way, I’m sure that was why she was who she was. I finally understood why it was easy to be around her, perhaps at a time she was once like me.

Mauryn suggested we move and continue destroying our liver, David bailed. Before he left, he asked me if i had time before my flight tomorrow to meet him, i had. So we arranged to meet in our place the next morning.

Mauryn took me to one of her places. A bar somewhere in a place where you would not think a bar would exist with name as funny as “Here” or “Not-Closed” or like this one called “Vices”. She has all these people she hangs out with who are either musicians, bar owners or just plain slackers trying to be artists. But they are a bunch of cool people to hang out with and I always feel good when I meet them. And like always, we bumped into one of her groups of friends at Vices.

We met James, Mauryn’s boy friend (or so i thought), but there was just awkward hi’s and we sat further away from where he was. Later on I saw that he was with another girl, and i was sure it was a date. I wanted to ask Mauryn about it, but it just didn’t feel right. Until she noticed i was giving James dirty looks.

“We broke up” Mauryn said

“When? You were still together last weekend.”

She laughed, “Trying to fix what was broken was more like it” she said.

“Why?”

“Sometimes, things just don’t work out... no matter how much you want it to work out. Even when you try as hard as you might, sometimes things just don’t go the way you want them to.” There was a slight sadness in her eyes.

“Are you okay? We can move somewhere else.” I offered

“No, I’m fine. We almost never know the reason but i have always believed, things are exactly the way they need to be.”

“I am always amazed how positive you can be, and always cheerful.”

“Let me let you in a secret, everything that happens, every incidence in our lives, they are like the two sides of a coin. They have a negative side, which we and most people give our attention to, and the positive side, which we tend to forget. But if you wake up every morning thinking ‘i will only see the positive of everything’ and you actually focus on the positive outcome of everything, then i tell you, life gets better and easier and lighter.”

“When did you become this wise?”

“When i met my ‘David’” she winked.