Works for me! See you there!

Ved

Cloe read Veds first email one last time, before leaving for the park. Although she wouldn't admit it, she was nervous.. Some might say she was even scared. But again, Cloe would never agree to that term. She told herself that she was just a bit tens about meeting Ved. After all, it was Ved. You never knew what he had planned this time.

"Clo, you have 2 choices here! Either you go to the park, and listen to what Ved has to say.. Unprejudiced that is. Or you turn around right now, and you won't have to fear he's gonna pull a stunt on you." Ebonys voice came through the speakerphone.

"Okay okay, I'm going! Don't worry Ebby.. I won't go crazy on him. But I do have to go right now, since I'm at the park. Thanks for talking to me" Cloe said back.

"Yeah, I know.. I'm your knightress in shining armour. You can't live without me!" Ebony made a kissing sound before hanging up.

Cloe walked over to the bench next to the entrance. She sat down, and she realised that they had never agreed to where in the park they were going to meet. She thought about calling David to ask for Veds number, but in the time she was thinking that option over, Ved came walking towards her.

"Some things never change, do they? We still meet on this bench, like we did when we were 12 years old." He said, while sitting down.

"Yeah, those were the days.. Weren't they? Life seemed so easy back then." Cloe responded. She could see Ved tense up, the second she finished the sentence. "But I guess it wasn't that easy for you, right? That's what I understood from the conversation I wasn't supposed to hear." She continued hastily.

Ved sighed noticeably, before answering.

"You are right about that. Probably more right than you wanna be. And that's why we're here, right? To hear my story.." He stopped for a second, tapping his fingers on his legs.

"I guess there isn't an easy or good way to start the story, ironically. I say ironically, because that's the was my life was, I guess. Once again, I think it's best to start at the beginning. When I was born, Jay was already 6 years old. My parents only did two things, spoil him or fight with each other. Getting me was basically their last hope on fixing the marriage. Well, no need in telling you that it didn't work. Stuff like that never works. But where Jay's first memories are about them yelling at each other, my first memories are about my mother walking out of the front door. I guess they came to the conclusion that if they never saw one another, they couldn't fight either. Of course they couldn't get a divorce.. If the Daimers, the jet-set couple of the year, got a divorce.. That would basically mean the end of the world, at least for the socialites. So, they lived their life separately. But, as you might have figured already, it didn't go like that for long. I wish it had, but it didn't.

One day, my dad had been drinking with some people from work. He came home, not even really hammered, but still drunk. I don't know how, but he figured that it was my fault that their marriage had failed. After all, I was supposed to fix it, as a baby. So he started shouting at me, about how it was my fault. He called me a failure at first, but soon he decided that I must have done it on purpose. He started about how I must have thought it was great that my parents hated each other. This way I didn't have to fight for the attention of my mother. Because I was such a mama's boy.. Which of course wasn't true, I never saw my mother. She was always out having lunch with friends or shopping. But my father didn't care about those things. It was all my fault, and I knew it according to him. He went to bed shortly after that, and I thought it was all over. But unfortunately incidents like this happened more and more after that night. And where it had started with just shouting, he took on hitting me a couple of weeks later. He claimed he would beat that meanness out of me, so that I would stop screwing with his marriage.

Soon he just hit me every day, sometimes with a "reason", like if my mom hadn't shown up that entire day, other days he would just hit me. I was 4 at that time, did I tell that? I was freaking 4 years old.. Nothing more than a toddler. I didn't even understand half of what he was blaming me for. But what I did get, and I remember this clearly, is that he blamed me. I remember thinking "Well, if daddy thinks I'm mean and it's my fault, it probably is." My dad was still my hero, like with every 4 year-old, even if he hit me.. He1l, I even thought it was normal, I didn't know any other kids. So I didn't know other kids weren't beaten, if they did something wrong. Since my mom was never there to take me to playdates and stuff, and no one had thought about signing me up for pre-school or kindergarten, I never saw any other kids then Jay. And it was Jay who, without knowing it, got me to kindergarten. He told his 6th grade teacher that he had a little brother, who was 6 years old. And when this teacher asked him to which school his little brother went, Jay just went blank. Miss Taylor, the teacher, drew her own conclusions, and signed me up for kindergarten. And that's where I met you, Cloe… Remember my first day?" Ved looked at Cloe, waiting for a responds. Cloe just nodded, shocked about what Ved had just told her. "You know what, I'm thirsty.. Wanna go get something to drink, before I continue? Cause I'm afraid that the story isn't finished yet." Again, Cloe just nodded and walked after Ved to the café.