314 Anger and Calm

“What about what she said in particular?” Ace asked as if he didn’t understand the point of my question.

“Everything. Everything that she said. Every..little and huge ass thing that she said,” I replied through gritted teeth.

Ace seemed surprise at how much my anger was showing and I was surprised at how he didn’t seem to realize just how angry I was. Regardless, Ace remained just as calm as before.

“I think she said some strange things and some of that must have bothered you. She can take her jokes a little too far but I’m sure that she doesn’t mean any real harm. If you’re upset, I can apologize in her place,” Ace told me before smiling a little at me.

I gasped at his words especially the part where he was going to apologize to me on her behalf. It never occurred to me how we could misunderstand each other this badly. I thought that Ace would surely understand what I thought and how I felt.

historical

“I don’t need you to apologize in her place. I don’t even want an apology from her. I just want to know why you allowed a dinner like that to happen? What with all the things you said about wanting me to learn from her and getting better acquainted with her? It just doesn’t make any sense to me and it’s driving me mad,” I confessed honestly as I started to lose my head.

Ace listened to me vent my anger in silent without taking his eyes off of me. I took a pause as I struggled to catch my breath. Ace was silent for a moment as if waiting for me to continue and that was exactly what I did.

“I felt so horrible all throughout the dinner, didn’t you realize that? I couldn’t wait for it all to be over and done with, so that we could just go home. I hated everything that she said to me, and I don’t even understand why she seems to hate me so much. I also hated that she seems so close to you..” I blurted out so fast that I had to pause again to catch my breath.

To my surprise, Ace still seemed very composed as he listened to me complain on and on about all that I had suffered during the dinner that we just had. My shoulders trembled and then my entire body seemed to tremble as well. It felt like I was about to burst into tears, but I didn’t want to cry. I felt too angry to let any tears out.

.....

“How dare she say those things to me like that?” I spat before I ground my teeth together in my frustration.

I could feel Ace’s eyes on me and when I looked up, our eyes met. His hazel brown eyes didn’t betray any emotion and I wasn’t sure what he was thinking about what he was seeing and hearing from me. I closed my eyes and took in a deep breath before letting it out. I repeated that a few times as I desperately tried to calm myself down.

“Do you feel better now?” Ace asked after giving me a moment to compose myself.

“Yes..a little..” I replied truthfully.

Letting it all out honestly made me feel slightly better but that did not mean that I had forgiven Elizabeth and Kyle for turning up out of nowhere to ruin the date that I had planned with Ace or all the insensitive things that she said to me all throughout dinner.

“Some people are like that,” Ace said softly before he shrugged like it couldn’t be helped.

“What?” I asked in a shocked whisper.

“Elizabeth can be a horrible person just like you’ve witness for yourself tonight. Unfortunately and for reasons that I don’t understand, there are people like that in life and you’ll end up meeting them. If you think Elizabeth is the worst, you can think again. You’ll run into difficult situations that you want to get out of, but you can’t, or at least, not immediately,” Ace said while still sounding very calm.

I had no idea why he was lecturing me about life and its difficulties at this point in time and his calm and mature attitude truly got on my nerves. All the things that he said didn’t quite match up with what I wanted and expected to hear from him. Why couldn’t he just say that it was unfair that I had to take that and that he promise that it would never ever happen again?

Instead of reassuring me, he was calming telling me that there are much worst people out there and that things like this might happen again. He may be right but that wasn’t want I wanted to hear at that moment.

“Why are you saying this?” I asked as I held up a hand in front of my chest to gesture for him to halt his words.

I held up my hand as I closed my eyes for a brief moment because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to hear any more from him. My emotions were a mess and I felt like the smallest thing could trigger an unreasonable emotional breakdown that I wasn’t sure that I wanted Ace to witness.

“Because you’re supposed to be learning from this experience rather than crying and screaming over it, Rina. People will say unkind things to you, and you have to learn various ways to deal with it. I’m not saying that what Elizabeth did was the right thing to do and it’s not wrong for you to feel the way you do either,” Ace said before he smiled at me and nodded his head to show me that he understood how I felt.

“I don’t know. I just..I just hated it..” I muttered while feeling as irritated as before.

“You’ve been quite concern about the time that I spend with Elizabeth so I figured that if you’re so concerned about it, you should get used to seeing her,” Ace explained.

–To be continued..