His Second Chance (Love Comes To Town)

Of course.

It’s our song.

Past, present, future, you are

Whenever I’m far

Chapter 11

Wynona

Sleep’s supposed to bring you clarity, or rest at the very least.

But I feel as unclear as I did yesterday, and even more tired.

Then again, at least I’m in a rainforest.

I take a slow inhale then exhale as I eye my surroundings.

Everywhere I look, there’s another lush green, glistening gorgeous specimen of nature that you definitely wouldn’t find back in NYC, let alone the USA. What gets me is the sheer number of them, these plants. Each tree branch seems to hold a mini-forest of its own, monsteras, orchids, and other plants I don’t know the names of all coating its mossy surface together.

They’re even taking over the one bench I’ve come across, although that doesn’t stop me from sitting down on it.

Because, let’s face it, as much as I’m loving the hotel’s free excursion to the nearby rainforest, I’m not here for the view.

I’m here to think.

I managed to avoid Emerson this morning—unless he was avoiding me. At any rate, I can’t just avoid and refuse to speak to him indefinitely.

Last night already seemed... unfair enough as it is. Emerson had a point. Why jump to conclusions, and the worst ones at that?

And wasn’t it childish, talking to him through the door like that, point-blank refusing to hear him out?

Maybe. Probably.

The thing is, I wasn’t in any state to hear him out, harmless truth or not.

Eyes already streaming, nose already kill-me-now red, he’d have thought I was a complete wreck.

So... better for him to think I’m a spaz instead?

I sigh.

Normally, I’d just hit up Josie and get her take, except this time, I both know it and don’t want it.

Yes, I acted like a silly child. Yes, I should just go and talk to him. And... yes, I should do that right now.

Instead of hiding away in this dewy rainforest like the next course of action to take is this big mystery.

As if I haven’t been jumping at every other thing Emerson’s done, sure that it proved my worst-case-scenario mind right.

I change the cross of my legs, shooing away a bug that looks like a mosquito. I knew I should’ve worn bug spray...

My mind wanders back to an argument Josie and I had a few months back...

“Sorry for being a realist,” I grumbled in reply.

Josie threw her head back and laughed. “Realist?”

“Yeah,” I snapped. “I don’t have my head up in the clouds, always expecting things to ‘turn out for the best’ and waiting for ‘everything to work out’. I go by facts, by likelihoods.”

Josie just looked at me like I couldn’t possibly understand. “You just rename your pessimism ‘realism’ and then go from there.”

“No,” I said without pausing to even think about it. Although when I pause to think about it now, my “no” was a bit shaky.

“Yes,” she said. “Reality is subjective. Confirmation bias is real. Why not believe in the best possible scenario?”

“Because it’s delusional,” I found myself saying. “Because it’s a fast road to disappointment, to disillusionment. Then you won’t be prepared.”

Josie just quirked an eyebrow. She didn’t have to say a word. I knew what that eyebrow was saying. Do I look like someone who’s disillusioned, disappointed, and unprepared?

“Look,” I said, measuring my tone. “The whole world is like me. We’ve run the numbers, looked at the facts. The planet is screwed, we’re all screwed, and the average person is a selfish piece of shit who only cares about one-upping their peers. What’s the point in moseying along like a brainless blind idiot pretending otherwise?”

Suddenly, Josie shot me one of those rare lucid looks of hers that seem to cut straight to things. “Problems aren’t solved on the level of thinking they were created.”

I rolled my eyes. “Thanks, Socrates.”

“You can thank Einstein,” she says. “Although it’s some logic that I’d think you, of all people, would appreciate. In what state do you think the average person or society is in a better position to handle its problems, a terrified, negative, fearful one or a positive, go-getter one?”

I could feel her points tugging at me like a thrusting branch as I’m striding by.

“We’re talking about positive, delusional people who don’t accept facts,” I snapped.

“No,” Josie said, looking at me with a compassion that annoyed me even more. “We’re talking about you, Wyn. About how you use your ‘logic’ and ‘realism’ argument to justify being a downer twenty-four, seven.” She shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me. As you say, I’m delusional anyway. But it must not be fun for you.”

I shrugged. “It’s probably not fun for most of us. But we’re here and we’re making the best of it. I guess that’s what you do when it’s the end of the world.”

Josie’s face went hard, her eyes far-off, sad and happy and alight. “No, when it’s the end of the world, you fight it till the end, then, when there’s no more denying it, you dance and smile a little, thankful that you were one of the lucky ones who got to be there at the last.”