Almost a Love Story of...Me and Megan

I loved Megan. But that was the biggest mistake I ever did; to love Megan after somebody else did. I don’t blame anyone. Cos in the end, I only got myself to blame on.

Megan. I’d be lying if I don’t say physical attraction first brought me to her. I don’t always go for looks honestly. But right at the moment I saw Megan in that airport, looking all confused waiting, in that nice white top I’d never forget, it simply drove me to her. Yeah, I met her in an airport. When she just got back from Ireland.

“I study there. Taking a course I’ve never wanted to take,” she said when I asked what’s with Ireland.

The more I knew Megan day by day, the physical attraction that used to attract me in the airport seemed to fade away by time. Cos it was now much more than just a simple physical looks to me. Megan smiled and laughed with me through the good times, and at the lowest point in my life, there was Megan. She told me stories and the path of her life.

It might be a destiny for God to let me know Megan to take her out from the undertow she never knew she’s caught inside. It might be. And it might be not at the same time. Or it might be just a big test for me that came, passed, and then gone. That I have to remember, but not to carry it with me my entire life.

Maybe it was just another mistake. Cos she’s already with somebody the moment I met her in that airport. Though I never surprised. A girl like Megan, why would I expect to be single.

“I have a boyfriend,” I remember she said with smile when I tried to get her talk in the airport.

“Yeah, I know,” I said, and she shook her head, with smile that never faded on those lips.

Looking back to all these things, I never thought that I’d go feeling all these feelings that I have for her. It’s not the way that she didn’t want to talk much when I tried to get her talk. And not the way she refused to take my ride when it was close to midnight. And not the way she ignored me and honestly said she had a boyfriend. But it’s just the moment I knew I ain’t hoping for anything from her, but to be there the best for her as friend.

Cos after that, we became friends. Being a place for her to take out things she didn’t use to tell anyone. Her relationship with Mark. Mark, of course, her boyfriend. The boyfriend she had been with since senior year in high school. No, they didn’t go to the same school. Ever. Let just put it like this; a friend of Mark just happened to know a friend of Megan. And they just happened to go out in a group one night.

Mark was the one who made the first move. Mark was a very shy guy though, she told me. I myself just met him a few times, including Monday morning last week when he came to see me, which got me thinking and came up with this decision finally. When I saw this guy, I could see why all these things happened. I just still could not see why it had to have me to see that happened.

To me personally, Mark is a good guy, and very faith. Very, which gave him a bittersweet place in Megan’s heart. Which made an independent girl like Megan find it confusing sometimes. A guy like Mark doesn’t screw up. And let a girl like Megan accept him by time. It is a contrast for them, to me. But who am I to say something from the view of my own. Cos after all, I still am a stranger in their own world.

If I would to say just another word about Megan, it would be just this; uncomplicated. Megan is uncomplicated. But still, is strong. Megan is the kind of girl that has all this confidence that sometimes you don’t feel like protecting her all the time, but still feel the feeling of her needing you, in a strange way.

Huh, I hate to talk about how good she is, in times like this. Cos I don’t want to be feeling regret of letting her go today. Don’t want to take back the decision that I had made today. I seriously don’t.

I remember this morning when I woke up and feeling too lazy to go to the bathroom, I sat in front of a mirror watching myself, and suddenly remembering something. The thing Megan said to me when I told her about how I could be so superstitious sometimes.

“Don’t look in the mirror first thing in the morning. You have to at least brush your teeth before actually looking at yourself in the mirror! Go get clean first. First above all--”, she said, which put me into laugh.

“Okay, why is that?” I asked.

“I don’t know, they say it might then be a bad day for you,” she said.

“-But you still have to look in the mirror to brush your teeth, right? Where did you get that? Never heard of that one,” I said, laughing even more.

“A friend told me, I think, when I was younger. Don’t laugh!” she said, and when she said ‘don’t laugh’, her eyebrows wrinkled deep, showing a difficult expression on that face, which was very rare for her.

So I guess she was right, then. Cos the day I woke up sitting in front of a mirror before getting clean is going to be the day where not-so-good thing would actually happen. And that was today.

When I called her at 7:30 this morning, she was not at home. She’s with a friend, still striving finding a job. It was over half a year she had graduated in Business Admin. I did offer her working at the company I worked with the moment she graduated. But she refused kindly. And I respect that, cos I know it had always something to do with how Mark would be feeling.

“Mark, this is Ian,” I remember the first time she introduced me to Mark at her graduation day in Ireland months ago. And that was the very first time I met Mark. He’s tall, about a couple inches taller than me I believed. And good looking. Not this ‘Ben Affleck’ type of good looking, but in a boyish kind of way, he’s handsome. He’s twenty-two after all.

And his skin, it was so fair that he would go bright red in the face when he’s feeling something funny or anything, like when meeting me back at that moment.

“I’m her friend. She talked a lot about you, y’know,” I said, tried to lighten up the moment. Of course she talked a lot about him.

“Yeah,” he said, short.

I told Megan it was not a very good idea for me to come to her graduation day, but she insisted on that. Cos to think it back, we’re friends after all. We ourselves never be sure what are we sometimes. Even until the moment she’s breaking up with Mark. Until right now. We can never be sure.

I remember the moment I watched the delightful that was framed within her and her family, and Mark, during that graduation day. And I didn’t feel jealous about it. I felt proud. Proud and happy for her. So looking at them as an outsider was all enough satisfying for me.

“Hey, c’mon! Get into the camera! What are you doing over there?” she said, pulling me into the camera to stand beside her in the picture. Mark was at her left side, holding her waist. And then it became the only picture of her graduation day that I was in. And this morning before I got out of my apartment, I looked at the picture long enough. Long enough to throw it all away once I stepped out the apartment door. But to think back at those blessing times of hers, I think I wouldn’t be regret letting go of everything.

But to be reminding the reaction she got when I told her I’d be taking the 3pm flight this afternoon, it made me doubt it whether or not I wouldn’t feel any regret upon this.

“God, Ian. You’re leaving. Ian,” I heard her voice’s deep. It hurt me to hear her that way.

“I guess I am,” that was all I could say. It was slightly funny cos I felt so hard to let go. Like I was breaking up with her. As if she’s my girlfriend, when she’s not only not, she’s somebody else’s girlfriend. And the most funniest thing is that it hurt deeper than saying goodbye to any girl I really had been with before.

“He called me again last night,” she said one Tuesday morning when she urgently wanted to meet me at a restaurant near where I worked. She looked neat and clean, like always, but her face miserable.

“He stops going to classes, Ian. He cried when he talked to me last night,” she stopped. Holding her head in her one hand and shaking her head, looked away through the glasses that divided us from the outside.

It was days after Megan decided to finally tell Mark that it was the time to let go of the relationship. He probably couldn’t take it. And now, I am beginning to learn how hard it was for him.

Weeks before, Megan surprisingly came to me with a decision of breaking up with Mark. I know how she feels about the relationship all along, but never thought she would go that far. She said it was one best thing she could ever think of for both of them after this long. Had she realized after this long, the relationship, it actually led nowhere. She loved Mark. Yes, she did. But in a different way.

Had she realized the whole time away in Ireland, never did she turn back her head one sec to know that she’s missing somebody back home.

“It turned out that the only person that I missed here is -you,” Megan said to me one day. Almost could not be heard, not too, looking at me. “I don’t know, Ian. I don’t know,” she said, as if regretting it.

Regretting that never did she think of coming back to this country everytime just to see Mark was waiting at the airport with open arms, having a nice whole breakfast-lunch-dinner the whole day with him, talking endlessly on the phone in the middle of the night with him.

Mark was like a wind. When it was there, then it was. But even if it doesn’t, it won’t make much of a difference.

What she needs is somebody that she could lie her both wings to. It wasn’t me. It might be somebody else. Somebody else that would be it.

I think the relationship was fine. But it would be better if they didn’t even start it at all. Cos once they started it, they actually built up only different feelings between both sides. And it made it a big mistake only seen in the end.

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” she said. And that had been the thousands of time she said it on that table, that Tuesday morning, in front of me.

“What did he say?” I asked, gentle.

“He wants me to tell him what did he do wrong,” she answered. Then she bent her head down to the table. “ - which of course I couldn’t answer it. I couldn’t. Could I, Ian? Could I?” she asked me, started loosing it.

“Hey, hey, Megan. Listen to me, listen to me,” I leaned forward, reaching for her hand. Then I quiet, looking right at her without blinking, forcing her to look back at me.

Her eyes were slightly dead. Liveless.

“Every take in this world always has its price to be paid. There’s always something you’ve got to give in and let go,” I said, holding her hand tight. As if giving her a new strength through the touch. “For something better, you’ve got to go through pain sometimes,” I said, looking deep into her eyes.

Then she looked away. Frowning with pain.

Then I suddenly remembered when she suddenly acted weird one night we sat out watching the sun fell off into the sea, away from town. “How many times did I tell you that you’re a very good listener to every story?” she asked me, cast me her little smile.

“How should I know? I never counted,” I joked.

“But, hey, for real, you know, that was why I always end up being just a listener, and not a part of a story,” I said then, which changed her expression immediately, which also made me felt a little bit surprised of her reaction.

“Why’d you say that?” she asked.

“Say what?” it was just making me felt more uncomfortable, as if what I had just said mattered the most to her.

“Say what you had just said.”

“What? What had I just said?”

She looked at me for a while, and then shook her head a few times. “Nothin’,” she said finally. “Nothin’,” she repeated.

“What should I tell him, Ian?” after a little while gazing empty at the glass walls beside the table, she spoke. Blowing off what was on my mind all at once.

“Remember the time you said to me you never wanted to hurt him more than you already had?” I asked her, shifted my gaze down to her face. She nodded, weak.

“You know you’ll hurt him even more if you don’t tell him things you really felt,” I said. She seemed to be listening. And then she nodded again.

Suddenly I smiled to myself. All the thoughts of that Tuesday morning weeks ago before I really decided to quit my job, buy a flight ticket and leave this country, was just like a gust of wind that swept by now.

I never really decided to quit my job. Not just because of I failed myself in this. In fact, I don’t feel like failing, I feel like I’m rising up again. Like I’m finally getting and gaining something from a different angle of my life.

And not because of the meeting with Mark Monday morning just last week did I quit the job. It is always because of myself. Because of what I hold of through my life. Because of what I believed and stick to this whole journey of life of my own.

“Look at me. Look at me, and tell me, man to man, with all the honesty that you got in you, that you don’t love her,” I remember Mark said to me on that hot Monday morning. It was in fact, a very shadowy morning with the wind swept by sometimes. His voice, too, was calm, not showing off any anger. But in a strange way, it felt hot on that second-floor balcony off the restaurant. “Do you?” he asked. The calm was still there.

I didn’t give him any answer right away. How should I give him an answer when I had never had the answer for myself.

Finally Mark nodded his head a few times when nothing came out from my mouth. His fingers were tapping the concrete bricks that made up the balcony. And then he nodded again.

“Okay,” he said, lowering his voice. As if getting the answer himself by it. I, still, did not say anything. Not that I was afraid. But I guessed it was better to just let the silent speak for it all at once.

“I don’t know, y’know. I couldn’t think of anything that could have made her breaking up with me, “ he said, chuckled; to be hiding what was supposed to be there in the words somehow.

I know, I said to myself silently. I know, but he did not. So I made a conclusion to myself that Megan never had the courage to tell him the way I told her to.

“The only reason I could ever think of --is you,” he said, did not wish to conceal anything from me.

I nodded for the words he said this time. I didn’t blame him for blaming me, for taking me out as the excuse. It’s not his fault. It’s not anybody else’s. Or maybe it was just mine.

The wind suddenly blew a little harder, bringing this kind of weird sense through me. As if it was telling me that it really was my fault. It’s not anybody else’s. Was it?

“I can’t ask you to stop caring about her,” he said. “Or loving her,” he chuckled again. “Can I?”

“But you’ve known her in less than a year, and you’ve felt it already. Those feelings,” his eyes I saw, were deep.

“Just, try that, times six,” he said, and left a few moments silent dead, meaningless, before finally lifted up his head and continued, “For six years I’ve known and been with her.”

The words were simple, so was the idea. But they jabbed through me deep. For one moment I was thinking he was so very right.

“Hey,” finally I said. Pushing my gaze on him. “No matter what you had in your mind about me, I want you to know, never had I thought of coming into your relationship with the intention of ruining it,” I said solemnly.

I was just happened to be somebody who happened to make her realize on how she really felt about the relationship of yours.

I never meant to intrude in. Never meant to fall in love with her. And even if I accidentally did, I’ve tried so hard not to.

I ran my eyes away to the ticket counter near to the end line of the seat I’m sitting in. For no reasons. I know Megan would be coming. At least she said she would this morning. Glancing to my wristwatch, I know she wouldn’t be here any sooner. She might have many other things to do now rather than just to come and see me on the take-off this early. She probably got the new job today. Or she might be on a meal right now with Mark.

Never meant to fall in love with her. And even if I accidentally did, I’ve tried so hard not to. And even if I didn’t try to fight it, it doesn’t make any difference now. The decision has already been made. I am leaving. And Megan, --she had her own reasons. Her own reasons for taking him back.

I can’t really say that at last, in the end, all these things just got back to where it all started. Where I don’t exist. Where there could only be Mark and Megan. No me. Pretty much like where it started. I cannot really say that, but looks like that it is. And I guess this is just how the story goes. And my life is just a part of a story. Like I told Megan, where I always end up not much of an audience of a story.

To be inside the airport hall, I don’t know how was the sun outside. I just wish the wind still blowing, like it did on the day I met Mark last Monday, like it always did on good days. Blowing ceaseless comfortingly. Cos wind could be a cure sometimes. Not that I need a cure right now, but I just need to breathe the breath of serenity of the wind.

And Megan, - she had her own reasons. Yeah.

Having Mark studying Computer for final year in local college and watching him extending another year or quitting college just because of the break-up is very unfair for Megan. I understand.

“I can’t just sit back seeing him destroying himself because of me, Ian,” Megan said after telling me how was Mark after the break-up. “I can’t. I just can’t,” she added.

“I can’t just let it. Yet I don’t know what to do either,” she shrugged. And then she sighed.

That was a few days ago, a day after Mark met me. She didn’t mention anything about it, so I assumed that she didn’t know. She didn’t have to.

“I don’t want to be the one who tells you to forget him and just stick to the decision you’d already made, cos it’d sound like I prompting you of your own relationship,” I said. “Cos it was your relationship, and your decision is what matters the most here after all.”

“But all I can say is think about everything a little deeper than you already had,” I said to her. I saw her nodding.

“Take some time, sit back, set your mind free, and the next thing you know is you wake up with the answer you’ve been searching for the whole time,” I said, and that was when she said I sounded like a therapist.

“I did?” I asked, laughing.

“Yeah, you really did,” she said, smiling big then. And that smile was like a credit to me. Cos she barely smiled those late few days.

“Okay, okay, let’s do it again,” I said, raising my both palms. “I’ll give you something lighter. Something ‘friends-like’, not a ‘therapist-like’,” I said, joking. She laughed.

“Get out of here,” she said, warm. Holding back her smile.

And then some time later after that day, she came across the decision of getting back together with Mark. She said he had sacrificed a lot for her, devoted to her throughout her days away in Ireland. Why shouldn’t she sacrifice a minute for him? When she told me that, her face miserable. She was wearing this thick black jacket, unzipped. Her hands were on the jacket all the time. Her sneakers were untied, unlike always. Under her eyes were grayed-lines, bruises-like. She might be not well-sleep those few nights.

“I’m sorry,” -and then she said.

I looked at her face and shook my head. “Don’t be,” I said. Really, there was nothing to be sorry about.

She said she still felt bad about the decision she made. Like she did not do it fair enough for everyone. I knew what she meant to say was it was not fair enough for me.

“Hey, c’mon. Cheer-up! That was a good decision, Meg,” I said, shaking her shoulders with my both hands. Through a gloomy face, she drew a smile.

“No matter what your decision is, I’m still happy for you,” I told her. “You have to know this,” I added.

And then I hooked my left arm to her shoulders, shaking it. “C’mon. What is there to be so ‘unfair’? You’re with him when I met you,” I said. “We’re friends, remember? And I’m behind you no matter what, Meg.”

Her face was gloom. But she did not shed any tear. Megan was like that. She hardly cried even when she told me the hardest part of her relationship with Mark.

Then I let go my hand off her shoulders. “I’ve made my decision too,” I said, which made her turned to me immediately.

“Whoa, whoa. Don’t look at me like that,” I said, giggled. She smiled, changing her direction.

Then I told her I might be leaving the country for a little while. And she was very surprised, like I expected. I told her I wouldn’t be gone for long, though I actually would. I told her I’d find a new job over there, but didn’t tell her I already quit my job here. She asked me why, I gave her a cold smile.

It was actually just a night before that when I came up with the decision. After watching ‘The Amazing Race’ on TV, I came to think that I really need to go somewhere else and start over. Just like they did once they left the pit stop.

After talking to Mark the other day, I was thinking maybe I just need to leave them alone. Maybe I need not to be involved in this anymore. And after Megan told me she was getting back together with Mark, it was clear to me that this thing that happened in front of me was just like a wind that came near me, let me feel the gentle caress for once, and then disappeared.

This morning before I went to this airport, I caught a bus, and went to a few places. A restaurant near where I used to work, a coffee shop in the middle of the town, a fish market near the sea, the brick walls headed to the sea; places where I used to hear stories from Megan. I wouldn’t be listening to those stories anymore.

Suddenly my eyes caught somebody I knew on the entrance of the hall. She looked around, like she was searching for somebody. Pretty much like when I saw her the very first time in this airport a year ago.

I stood up, waving to her. Quickly she saw me and heading towards me. She looked neat and well-dressed, unlike the day she told me her decision about Mark.

“I’m late, I’m sorry. I really am,” that was the first thing she said when she was standing right in front of me.

I chuckled. “That was okay,” I glanced over to my wristwatch. “It’s only 2:45,” I said.

“We-- kinda got a job. Me and Lissa,” she said. “But I screwed up,” she released a deep breath.

“I left the interview session. It was supposed to be from 2 to 4,” she said. That really surprised me.

“Megan-- You really don’t have to, y’know,” I said, shaking my head. “You can just call if you got something a lot more important to do. I really don’t mind-.”

She shook her head. And then slowly she said, “You are what’s important to me right now, Ian.”

I swallowed hard, and it tasted bitter. Slowly I reached my hands to her shoulders and pulled her closer to me.

That was when a voice came out on the speakers, “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your patience. At this time, we would like to begin preboarding of MH Air Flight 170 to Adelaide through Gate 30.”

I let go my hands from her.

“That’s your flight?” she asked. I only nodded.

Then I looked at her. Feeling like so much to say yet did not know what was there to say. Then I touched her left hand. Looked at her again. And then I lowered my head, until my mouth stood beside her ear. And then I sang her a song;

“..It’s not the way I choose to leave,

And somethin’, somewhere’s got to give,

As sharin’ this relationship,

Gets older, older..”

I stopped right there when I heard a slow sob. She was crying. For the first time I heard her crying.

I leaned my head backward to see her face, and the second call for my flight once again filled the hall.

“Megan? You’re crying,” I said, holding her shoulders tight in my bare hands. And suddenly there was a heavy feeling came into me. Because today the day I first saw her cry, and today the day I was going to leave her. When I said this, it sounded much like breaking up. But do friends break up? Friends don't break up, right? Do they?-

Just a second away, and the call for my flight echoed in the hall again.

“I guess it’s time,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said, giggled. Wiping away her tears with her thumb.

For one last time I looked at her long enough without a word, before took my pack on the seat and just about to walk away, when she called, “Hey.”

I turned. She walked over to me. There was a distance look in her eyes when she looked at me. Then she placed her fingers on my hand. “Remember you said you always end up being just a listener to a story, and not a part of it?” she asked me. And then she paused. Of course I remember.

“You’ll always got the play in my every story, Ian. You’ll always be a part of my story,” she said. It sounded so faith and so true that it made me grabbed her into my arms, and hold her close to me for a very long time. But I still had to go.

I still had to go, yes. When I walked to the gate to the plane, I thought I could look back at her for another one last time, but then, when I reached the gate, I don’t think I could. So I left without ever looking back at her again.

And when the pilot said through the speaker to prepare for departure, I looked through the small window beside me to the outside. It was not a rainy day; it was a very hot day today. I remember people say rain always comes in sad moments. But it was not for us. Luckily. Me and Megan.

My sight then landed to the runway outside, looking over to the airport behind at once, while the plane moved further and further ahead. It was funny how it all started here and ended up exactly at the same place. This place. This airport. This country.

Suddenly there was a chill inside me, made me quickly pulled my sight from the airport. Realizing that finally this story ended up this way. This is the story. And if I were the writer to this story, I might just go back to where it all started and start over. And there would be no me. No me at all, so I don’t need to feel the pain that I’ve been feeling right now. So I don’t have to miss Megan like I already did right now.

But I can’t change the story. Cos this is just how the story goes. The story of me and Megan.

Me, and Megan.


-THE END-




Written By ;

diabolique