The Day I Found Destiny

The Day I Found Destiny

 

   "Cut me some slack here, grandson! Literally."

 

     I grabbed a pair of scissors in the drawers and ran down the stairs to see my grandfather only in his underwear, holding a pair of pants. "Oh come on, Grandpa! Would you even mind?" I said, peering away from the sight.

 

     "Oh, am I on my underwear?" Damn, my grandfather has the most severe case of Alzheimer's. Sometimes, I even wonder why he still recognizes me so much as he knows my name.

 

     Before he tells me stories about my grandmother who had seen him only in an underwear for a dozen of times, I decided to cut him off, almost literally. "What do you want me to cut?"

 

     He blinked for a few times like he had left his unknown world. "Right. But that isn't why I made you come down here." He put on his pants again, wore his favourite shirt which, I have to say, was given by my grandma, and sat down on one of the chairs by the dining table. Thank god, he's not naked anymore. He nodded me to get a chair and I sat before him.

 

     "Remember the time I told you to visit the book store on Avenue A and you told me about that girl you were looking for the moment you got home?" Wow, he still remembers that? That was five months ago. Does he even have Alzheimer's? I want to laugh at the logic but his face says he's being serious. Maybe I'll save that laugh later.

 

     "Yeah. What about it?"

 

     "Since it's past Christmas and I haven't given you a gift yet, here." he then handed me a hundred dollar bill. "Spend this with more books and find that girl who you always compliment for her hair." And eyes. "And you better not leave a change."

 

     "Grandpa," I sighed, "I have told you a million times now, she's impossible to find. I've only seen her once."

 

     Instead of answering back a retort, he asked, "Do you believe in fate?"

 

     Oh, here we go again.

 

     "Your grandmother and I met in a subway station-"

 

     "Okay, okay. I do believe in fate."

 

     "Well then, you should get your butt off that chair and look for her."

 

     I headed out of our apartment and to the store on Avenue A. The Leaf Reads. Ever since the day when Grandpa introduced me this, I started to make stopovers from time to time when I would walk home from school, either to find who that girl is, or to look for a book that can be useful of reading. Sometimes I can even catch a bargain for every three weeks. Although, one time I bought this book called Purest of the Soft and I found out my grandfather used the pages to wipe his butt and flushed them in the toilet. Good thing it was only ten dollars.

 

     I've read nearly fifty dozens of the pocket books here in Leaf Reads. That is why I didn't know what book I can get now, seeing that I'm already fed up with them. Maybe I can try a different store next time.

 

     My eyes settled on a sign above a dainty, redwood bookshelf lying on the farthest side of the shop. Romance, the sign says. If you have to judge me, I guess you can say I never changed. Never did I ever, liked love stories. It left me. She left me.

 

     Scanning through the books of Rachel Cohn and David Levithan, I thought I saw a familiar pair of shoes, or if I had estimated, boots worn by a denim-natured girl standing beside me. I glanced at her and she has her back in front of me, so I couldn't see her face. Her hair was pinned up, and from the distance, I can see the temple of her black, rim glasses like one of those typical teenagers who strolls around a book store much the same of their own playground.

 

     She was rummaging through the rack of Nicholas Sparks' best selling novels with difficulty, so exhaustingly that I can imagine a look of anxiety on her face. I may have as well check my imagination later.

 

     I can't stop myself but feel the desire to help her, since looking for the girl is an impossiblity and I have nothing left to do. I presume I have to let fate decide for me.

 

     "Hey, what are you looking for?" Question is, what am I looking for? Oh, the irony.

 

     "What?" she turned to me and I finally saw what she looks like. She was oddly familiar, one way or another. She spoke again but now with softness in her tone, and was actually quite relieved, "Oh, just looking for a good book."

 

     "I wonder why a girl like you would go through a stack of love stories. Would you rather be in the Adventure section?"

 

     "I'm simply fixing a heart that a guy had broken. It works more efficiently when I read. Kinda makes up everything." she smiled, and yet again, it was intimate, seemingly calling the back of my mind for a particular remembrance. I just, couldn't put my fingers on it. 

 

     "Sorry about that." I apologized, for something I didn't even do wrong. "It's fine." she said, almost whispering it as she picked up The Great Escape by Susan Phillips. "You don't need to say sorry. " she beamed at me for another time, and she never lose the grin, looking like one of those people who only understand their own selves when reading a book, but she was only gazing at the cover, letting her mind wonder off on their own. 

 

     She eventually turned back to me and smiled as she sorted the book back to its original place, averting her eyes away for a quick second. She took off her glasses and enduringly said, "By the way, my name's Destiny." 

 

     Fate decided for me. I can't believe it did.

 

     At the moment she removed her spectacles, my brain functioned splendidly for the first time after the after seventeen years of my existence. I knitted my eyebrows in confusion if what was happening is real. I smiled to myself when I realized, it is. Those same blue, oceanic eyes. That smile that can send a hundred of photographers prying for her. And most especially, the only detail I can surely remember - her chocolate hair that can be mistaken as a spread of nutella. 

     After five months of waiting - actually suffering for thinking all about her - she's finally here, standing before me. If I can do a manly happy dance, I would. But it would make her feel awkward that something might have hit me in the head and she would look at me like I've grown three heads, unless she never forgot me, too. And so I simply smiled. A sly one to be exact.

 

     I know she wasn't going to understand my devious grin.

 

     She squinted her eyes at me and she briefly surveyed the book store to look for any clue if she ever knows me. And as if on cue, she did. She did remember me. Her face was lighten up by a swift realization as she grinned more than she ever did a few minutes ago, laughing like she understood it better than me. Oh that laugh, like it was only a few months back when we first met. I'm sure that somewhere inside her mind, she was somewhat asking herself, Is that Mr. New Guy? 

 

     She could not speak. She was comparatively speechless. And I, myself, was more than that. We both didn't have any idea that there's still a chance for us to see each other again. There was never a day that I did wonder if she can go back, only in a few minutes. But those few minutes would wipe away any thought of her without a hitch. And it comes back whenever it pleases. 

 

     "So, you're name is Destiny."

 

     Even from the fact that I hate reading romance, I love the manner of being in it. Of having your own love story, where everything is under your control and fate will just guide you. I never knew Destiny was my fate. I never knew she would come back. I never knew she would be mine and I would be hers. I never knew she would wear the ring that I gave her. I never knew she would walk down the aisle in a white dress. I never knew she would give me a family. And I never knew she would love me as much as the way I love her. 

 

     But, from that day forward, I knew that I will have the greatest of all adventures with her, far from the stories that I have read. I knew, she is my right kind of book.

Reviews

[Zachary_James]

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[Cynthia Green]

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C.G.