---

The view of the New York City streets at night was a blur when Gabriella's brown eyes were obscured by tears. She sobbed, then turned the car around to face less traffic. The route she was taking was farther, which would make it much slower for her to get to her rooming house around the Kemang area. Especially at this hour of the day, it was impossible for Gabriella to calm down.


The world sometimes does not run like a scene in a romance movie, not all problems faced will be easy when you have love. Gabriella loved her parents, back then and even now. Although Rio hurt her, hurt her mother, but Rio is still Gabriella's first love for a long time. The man used to be good at making food, good at comforting his wife who was sometimes sad because the gas and electricity ran out when she had no money, Rio also worked very hard to make his small family very very simple. The love once grew, but then withered when the mother began to have difficulty speaking and could not do anything, the longer the love only got deeper and deeper buried in immeasurable sadness.

Rio finally left, not knowing Gabriella had been trying to find her long-dead love again. Her mother's departure was the beginning of the agony she never expected. But knowing that her father was now also sick and suffering, left her speechless.

After all, Rio was her father.


Blood is always thicker than water.

But as her selfish side whispered, all the evil and pain Rio had left behind ran too deep, old wounds from the past seemed to float quickly to the surface. Gabriella wanted so badly to be ignorant of her father's situation. Even if she could, she wanted to think that her father was better off dead than alive but continued to break her heart.


Unfortunately, the long-buried love was not completely dead. It was just sleeping without knowing when to wake up.

Krieettt!!!

Gabriella's foot hit the brake pedal quickly as a motorcycle appeared suddenly from the direction of the turn, forcing the woman to make an impromptu brake that almost made her bounce into the steering wheel in front of her.

Gabriella's heart skipped a beat when she saw someone fall on the asphalt, while the motorcycle she was riding rolled over and emitted smoke from several parts. The woman covered her mouth with one hand, before finally regaining her sanity. "Shit!"

With hurried steps, Gabriella left her car. The woman in the red T-shirt didn't even have time to close her own car door and just kept running towards the biker.

"Oh my God, Sir. are you okay?"

Gabriella's voice reached the man driving. The man turned around and looked up. It took a moment before the man finally took off his full-face helmet and revealed the face behind it.

Gabriella's eyebrows furrowed when she discovered that the figure behind the helmet was someone she recognized. "What, Glen?"

"Gabriella?"

Gabriella breathed a sigh of relief before extending her hand to Glen. "Here, let me help you."

Glen took Gabriella's hand and got up from the asphalt. Although his legs looked a little lame, the man was still able to get the fallen sportbike back on its feet. Glen put on the motorcycle standard so that the vehicle he was carrying could stand upright again, then stored the helmet on the body of the vehicle.

"Are you okay?" Gabriella asked to make sure. The woman chuckled, then rubbed her forearms because she felt bad about what had happened to Glen. "I'm really sorry. I was daydreaming, it was entirely my fault."

The man who was much taller than him gave a small smile. "Come on, take it easy. It was just an accident. I've been through worse." Gabriella raised both eyebrows, staring at Glen in disbelief. How could he be so relaxed when he had just fallen and rolled hard on the rough road. "Anyway... are you drunk?"

"Ooh no no," Gabriella quickly replied. She needed to get this straight. "I'm not drunk, but I-"

The woman turned around, looking at her car. The words that were about to come out of Gabriella's mouth were suddenly lost as if swallowed by the night air that enveloped both of them. Gabriella inhaled as much oxygen as she could, trying to ease the tightness that was again gnawing at her chest. She then turned around and forced a small smile on her lips. "Sorry again."

"It's okay."

"How about you wait here while I look for medicine? I think your feet are bleeding and blisters."

Glen chuckled. "Tsk. I'm seriously okay."

"If you refuse help, I'll feel bad," Gabriella said half-insistently. "Wait here for a moment, okay? Let me buy some medicine and a drink, they say you should drink when you fall so you don't get shocked."

"Haha, whatever you want."

Coincidentally, Gabriella found a pharmacy not too far from Glen's accident scene. Let alone inviting him to go to the hospital, Gabriella still had to insist on being offered medicine and a drink. Apparently, the man hadn't changed at all.

After a few minutes, Gabriella finally returned with a bag of medicines and drinks in her hand. The woman smiled and approached Glen immediately. "Sorry it took so long. Doesn't it hurt your leg?"

Glen sat on one of the wooden chairs at the edge of the park near his accident site. He seemed to be watching his leg as he waited for Gabriella, so when she arrived, Glen immediately looked up and responded. "It hurts, but it will heal. I'm Edward Cullen's descendant, don't you remember?"

A chuckle sounded from Gabriella. She then shook her head and handed Glen the bag in her hand. "That was in high school. Now that you're in your thirties, you can't be Edward Cullen's descendant anymore. Here, I'll give you some medicine and a drink too."

"Thank you," Glen said as he accepted the white plastic bag Gabriella gave him. Glen looked inside and took out a bottle of mineral water from inside the bag, before finally looking at Gabriella again. "How come there's only one drink? You didn't buy a drink too?"

"I didn't think of that. It's okay, it's just for you. You fell really hard, it must have hurt."

Again Glen gave a short chuckle and held out the drink in his hand to Gabriella as he got up from the chair. "You should drink this more. I think you have more problems than I do."

"How do you... know that?"

"If you didn't have any problems, wouldn't you have been driving with your head down and hit me like that?"

Gabriella looked at Glen straight on. Suddenly, her heart felt warm. She smiled and accepted the water bottle from the man who was her close friend in school.

"Next time we meet, I hope your eyes aren't glazed over anymore. Okay?"

Without waiting for Gabriella to respond, Glen was already back on his bike. Although he was limping, Glen was able to ride his motorcycle and left Gabriella who was crying again where she was now.

---