When in High School

09 May,

Peter sat beside me, handed me a glass of water. I smiled and said thanks to him. I looked around this room, his room. His room was quite small, but it was enough for him. Only one cupboard, one bed we were sitting on, one nightstand, one desk. And I couldn't help but noticed a few pictures on the wall.

I stood up and looked at it. They were all his pictures.

"You sure had a lot of fans huh?" I teased him.

"Well, they can't resist this handsome human being," said Peter, he ran his fingers to his hair bragging himself.

I rolled my eyes. I noticed one thing in common that all of these pictures were taken when he was in college. I scanned one by one. Yeah, they were all his pictures when he was still in college. I turned around, didn't realize he already stood behind me.

"Oh my God! You startled me!" I said. "Since when were you there?"

He took one step closer to me, his perfume tickled my nose. My heart was still beating, and I knew this time was not because he startled me. "Since you stood up and take a look at those pictures so seriously. Admiring me as well?" now he teased me. He smirked.

I punched him lightly on his arms, "You wish."

"Ah come on, just admit it that you can't resist me," he said while he placed his fingers on my chin. I gulped nervously as he draws closer and closer. Then he stopped and laughed so hard. "You should see your face, all red like a tomato hahaha."

"Not funny you jerk!" I threw a pillow at him. He caught it, still laughing. "All of these were taken when you were still in college right?".

"Yep."

"I want to see the pictures when you were in high school. Do you have it?" I asked.

"You want to see it? Why?"

I shrugged my shoulder, "Nothing, I just want to see it. Maybe I will find a humiliating picture that I can use hehehehe.".

"I think I still have my yearbook, wait let me look for it." then he started searching in his room. Not long, he handed a dark blue yearbook. I opened it. Whoaa. He looks so... young and different. I guess it was life before papers and tons of assignments started coming in between.

I remember some of the stories he used to tell me back when he was still in high school. Well, long story short, he was a popular kid. All the girls screaming his name and secretly wanted to be by his side. He also on the soccer team, the team captain for a year. Yeah, popular.

Those pictures in the yearbook somehow transported me to when I was still in high school. Contrary to what he used to be, I was a major nerd. I was never one of those popular kids in high school, but I did make it to the school choir. But still, I was never popular as I was invisible to them popular kids. Sometimes they suddenly noticed me during exams.

Imagining if we were in the same high school, all of this would never happen.

If we were in the same high school, he would be too busy dating a series of girls and dumping them the next week, playing soccer and winning the regional championship. Basically, too busy being popular.

And me, I would be standing by the balcony staring (and probably dissing) while he was playing soccer and bragging himself to those girls on the second floor who kept on giggling every time he looked at them.

Then he would come to the third floor where I sat quietly on the floor and my nose in the book I just borrowed from the library. And he would just pass by, and I kept on reading.

And that's it.

That would be the only relationship we would've had if we were in the same high school. But he changed now. He's not the same person he was in high school, although old habits die hard.

I closed the book and handed it over to him, "You know what, I'm so grateful that we are not in the same high school." I said to him.

"Why?"

"Because if we were, you will be the last person I'd consider to be in a relationship with," I said to him, and he just shrugged his shoulders like he always did.

Little did we know, in a galaxy closely similar to ours, almost the same timeline, there was a girl who sat on the floor with her nose in her book. Then comes the boy, sweating from a soccer play he won against his senior.

He patted his forehead with a small towel on his shoulder when he noticed her. He knew she wouldn't take her eyes off of her book. He smiled a little when seeing two eyebrows almost kissed each other because God knows what she was reading. So he kept on walking but his smile hadn't left his face.

She heard a footstep. But like she always did, it never bothers her. So she kept on reading. The footstep passed her. She raised her head from her book and finding him. She can tell that he won based on the cheering that was still echoing. She smiled a little and back to her world.