"Ummmm...hey, Lan!" a familar voice called out.
I blinked. did Rishi just call me by my real name? Normally, she'd just call me 'Grandpa'.
I didn't have time to contemplate on that, because the little sophmore I had come to know suddenly glomped me. I quickly jabbed her in the side, and she let go of me. Rishi plopped down on the seat next to me. "Morning!" she chirped, even though it was time to leave school, and I was on the bus to go home.
I sighed. "Good afternoon." I replied, moving my backpack away from Rishi. I didn't want her to go searching through it for applesauce, which I just happened to have in my bag. The last time she ate applesauce, she was hyper for a week.
Rishi grinned at me. "Whaaat?" she whined, holding her stuffed cow, Steve, to her chin and blinking at me cutely. I swear, if she did that puppy pout, I would be useless to resist. Rishi always found some way to get what she wanted.
"Walk me home, kay?" she said, batting her eyelashes.
"Sure." I replied without a bat of my eyes. Rishi lived two streets away from me, so either her neighbor Tere or I would walk her home--it was normal. We didn't want out cute little 'innocent child' to be tainted just yet...which, living near three perverted high schoolers, was very likely if she didn't have a companion. Plus, if I said no, she would probably cry.
The bus ride was fairly normal, as Rishi chatted away with a freshman whose name I could never remember. Something, I noted, was weird. She was still calling me by my real name--Lan. She never called me by my real name--when we first met, she decided that she would call me 'Grandpa' and that was that.
"Oooy, Lan! Let's get off here." Rishi called, tugging my hair. It was a stop before mine--three streets from my house--but I stood up with her. She still had a grip on my hair. I picked up my bag and followed her off the bus.
Rishi and I were the only ones to get off at this stop. Well, her freshman friend did, but she went in the opposite direction. The yellow bus pulled away in a cloud of smoke.
"Hey, Lan," Rishi started, calling me by my real name again. "I wanted to tell you something."
I glanced over at Rishi. She had put Steve away. She was looking at the ground, her brown locks bouncing with each step she took. Her mouth had gone from a grin to a thoughtful expression. She bit her lip.
"I really like you, Lan."
I stopped shrot, looking back at Rishi. She was maybe a foot behind me.
Rishi looked up at me. "For a long time."
So that was why she was calling me by my real name.
Rishi started walking again, quickly catching up to and passing me. "If you want me to change, okay, I can do that. If you want to reject me, that's fine too, go ahead and reject me, and I can keep calling you 'grandpa' and we can forget this ever happened. What I want is a definite answer. Yes or no will do."
I was, to say, speechless.
"Well?" Rishi demanded. "What's your answer?"
"It's not that...I don't." I said, carefully choosing my words. I didn't want Rishi to get angry--that was the last thing I wanted. "I just don't want to get into a relationship right now."
"That's not a direct answer." Rishi cut in. "Damn it, Lan, you're so frickin' wishy-washy!"
We had reached Rishi's house. Rishi stood there for a moment, lingering. "Only a fool makes the same mistake twice." she said, her eyes averting mine. She turned towards her house. "Fool."
With that, she walked away.
Rishi never called me by my real name again.
Tell Me Something I Don't Know.
A/N: Dedicated to SomeGuy, to prove to him that I'm still writing.
“You’re in love with Gabbi, aren't you, Grandpa?”
I turned to my younger friend, Rishi, a girl about fourteen or so, with bouncy brown hair and blue eyes that normally sparkled with excitement. Rishi was kneeling down on the sidewalk, her finger tracing the concrete ground as if she was deep in thought.
“Aren’t you?”
Rishi’s simple, yet quite blunt, words took me by surprise. Normally, Rishi was so cheerful and happy, but her eyes told me something was bothering her, and she was upset...did it have to do with me?
“Well? Answer me, damn it.”
“...I am in love with her. How did you know? I mean...is it that obvious?” I replied. I could feel my face turn a bit pink at admitting something so personal.
“Not really.” Rishi said. “Guess you could call it instinct or woman's intuition or something.” Rishi shrugged, her back turned to me. “You’re in love with her, but she doesn’t know. That kind of sucks, Grandpa.”
Honestly, I wish she would stop calling me by that nickname she gave to me when we met. So what if I was two years older than her? She didn’t have to make me feel old.
“What’s your point with all this?” I asked carefully, trying not to get her angry. I had never seen Rishi angry--and frankly, I didn’t want to know what it was like. If she was anything like Gabbi, which she was, then all Hell would break loose for me if she got upset.
Rishi looked up at me, almost glaring. I recoiled. Defiantly like Gabbi, I thought.
“You’re so stupid, Grandpa.” She muttered, returning to her former activity of tracing the sidewalk. “You don’t have any guts to tell the girl you’re in love with your feelings. Sure, Gabbi can be scary sometimes--I've experienced her wrath a lot--but so what? Why are you so scared?”
“Are you reading my mind?” I asked her, pushing my sandy brown hair out of my eyes.
“No. It’s just written all over your face.” Rishi said bluntly. “It’s so stupid, grandpa!” She faced me as if we were about to fight a major Street Fighter battle. Her fists clenched. “Why can’t you tell her? Because you’re afraid?! You coward!” Rishi yelled, pointing an accusing finger at me. “It doesn’t matter, cuz you—-she could be in love with you, too...!” Rishi's voice turned desperate.
Realizing her tears, Rishi quickly turned away, wiping her eyes. I had never seen Rishi act like this before—-she was always so cheerful and carefree-—but it was like something was eating away at her at that moment, something important to her...
“I’m waiting for the right time.” I said, shaken. “I’m waiting for the right time to tell her.”
Rishi pouted, tears brimming in her blue eyes. “There’s never a ‘right time’, dummy. You can’t wait for a perfect opportunity...your problems aren’t just going to ‘go away’ if you wait. You have to carve your happiness with your own two hands! If you wait on your ass your entire life, all you’ll end up with is regrets...you’ll really be able to be a grandpa by the time you realize that, at the rate you’re going.” Rishi folded her arms, looking at the horizon. “Don’t do something stupid like that.”
“You enjoy saying the word stupid, don’t you?”
“Damn straight.” Rishi shot back. “It’s the truth, you know. You are being pretty stupid.”
I sighed. “You’re not like a lot of people, Rishi.” I finally said, smiling.
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
“I mean...You don’t hide behind words like a lot of other people do you speak the truth...people our age aren't the types of people to do that.”
“You’re two years older than me, Grandpa.” Rishi said, cutting me off from my monologue. “You’re hardly ‘my age’.”
“Guess that’s true.” I laughed. “But still...you’re different. Unique, if you will.”
Rishi grinned at me, the grin I had come to know so well. “Again, tell me something I don’t know.”
--
