Chameleon Heart

"Where are you?" I hurriedly typed the letters on my mobile phone before I hit the send button.

I looked up in search of a familiar face but there was none. Actually, there was really not much to see thanks to the heavy rain that mystified everything in front of me.

Everything around me was so dark now for evening has descended on top of this crazy downpour. Everything has just become so gloomy and blurry now like my future with him.

I closed my eyes and pushed back the tears. I have prepared for this moment--dyed my hair red, put on mesmerizing makeup, and wore my best sultry dress. But rushing to get to here--a fastfood resto in our neighborhood mall--got me all drenched in the rain and I now have doubts I am anywhere near attractive. I musn't let the tears fall.

It's been months since he ceased communicating with me. After all that we've been through together, he just suddenly cut me off and disappeared. I almost died when he did. Well, until two days ago when he suddenly texted me and all my hopes on him and me were revived.

Yes, I have wanted this moment to be perfect. But it's really not the broken expectations of how I would look before him again that's making my tears well up. It's the utter sense of abandonment I felt in the past months that's creeping up again because of what's happening now like the red orange orbs that would pop up once in a while on the street before me to signify a car has stopped by in sync with the red traffic light.

I did arrive here a quarter to five in the afternoon, our agreed upon time for our "date". Well, I would like to call it a date, after all we did agree to meet in this favorite resto of ours and I was looking forward to our normal dinners together. But an hour and a half later he texted me that he'll just meet me by the entrance of the mall. I didn't get any response to my asking why there. I actually don't get much response from him at all.

So I have been standing here atop the stairs from the street leading to the mall's main entrance for thirty minutes already. A lot of people have come past me, coming in and out of the mall, yet he was still nowhere in sight.

I was already shivering. My clothes have already gone dry except for my long hair from being drenched earlier. And a terrible heaviness resided now in my heart. It made my stomach flip that I just have to close my eyes. I could not contain the tears any longer.

"Sam," A man's familiar voice called out my name. I bowed down and quickly wiped my eyes before I opened them and looked up.

"Sam," an average set man in a red and white striped polo shirt called again as he came up the three-flight steps. He brushed his short, thinning hair off his high forehead with his right hand, revealing clearly the lines that have formed under his eyes.

He lost the chubbyness of his face and all the glow it used to greet me with. No it was not the sudden weight loss that changed remarkably with him. It was the new stern-look he sported that told me things aren't going well on his side of the fence either. Seeing him like this pinched my heart, wiping the anger I held against him for what he did.

"Martin--" I gasped, suddenly restraining the urge to embrace him as he came closer. There was something in the way that he stood in front of me that hindered what I actually wanted to do.

"Apologies for arriving only now," he said matter-or-factly, his face flat of any expression like his tone. "There was something important that I needed to attend to."

"Understood," was the only thing I got to utter. There was just something in the air but I couldn't pin it down. All I know is that the butterflies in my stomach have started fluttering their wings again.

"Why--why don't we get inside and have dinner already?" I finally got to say.

"Look, I'm really sorry. I had to cut you off these past months," he rebutted, ignoring what I suggested. Then he confirmed what I read of him,

"My life is really in chaos now."

"Anyway, I just wanted to see you for this," he continued as he slightly lifted a medium, black recyclable bag for emphasis. Then he handed it to me.

I could hear my heart pounce against my chest as I took the bag from his hands. Being an open bag, my eyes easily got a glimpse of what's inside. Seeing it made my legs tremble. It seemed an invisible sword was thrust against my chest the moment the bag's contents registered in my brain.

In it were the presents I have given him the past year we've been going out as an unlabeled couple--he didn't want any labels. He said it didn't matter, what actually does is that we know we love each other.

I looked up at him, my stubborn self refused to digest what was happening.

"Goodbye, Sam. I have to go," Martin quipped. It seemed he rehearsed saying that several times by himself that the moment he actually did his lines, he turned around and walked away.

A sharp pain struck my heart. It seemed the invisible sword was thrust deeper into me, cutting through my soul. The pain throbbed in my chest, making it difficult to breathe. Too painful, I can't speak. I can't even move. I just stood there as Martin moved farther and farther away from me, my eyes soaked in tears, before he finally disappeared into the stormy night.