An Unwarranted Surmise

Author's Note: I have an activity for you before you begin. If you have not read or did not complete 'Great Expectations,' please read the BEAUTIFUL Chapter 59 starting from the phrase about halfway through, "I secretly intended to revisit the site of the old house." Note themes of land reconstruction and old friendship. Please utilize all media as essential parts in the story's experience.

The soft daylight sways the white and pink hollyhocks reaching above the roof across my wide bedroom window. I pull my look together in my green dress, feeling as unnoticed as one of those flowers whether in the garden or a vase.

An observational awareness of societal disorder; that's what changed my demeanor into the skeptical mystery it is today. If the entire meaning of life were love, our world would be culpable of inordinate dysfunction.

Mediocre conversations rapidly deteriorate into suggestiveness I decline to participate in. Egocentric lovers tell me my outlook is an unwarranted surmise, and I tell them I disregard coaxing tactics in rushed reasoning and haphazard efforts.

My writings would have thrived in a screen-less world of limited sound waves; like the mid-19th century where Great Expectations takes place.

Like Dickens suggests, I had to let go of what once held preeminence in my mind. Old literature discloses the grievances of latter and former centuries. Those writers would understand how my limitless hopes proved to have stop signs.

I want to take a walk, and I know exactly where I want to go to shake the question of whether the last one I wanted has forgotten me.

The road is not as naturally gorgeous as I remember it in my childhood before the city's rapid development. As much as I try, I can't picture what the land used to look like as it disappears beneath cement.

Tones of beige structures used to preserve the nature color scheme which I formerly depreciated until prison-grey superiority overran the sky. The spacious fields preceding them distract me from the concrete jungle.

Shades of green blend with flowering yellow, purple, and orange wildflowers. The city would not care to preserve the scattered areas where the air is easier to breathe if it weren't for cosmetic business-enhancing purposes.

An unmistakable voice sings my name.

"Yes?" I stop and slowly share my gaze.

"I hoped I would see you again."

I modified my wishlist for him, for the sake of simplicity, but my idea of simplicity compared to his and all others has been an unsolvable equation. "Why must you hope instead of try?"

"I've been busy! Are you in a hurry? Can I walk with you?"

"I'm just walking to a place you never took me to. You're probably not going that way."

He runs up beside me as I keep walking. "You know the best places to get some peace and quiet. Is that what you're doing?"

We come upon a chain link fence blocking off an empty field, with a prominent sign reading Business Park at the bottom of the developer name. I stand still and he stops with me. "Always closing off the mountain views. I wonder how tall these ones will be. And all of this nature will be gutted, buried into the mud, and paved over. Sounds a lot like what you did to my heart."

"That's something a cliche heartbroken girl flaunting her independence would say."

I turned to the fence and took a couple of steps faster than him. "In some strange uncomfortable way, I'm happy."

"I think I stressed you out."

"Two stressed out people are like two fires together. Look at this" I point to the fenced off piece of desert in front of us, big enough to hold two football fields.

"An open piece of land standing free with those two trees, yet they always have that sign right there that says 'available,' like they want it gone as soon as possible."

"It's the hardest to look at when it's a work in progress."

"You love gentrification."

"It has its upsides for sure."

I feel my face turn to stone and can't help but cross my arms- a telltale sign of my mood he knows like the back of his hand. I anticipate his frustrated exit at any moment. "I'm still trying to figure out where I'm going in life. But why did you never think about me?" I hadn't planned on asking him that.

"I did think about you."

"I thought about you so much it was like a sickness." I didn't think I would say that.

"Um, let's keep the past memories" (he puts his hands in his pockets when he's nervous) "far in the past where they belong." He paused the walk. I pamused with him as we looked at each other with hesitant longing. "I loved talking to you." I didn't think he'd ever say that.

I stood in shock and awe. "I've been wanting to talk to you! I don't know how to anymore."

"We were like this great feeling of adrenaline that kept making me screw up. You weren't like everyone else. I can promise you that. None of those memories with us missed a place in my heart."

I sigh I'm hopelessness. "Everyone is inhibited by unoriginality, boringness, lack of creativity, and the only thing that kind of presence leaves me with is loneliness."

"And loneliness is just another word for disappointment!" he argues, "Like when you think you know where you're going and it's a dead end."

He quietly continues walking with me, seemingly both watching his steps and hanging his head in shame. "Is that what I am? A dead end? You told me that's what you were."

"You have always held your place in my heart."

I thought how I still enjoyed, against my will, gazing up at him. "So happy to have ridded yourself of my stories of woe, I'm sure. I'm ranting on and I'm somewhat embarrassed that I ever told you how I felt- at all."

"I just feel great in my own self, you know? It has nothing to do with you. I know great things will happen for you."

"I hate it when you say that." I didn't think I'd tell him that. I stayed quiet, because my next thought was disrespectful.

He slightly smiles at me as we traveled further away from the main streets in silence. Walk away, I thought.

He continued, "I'm thinking about how they say the word impossible has the same lettering as I'm- possible. It sounds cliché, doesn't it?"

"Terribly. Terribly cliché. I've seen it a million times. Why would you be thinking about that?"

"Dinosaurs don't exist on earth, but maybe they're still alive in a faraway undiscovered planet. I've read a lot of cool news about earth-like planets" he trails off. I could tell I had finally shot him down by the shift in his tone.

The rest of the conversation isn't important- it dissipated further and further into smalltalk until the hollyhocks back towards my house waved at us in the distance. We parted simply. I denied the familiar temptation to watch him walk away.

To my surprise, I received a message from him later on that night. A surge of uncertainty prevented me from answering.

So I left it unread.