“I am fighting with the disembodied voice of an omniscient and self-aware narrator that is obsessed with me finding ‘true love’. That’s what I’m doing, ok?!”

This was all true. I was, or rather, I AM narrating Alex’s life, and I do want him to find true love. However, his dramatic outbursts (often directed at me) tend to sidetrack this narrative.

“Oh, do shut up?! Is it not enough that you’re making me look insane already? You have to insult me as well?!” he shouts. Proving my point.

“Um, so… did he say something rude?” it had come out sarcastic. Eva hadn’t meant for it to sound sarcastic, but considering the situation, it was already very kind of her to stay so together.

It all started with…

“Oh no. No, no, no, no. We are not explaining the situation. I know the situation! I am living the situation. You started badgering me about how I keep wasting my time here in the theater, when the semester hasn’t even started, and that I am just a lonely fella who refuses to find true love or whatever, even if I have a know-it-all voice that could lead me to it. Eva came to see me, and I was mad at you, and now she is seeing me yell into the air and I will probably lose another friend because they’ll think I suffer from schizophrenia or something”, he takes a pause to breath. And to glare. He is always glaring at me, even if I’m nowhere… and everywhere. “Ugh, just shut up already.” But he had summed it up.

Eva remained composed, much to his surprise. Most people run the other way when they see someone yelling willy-nilly; but she was not most people. It was exactly because she was not most people that Alex had let his guard down, and also why he had told her everything. He still hoped someone would believe him, that someone would stay despite the rant and accept the simple fact that I did, in fact, exist.

“So, if he goes into a description… you can hear it?”

She was taking this in stride. Or was she just playing along?

“Yes”, Alex grunts. Still glaring, forever glaring. “He just prattled about how composed you are and..." He had to stop. It is one thing for a narrator to be honest about your emotions and everyone else’s, bare them to you with an honesty so disarming it constantly left you breathless. But it was even worse for oneself to express those emotions, to let them free into reality.

“And?” Eva still seemed serene. Why was she so calm?

“...and that I hope you believe me.” 

“Oh”

The silence extended itself. Alex hates it as much as he hates me. He longs for silence more than most (who wouldn’t when you have a voice, besides your own, that loudly followed your every move?), but he had grown so used to me, that he forgot how to find the silence of others comforting. And it did not help that this particular silence came right after he had gone, well... bonkers? No comfort there I’m afraid.

They stare. Alex sighs. Alex sits. And he thinks that was another lost ca…

“Do shut up,” he lets out as a quiet growl. The kind of sound that signals tiredness and defeat. Alex was so consumed in his self-pity that he doesn't even notice Eva sitting right next to him.

“I might be crazy, Alex. But I believe you.”

“What?”

“You heard me: I believe you”

“You heard her?!” I did. And in all honesty: she did.