Life Goes On... - Neha Dua (good beach reads .TXT) 📗

My name is Elena and I am in my second year of college. I am five feet and seven inches tall with grey eyes and a thin physique. I am a very talkative person by nature and I make friends very easily. I live in Canada with my mom, dad, and my ten years old little sister named Susan. I come from a rich background because of my dad. I own my car, which my dad had gifted me on my eighteenth birthday last year. My mom takes care of our home all by herself, as I have never liked cooking so I didn’t ever go to kitchen to make food.

My dad owns one of the top IT companies in Canada; hence we are very known to everyone almost everywhere in the province. My father keeps himself busier with his professional life than balancing his personal life. We have been a part of so many big events and parties due to my dad’s public relations. My dad has always been into the limelight of majorly all parties, as he travels a lot due to his job and his pictures are posted every quarter on page 3 of every newspaper.

My dad had a secretary named Lisa, who could be found everywhere near him. She looked to me like a leech who is just here to screw up my family time more. She is always near my dad being extra friendly and caring, more than required as per her job profile. She always dresses up like she is doing modeling assignments or always wearing something like to show-off her cleavage a bit more than required.

Me and Susan never liked her being around our dad, because we could always sense that she was trying to get near to my dad and to make him avoid us as much as possible, by keeping him busy with meetings and outdoor trips for official purposes. She used to go with him everywhere for official work. We have informed mom also about it, but my mom is so calm and compost that she never questions my dad about his secretary and his work profile and the kind of life he always wanted to have.

My mom is a novelist and hence, she roams around to different places for her inspirations. She keeps herself busy with the random stuff and her parties. She became a smoker when she found out that she was expecting their second child, my sister Susan. She refrained from letting out a sound of her cry, knowing that if she drew attention to herself it would only create more trouble. My dad never loved Susan since the day she was born.

Our family stays together in front of everyone else, but if we go deep into the relationships that we all shared, it’s kind of a messy life that we all live. We all are bound by blood only but have no real attachments. The bitterness that we have now in our family started long back, when my mom and dad were in their college. I was the result of a one-night stand in their college times, my dad was twenty-one years old and my mom was only eighteen years old when they got married as my mom was expecting me and broke this news of her pregnancy to my dad.

My dad and his friends decided to play a prank on my mom. My dad had a bet with his friends that my mom would fall for him in just one month and would be ready to offer herself completely to him. This is what exactly happened between them. My mom always loved my dad, even if that was a prank that dad and his friends played on my mom.

One day at her college, my mom decided to tell my dad that she was going to have his baby and she is already three months pregnant and aborting the child would be risky for her. After hearing the news of my mom’s pregnancy, my dad growled and yanked her out after him, “What do we need to talk about? I don’t want to have a baby now. I am not ready to get married or have a baby”. He trailed off, shoving the exit of the college door open with his back and left.

My mom was left behind with her trembling voice continuously say my dad’s name “Richard please, don’t leave me. I am carrying your child. My parents won’t accept me. Please don’t go like this. Don’t leave us alone and stranded like this”. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe, her words were caught in her throat as she sobbed very much in her tears and she pushed herself up so that her hands supported her. 

My mom’s parents insisted on my dad to get married and settle down with my mom. Since then, they stay connected because of me and now because of my sister. They behave in a very good manner infront of me and my sister but are not attached by heart. Only me and my little sister stay together every time apart from our studies. I have always stayed strong because of Susan and even my friends had never seen my emotional side. I always plan parties with my friends at my home, so that Susan doesn’t feel alone. My friends also are very fond of my sister and they love to play with her.

I have my three best friends staying near my home since my childhood. My friends don’t know about my family and me. I have never shown them this side of my personal life. Me and my three best friends named Denise who is five feet and four inches tall & of average build with spectacles and medium length curly hair, Mary who is five feet and five inches tall and has black eyes, short hair, and finally Maria, who is short with thin built and has long hair and brown eyes. We have been together since childhood and had attended same school and now same college.

I know driving, so I always pick Maria, Denise & Mary every morning to go to our college. We are a group of eight members from our college. Denise has a boyfriend named Alex, who is five feet and eight inches tall with a muscled body, black eyes with a beard, and black hair always set with a gel with no strand seen on his forehead. Alex is a shy and focused guy with a serious look always on his face. I have always admired Alex and Denise as a very sweet couple with no worries and tensions to take away their time of togetherness. Alex is a studious guy but Denise is just an average scoring girl. Alex and Denise found each other when they started to study together through a project, which was given by our professor, last year. Alex had moved in with Denise last week only.

Whereas, Mary likes to bro-zone every guy who approaches her and who tries to flirt with her. Some of our batchmates are even scared of her personality due to her bold nature of refusing guys. Mary is always seen with her earphones on, carrying a small handbag. She doesn’t like to be friends with everyone and doesn’t believe in relationships, as she thinks, it spoils the friendship also. 

Maria, on the other hand, likes to be friends with everyone, the same as me and she has a boyfriend named Prince. They are in a relationship from the last three years, but they see each other very less as Prince is our senior and is in his final year of university studies, so he is often found busy in his projects and internships. Prince is always busy with his work and projects and by the end of this year he has to find a job for himself. He wants to be a photographer. He is currently handling freelancing projects whenever he finds time from college and studies.

The rest four of us; me, Shane, Alan, and Jenny are among the ones, who like to stay as friends forever and always believing in friendship and staying together. We share our lunch hours & studies at college. Shane and I liked each other, but we never expressed these mutual feelings, as I was afraid of any kind of relationship or love because of my family history and Shane didn’t express because he never wanted to lose me as a friend, because of these silly lovey-dovey things. He was always aware of the fact that I liked him more than in a friendly manner, but I could never move forward in this.

It was Friday night when I and Susan were at Maria’s place for her birthday and my mom was out of town for her next novel. My dad called me at around 7 o’clock in the evening “Hey dad! What’s up?”. “Hey, sweetie! I am going out of town tonight due to some urgent work and won’t be able to come back before ten days. It’s kind of an unavoidable situation so I have to be there. I will be staying at our farmhouse there”, he informed me.

“But dad, you have to attend Susan’s school function on coming Monday afternoon” I questioned him with a little surprise. “I know Elena, but I am sorry, I can’t attend it. Your mom is also not available so on our behalf, you attend that function. Bring any of your friends at home for a night or two. I got to go now. Bye!”, he suggested and then hung up on me.

Susan heard the conversation between me and dad and got upset, I bent down on my knees to be equal to her height and happily said, “Hey, Susan! Daddy got some urgent work to attend and mom is also not around, so it will be just you and me. We will have a lot of fun together playing all night & watching movies”.

She dropped her head down with disappointment and just went away from me to sat on the seat at the corner of the room. Maria and all my friends came back to the room after arranging a cake, snacks, and drinks for our party. The life and the relaxation that Susan and I have with my friends around can’t be expresses in words as these people make us forget our messed-up reality and they bring a big smile on our faces by their funny jokes, games, gestures and dance moves. The party started at around 7 o’clock in the evening and continued till 11 o’clock at night. Meanwhile, Susan was already asleep and I had to take her back home.