Okay, this is the third chapter. Some of you asked for me to continue this as a multichapter and I was thinking about it. Hard and long. Somehow this story makes my insides mumble and it seems as if I can't stop my fingers from writing down those words I hear my mind saying.

So, I decided to maybe do more than three chapters, but please be patient because I don't want to start yet another story without finishing at least one of my others. I marked this 'complete', but when the time feels right, I'm going to scribble down some more of this.

Thank you very much for sending me your thoughts and feelings, wow! Really, so damn awesome. It's such a great thing for me to hear, that you feel and see the same things when reading like I do while writing them. Maybe that means something like I'm doing it right somehow.

And I listened to 'Mad World by REM' because one of you mentioned that song being in their head while reading the last parts. Great song and it created just the right mood and sadness I needed to come up with this.

So I really hope I didn't fuck that up. It just felt so right typing those words.

A special THANK YOU SO MUCH to EmCelle. You are unbelievably wonderful! Don't you ever change!

Okay, enough now.

Lauren's POV

They say, you always meet twice. Maybe that is true. Maybe not. But if it is, maybe next time could be too late.

Funny how life turns out sometimes.

One moment you find yourself head up high in the fluffy clouds bathing in their warmth, wrapped up in cotton wool and one heartbeat later you are back down on Mother Earth. Standing with both your feet on the hard ground, feeling the weight of your body ten times heavier on your shoulders when reality suits itself on your back waving its shabby, grabby hands in the air, hollering for you to face the ugly truth of the moment.

I had to get out. I didn't know what else to do. I was overwhelmed. I chickened out. I- I did what I always do. Run.

Her eyes on me, her body mere inches away, her perfume inhaled with my every breath.

I freaked out. It was too much to stand. She made me look at her in a way I shouldn't look at anyone I barely know or wasn't even able to say a simple 'Hi' to. She leaves my mind swirling around and my body aching to be touched.

It isn't normal. I don't feel normal.

Finally, when I have found my voice, the only words my lips pushed out didn't compare to those in my head.

I wanted to say, 'Hi, I'm Lauren.' So badly. I wanted to hear her voice. I wanted so much that second that it was just too hard to sort out and formulate.

I am used to that start-speaking-without-thinking stuff. One possible cause of why I don't do conversations with strangers often, let alone talk to them in the first place. Most of the times I start rumbling my mind out and I don't stop until my counterpart literally runs off.

Normally I ride the bus up to terminus. The park is just a short walk down the main road. Now it'll take about twice the time. But that's not why I feel the tight knot in my throat and the heavy weight on my chest.

I step outside the vehicle and almost race to the next corner. My breath comes out in small puffs and I lean against the wall of a small bakery.

Whatever that was, I wanted it back the second I heard the door closing behind me. How could seven minutes change someone's sight of things in their life? Seven minutes. That's how long the bus needs from one station to the next.

My body is swamped with all kinds of feelings as my brain tries desperately to sort and catalog these emotions. The logical part inside of me screams for the hubbub to calm down, but fails and instead an even greater brouhaha inflames.

I clasp my book and notepad free hand to my bosom. Its pounding feels like sharp needles against my skin. Holding my blouse in my still sweaty fist. Forcing myself to stop the freak out, I lean forward. My eyes shut tightly. Pictures like movies flying wildly in front of me.

Flashes of her.

Surrounded by images of her cheekbones, her lips, her silk blouse, her hands. How could a stranger pull all of those strings inside of me? I have seen dozens of beautiful women in my life. Women I could have imagined to have some kind of connection with. A more physical one. But this one? This stranger? She has a hold on me and I can't do anything about it right now.

When I see her eyes staring back at me in my mind's eye, I sigh.

"Fuck!"

"What was that?"

I shoot my head up. A short grown old lady passing me by with an even older shock-headed golden retriever on a Zip Lead dawdling behind.

"Nothing, s- sorry."

She shakes her head and mumbles something about manners and parenting. I let it go. My head still overflowing with emotions and doing a hard job to locate all those definitions buried somewhere deep inside this massive chaos.

I roll my eyes up to the midday sky. Blue and white smiling back at me. Birds sitting on a branch of a chestnut tree on the other side of the street, singing the song of summer and I force a smile. This day has started really well, just to slap its smelly feet right into my face.

I start walking again. Shaking my head, I laugh sadly. What-ifs filling my mind.

What if I had found the courage to introduce myself?

What if she had returned my greeting and what if she had told me her name, too?

What if I hadn't run away?

What if... what if... what if.

What-ifs suck, because I know they won't leave me alone for the rest of the day and maybe the night, too. I overthink, reanalyze and tear all those possibilities apart to get to the same answer I have known from the start.

What if, but you didn't and she hadn't. Fact!

I am a sucker for facts. Clear, straightforward, outright.

"I hate it, Lauren. Sometimes I can't stand you. Why can't you just- just shut up!"

The first weeks my sister and I fought like cat and dog. I wanted a schedule, she didn't. I wanted the science channel, she didn't. I wanted privacy, she invited all her friends. Friends, I neither knew nor intended to get to know. Like I said, I'm more of a loner, a maverick.

Yes, being all rational and a reasoner brings all those pretty little fun games with it.

'Great,' I whisper under my breath, I have a hard time to catch.

I can fill weeks in doing nothing but staying inside my head coming out with only one result and in ninety nine percent of the cases I've known the answer from the first moment I fell into my brainy nerd herd of thoughts. The other one percent I couldn't remember what answers I've been chasing after.

Slowly I push myself off of the wall. 'The show must go on, Lauren.' It says so in the movies my sister used to watch when she had won the fight for the remote.

I cross the street to walk underneath some oak trees. As a kid I watched my brother climb the stamps all the way up to the crown. My heart pumped wildly with every foot step slipping and hand grasping at nothing.

I remember one day, when his guardian angle must have forgotten to watch over him when he crashed down on the with autumn leaf covered ground, right on his back. He couldn't breathe. His eyes filled with unshed tears and fear showed all over his face.

I remember hovering over him. Soothing words rushing out way too fast to calm neither him nor myself down. The color of his skin changed into something purple. Something terrifying. Something deadly.

And I remember how scared I had been to loose him that day.

I am his big sister. I was supposed to look out for him, to make sure he was safe and sound.

We were holding hands and his eyes shuttered closed. I screamed for him to stop fooling around, to open his eyes, to start breathing again. Seconds had grown into minutes and the tension had gotten beyond endurance.

"Please, Tom. Open your eyes. God, no. Please... please."

I cradled his small body in my arms, crying. I couldn't loose him. We had only just met. He was five and I not older than nine. My love for him was sheer endless and beyond anything I had experienced before. He made me feel special. When he looked at me with those shiny, warm eyes. As if I was some kind of superhero. Fighting against those monsters in his closet and under his bed. Telling bedtime stories of worlds we both built up in our heads until our eyes grew too heavy to keep them open for any longer.

To him, I was the one, not someone.

I remember me begging form him to wake up again. Holding him closer to my chest. Wanting my heart to beat stronger for him and my lungs to fill up with enough needed air for the both of us to breathe.

I remember the moment when his tiny form stirred in my tight embrace and I remember him saying my name with his weak voice. I felt even more protective over him after that day.

Shaking my head yet again.

Where do all those sad memories come from?

When I stepped outside of my apartment door and on the much-used street I was feeling fine, great actually. For the first time after a long time I could breathe in deeply. The night before I had promised myself to work harder on my insecurities and my anxieties. I wanted to be better. I needed that for myself.

I'm on my own, but I'm okay with being just me. The only thing I can think about is my scholastic. To finish Uni and get my life into the direction I longed for for so long and worked so hard for.

Yesterday night, right before I closed my eyes, I promised that to myself. I promised to start living the life that I'd choose.

And now? After that short bus ride? All my well organized thoughts and emotions and plans went out the window when I laid my eyes on that beautiful stranger. And all of a sudden I'm not that sure about the choices I have made for my life. As if there should be more than what I have formed and painted in my head.

As I walk my eyes fall upon a couple sitting on a bench framed by two trees. He's smiling and she's sitting on his lap laughing and I just try to hurry past. Watching the two of them exchanging loving gazes and light touches just triggers the darker memories I tried to hold back for today.

'You've been there, Lauren. And where did that lead you to?'

All of my relationships have been awkward. It just didn't feel the way I thought it should, or better said I was told it should feel like.

John, my first boyfriend when I was sixteen, tried too hard and constricted me. Wanting more of what I wasn't ready to give to him thus far. At some point I couldn't breathe anymore.

"Come on Lauren, everybody does. Just relax."

When his hands started roaming under my shirt, I ran away and never looked back.

When Sarah happened, I was eighteen. Somehow I knew that I was different. When all the girls in my classes giggled and whispered while watching the boys playing basketball, I was sitting at the sideline but my eyes were on the cheerleaders not the players.

We dated in secrecy. No one ever found out and no one would. She broke up with me. Telling me I wasn't capable of loving and too afraid to explore my sexuality further.

"I don't want a girlfriend, who is too scared to even hold my hand in public."

I agreed. What else was there I could have said or done to budge her for giving me the time I needed to figure myself out? My family wasn't aware of my inner tumult. I was careful to hold my emotions in check. So I waited until nighttime to cry myself to sleep.

I skipped classes, twice. My sister wasn't as excited as I thought, when she was told, that her baby sister would join her grade.

"What does that make me, Lauren? Stupid or something?"

But we found our rhythm and got closer. She has been for me what I think I have been for my brother. The one to hold the world together. Leaving home was a huge step for the both of us.

I met Maria at the library one day, not long after she started dating Naresh.

She was every color of the rainbow. She was bright yellow, and warm brown. She laughed refreshing blue and her eyes observed hopeful green. She was beautiful in every way possible. In character, in body, mind and soul.

We started seeing each other more regularly. The fact that she was interested in me, had been a surprise. But I was too scared to think about that further. Afraid she would leave and that I would be alone again. We just fitted so well. She was clever and needy for the answers life brought with it, same like I'd been.

My sister never noticed anything, as she had been too preoccupied with her own happiness.

Four years ago, I talked with my brother on the phone. He has traveled through Iraq, at the rim of life and death. I was scared again. One of those dozens of emotions I had known and could easily figure out.

Fear still occupies a huge part in my life.

I was scared of never seeing him again that night. The connection was really bad and it felt as if he was even further away than he already had been. I was scared and I knew, he knew.

The light conversations I was used to have with him turned into something more vulnerable and at some point I told him. I told him about Maria and how happy she made me feel. I told him, that I wanted him to meet her. That he would love her sense of humor and her way of seeing the world.

I could hear him smile through his breaths. Tom always supported me. When he had to cut me short because he had to leave I almost cried. Before he hung up he said how much he loved me.

"You deserve someone who makes you happy. Someone to take care of you when I can't be around. I am so glad you found that someone, Lauren. I don't care if that person prefers a tuxedo or a cocktail dress."

I don't know when we switched positions. When he has become the one for me. I only know that it feels good to have someone to watch your back even if they are a thousand miles away. Better a thousand miles than no one at all.

Tom and Maria never had the chance to meet. A few months after I came out to my brother I received an email, telling me she wouldn't be around anymore.

I have never seen her again. She left without much of a word. Just that email I read over and over again at night, searching for any hint of what went wrong, of what I did, of why she wasn't around anymore. But the two sentence staring back at me wouldn't say much more than an 'I'm sorry' and 'I don't want to see you any longer'.

I broke up with love after that. It just isn't for me, I think.

Walking faster I feel the light summer breeze tangle my her. The concrete underneath my feet change into a pebble path. The park isn't far. I can see the heavy steel gate of its entrance. Rays of sunshine reflecting at the rounded edges. I feel my mood shift. Feeling lighter. But the truth is, I don't want to feel. It makes me wobbly around my knees and wraps my chest in a tightness I have difficulties to breathe with.

Maybe that came out wrong. I don't want to not feel. Not like being numb, it's just- I want to feel less overwhelmed whenever my emotions think about coming out to play. I want to be more in control of my inner grown of nerves.

The head-being that I am, I started analyzing the relationship with Maria after her terrible way of leaving me. I wasn't even sure afterwards whether it had been a relationship at all. We were together most of our spare time and we shared our thoughts and our fears and it felt like it was something, but in retrospect, maybe we just looked for someone to fill in the blank spots in our lifes.

When we kissed it was nice and soft and I know we cared for each other. The way she touched me, the way she looked at me, I know we did. When our bodies moved against one another, when I felt her filling me up with her breath, her warmth, her comfort, I know we were good together.

But then I watched my sister and her husband and I just knew, that it wasn't the same. That it wasn't this thing called love or what people depict as love. Her eyes weren't shining as bright as Naresh's when he observed my sister doing daily things, like cooking or cleaning. Or the way how my sister held him close, when they were waiting for the popcorn to get ready in the microwave.

Tom called me that day I reread her email about the hundredth time and I couldn't lie to him. Other than that he knew me all too well. He still does. He could sense my discomfort before I knew that I was even struggling.

"What happened Lauren?"

So I told him. About Maria and the email and what that made out of me and about my ineptitude to keep people in my life. I heard his shallow breathing. I heard his anger boiling in his short responded answers, these hm's and okay's. But he was patient. When I broke down and cried he spoke up in that voice. The one telling me that he would always be there and that everything would turn out right as long as we were together.

"She doesn't know what she is missing and if she hasn't found out by now, she doesn't deserve you."

With him I can be me. With him I don't have to hide. With him I can be free. It makes it even harder for me to not be around him.

Looking back at all those people in my life, I'm unsure whether I'm even able to love. I know I love my family but that's different.

Maybe Sarah was right. Maybe I'm in no position to be in a relationship. Maybe that's way I stick into science. There is nothing to feel. It's all about solving problems with analytics and calculations.

I'm good with numbers and scales.

My book lays heavy in my hand. I wonder why I decided to take that one with me as I know everything written in it inside out. My feet stop walking when a cat crosses my way. It is black with a white spot on the center of it's head. Meowing, it strolls along the path, tail up high in the air.

Cats are remarkable animals. As a kid I was fascinated by their gracefulness. Everything seemed so flawless and easy. I wondered what it must be like. Life living from a cat's perspective. All the hiding and sneaking.

I sigh again. 'Gosh, you're pathetic.'

When I listen to myself, I would think of me as a person in need for a therapist. All these sad memories and the tension and struggle. Yes, I've been through a lot and maybe a shrink wouldn't hurt, but actually, I think my life is okay the way it is. There is still some space for something more and better to come but all in all, it could have been worse.

That is, before my inner meltdown. Before I looked in those eyes. Before I wanted my future to be different. Before her!

I straighten up and holding my head up higher. Body language is important. So I walk on. Passing the entrance of the park I wanted to get to since I walked out the front door.

People. People everywhere.

On the green grass, sitting, talking, drinking, eating. I shake my head. The way to my secret place, the only thing on my mind. At least the only one I try to focus on now. Also those flashes never stop. The whole way I see her face. I see her.

I force my feet forward and through the crowded area. All the noises. The laughing, the yelling. I couldn't get away fast enough, so I speed up. Around the first then the second corner and finally I come to a halt at my oasis. The sounds have changed from loud and shrieking to everything nature and I begin to relax for the first time since the bus ride.

There are my bushes, my tree, my statue, my bank but something that doesn't fit in the picture of my human being free place on earth.

It is a woman, I can tell, but I only see her backside. The backside of her head to be exact. I freeze.

"Shit!"

That can't be right. Maybe I took the wrong path, but no, this- this is my spot.

For one second I consider whether I should leave or sit down regardless of the intruder. If I'm lucky the woman would go away.

I shrug. 'What gives, this day went in every wrong direction possible. So why not challenge destiny', and I walk up to her with my eyes on my feet. I stand right in front of her and look up.

I blink and because I think I must be dreaming I blink yet again. It is her. The beautiful stranger. She isn't aware I'm there, staring at her like I did in the bus. My God she is...

Then she looks up, meeting my eyes and I can tell she is as surprised as I am. Her face, God that face. Of all places, she is sitting in my special spot. Maybe that is a sign. Maybe it means nothing at all. But my mind races again and as much as I'm trying to play it cool, my body betrays me. I shiver. Goosebumps all over my skin. My eyes searching for answers in her features. Answers to questions I haven't even asked.

I don't know for how long I've been standing here. A small smile tucks at her lips and I can't help it and stare on those lips. Seconds pass. I can sense my face soften. And I feel again. Feel lighter, happier, warmer, more content and more complete than ever before.

'Okay, you were wondering about that meeting twice and about timing and maybe faith and all those things. Now here she is. So go for it.'

"Hi, is- is this seat taken?"

And I look into her deep brown eyes when I say those words. Look into the deep ocean of emotions I decipher easily, because they are similar to my own. I could drown, ending up breathless and dying, but it would have been worth it.

She smiles. She smiles and shakes her head, mentioning me to sit down and I can't even describe the things my body, my soul goes through. It feels just like this summer breeze in my hair, the sun beams on my skin, the song of birds in my ear.

I sit down. Right next to her. I see the tight grip on the book in her hand and I have to smile wide. A smile I thought I wasn't able to get onto my lips anymore. She looks down when she follows my gaze to her fingers.

She chuckles softly and I join in. It seems as if all the tension we both felt before, is now steaming out with the light exhale of quiet laughter. I can see her shoulders fall a bit forward, her whole body relaxed in front of me.

I take a deep breath. 'Now or never,' I think, and try to remember the last time, that I wanted something so desperately like I want to talk to that gorgeous woman next to me. I end up with nothing, because I have never felt like this before. To prevent myself to fall knee deep in the sea of thoughts again I shake my head.

"I'm Lauren!", I burst out. A bit shocked about myself, but a bit proud, too.

Her head shoots up and her eyes reflect some kind of awe, as if she wanted to hear my voice as badly as I want to hear hers.

I am nervous. More than ever. I think I haven't been more nervous, not in the slightest, like I am now. My hand leaves my notepad, laying on my lap and I reach over to offer it for her to shake. Her chocolate brown orbs search my face and fly over my trembling hand back to settle on my eyes. If she only knew how out of character I'm acting right now.

A happy sigh leaves her lungs and hesitatingly her warm fingers brush along my palm, tickling my skin when our hands connected fully and as we sit there shaking hands, locking gazes on each other, I hear her saying:

"I'm Bo and it is so good to see you again."

We stay like this. Just holding hands, slightly shaking, exchanging glances, bathing in each others presence and all my thoughts, all my insecurities, my fears, my sorrows can wait. For now, I am right where I want to be.