#10: On The Lakefront – BiboZ Short Story (English)

This is an insightful story about how a chance meeting between two strangers in front of a lake turned into a connecting of kindred spirits. Available on Amazon.com in both e-book and paperback editions.

Jake looked across the road and saw a playground where lots of kids were screaming, laughing, running, playing, sliding down slides, swinging. He himself liked to swing. It had never left him since he was a child. The big fall he’d had once hadn’t traumatised him. He remembered that on that day, his older brother was pushing him from behind and a friend of his brother’s was pushing him from the front, by the knees. Josh had felt him slipping off the swing bit by bit, but hadn’t been able to express it. And at some point, he let go of the chains he was holding and he hovered backwards. His brother and friend had run over to see if everything was okay. Jake had cried very little. His brother knew how to reassure him. He teased him sometimes, but for the most part, they had always gotten along. This older brother had taught him a lot of values. He had taught him to respect women, strangers, people with disabilities, the marginalised, and all people who were a little different.

Jake returned to real life and came out of his reveries. He realized that he had just been driving on autopilot. Apparently, it didn’t just happen to him in the car. He began to zigzag again between garbage cans, trees, and benches. He saw a couple there and three young people smoking and drinking beer while listening to music. Then he saw again a lot of empty benches with a few old people walking next to them.

Suddenly, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and he stopped. He took the device out of his pocket and saw that he had received a message. It wasn’t a very important message, but it made him very happy. He was always happy when people he didn’t see all the time checked in on him. He answered the message, put the phone back in his pocket and was about to get back in the saddle. But at that very moment, he heard someone crying and sniffling.

He pushed his bike forward and saw that behind the next tree was a young blonde woman, with a ponytail sticking out of the top of her head, sitting alone. And apparently, she was crying. Jake walked behind her. She sat to the right of the bench if you looked at her from behind. The bench was between two trees, like so many others in the area. Jake leaned his bike against the tree to the left of the bench, then walked past the bench and said politely and jovially, “Hello.”

The young woman, who must have been in her late twenties or early thirties, looked at him and glared at him. Her cheeks flushed, her tears dripping, a handkerchief over her nose, she looked the other way, showing that she wanted to ignore him. Read More below!