Chapter 17 Guo Jiu meets Maria again

It's in an old building, on the third floor.The studio for learning to paint is on the fourth floor. Guo Jiu woke up from a nap and was dazed, so he pushed open the door on the third floor again.Before, he always saw a fat aunt, but this time, he saw a young girl.Wearing a bright red dress, sitting on the sofa and painting her toes with nail polish. Seeing Guo Jiu, she grinned: I went to the wrong building, classmate. Guo Jiu was stunned for a moment, and then heard her say: My mother is really, she never closes the door. That afternoon of the summer vacation when he was sixteen years old, Guo Jiu couldn't get it out of his mind for a long time.Maybe everyone has a complex, and that afternoon, that girl, is the complex.For many years afterwards, Guo Jiu always wanted to laugh inexplicably when he saw girls wearing red, and his heart warmed.

He will always think of her in many moments, and he will never forget her.Memory is like a web, and she is like a stuck bug. Although he hasn't had time to have a story with her. The girl was two years older than Guo Jiu. When Guo Jiu met her, she had just graduated from high school and was enjoying her last summer vacation in middle school.Wear bright dresses, bright lipstick and nail polish.Also, maybe for the first time in love. Once Guo Jiu was out of an art class and just happened to meet her going downstairs, so he quietly followed her.Watch her cross two streets, a flyover, and stop in front of a small coffee bar.She straightened her fluffy hair in front of the glass, took a deep breath, and walked in.

After stopping for five minutes, Guo Jiu stood at the window and looked in, and saw her sitting next to a man, awkwardly picking up a cigarette. At that moment, Guo Jiu felt like a donkey carrying cotton across the river.Pressed by a pair of invisible hands, his chest was very heavy. Love didn't have time to start positively, and has since become invisible. But Guo Jiu remembered her name.Maria.I heard that her grandmother is a very devout Catholic.I heard that those who chased her could line up from the school library to the dining room.I also heard that she is very shy and likes to roll her eyes at people.

Amid the plausible rumors, Guo Jiu immersed himself in his studies. Time is like a silent liar, cheating away many interesting things.Maria was spinning the pen while listening to the boss's lecture.Every Monday meeting, the boss of the military background has to show a face of suffering.He educates his employees like he educates children, the world is miserable, and how hard he feeds them.He wanted nothing but that they would reward him for putting in his best eight hours a day—like going to war. Maria heard callouses growing in her ears, and the pen she had twirled a few times fell to the ground with a snap, and the only interesting thing during the meeting was over.

Malia has been in a bad mood recently, and she feels bored in everything she does.It has been nearly two years since I broke up with my ex, and I have basically adapted to living alone.Occasionally, Lao Zhang would come to pick her up for a meal together, and the two of them were in a hurry, with a sense of guilt that they couldn't see each other.Lao Zhang kept it from his wife, and Maria kept it from his mother. It was the weekend, and as soon as five o'clock passed, the colleagues who had fought so hard came down from the battlefield and returned to the world of fireworks.In less than ten minutes, they all disappeared without a shadow left behind.Maria is alone behind the computer, enjoying the sense of being alone.

A new company opened on the upper floor opposite, and every time Maria spends time in the office, she can always see the opposite side working overtime with bright lights.With regard to blood and passion, it is like her two children who have long been lost, but they once belonged to her. Occasionally, she ate at the restaurant downstairs and met several people from that company.The young man in the lead seemed to be a bit of a youthful motivator.They sat at the table next to Maria for dinner, discussing the features of the new product, which made Maria look so lonely and boring.Suddenly one day, the leading young man came to Maria's table and said to her, "Why don't you join us to eat together."

So, every evening thereafter, Maria seemed to have a sustenance. She waited until eight o'clock in the evening, went downstairs, and had dinner with her new friends. If all encounters in the world are reunions after a long absence, then what is a reunion?When he first saw Ma Liya in a Vietnamese restaurant, Guo Jiu didn't recognize her at all. She was wearing black high heels, a black coat, black hair, tall and thin, just a beautiful stranger.It was when he was at work one morning that he heard her colleague calling her name: "Maria, hurry up, we're going to be late." He didn't know it was her.So the sleeping memory woke up, like a child who still can't control the will, crying because the chaotic dream became a clear reality.

That day, Guo Jiu was still busy.But when he was busy, he always thought of her.The lady at the front desk was wearing a red skirt, and he stared at the hem of the skirt for a long time in a daze. The company was opened by a friend, but Guo Jiu has a stake.He finished his master's degree at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and worked for a while, and it has been half a year since he came back. I don't have a girlfriend right now.When I was in Singapore, I had a cohabiting girlfriend who was Rocker. He once stayed there for her, and later said that when he returned to China, he asked her if she wanted to be together, and she said no.When they broke up at Changi Airport, Guo Jiu wanted to persuade him to stay, and asked, will we see each other again?The girl said that a reunion would only shatter the memory.

However, seeing Ma Liya again, Guo Jiu felt that the reunion was to create new memories. So what is reunion, reunion is an outlet created for regret. Even if you don't fall in love with her, you can still be friends.It's a pity that I wanted to know her so much but didn't. Maria finally found the reason for her bad mood.winter.There are so many winter festivals.Winter nights are too long.Hands are cold in winter.People are very lazy in winter, so they want to eat steaming meals at night after get off work. Among the new friends, the leading young man is Guo Jiu.The other most noisy one is Lao Qi.A guy with glasses who is working hard is called Crazy Zhang, and there is a girl with exploding hair. They all call her Curly Lion.

Their reaction to Maria's joining was very flat.It seemed that Maria was someone they had known for a long time, and no one welcomed her politely.Lao Qi didn't avoid her at all when he told nasty jokes, Crazy Zhang was already asking her about his girlfriend's aura, Curly Lion immediately asked for her Weibo and WeChat, and added her as a friend. As for Guo Jiu, occasionally when Ma Liya raised her head, she would meet his probing eyes. If it was two years ago, Maria would never have been willing to share a table with anyone for dinner.But now, among her best friends, one went abroad, one got married, and the other took traveling as a career and made her home all over the world.Likes on WeChat and phone calls are common, but gatherings are rare.Occasionally when I go back to my mother's house, I always hear nagging.If she called Lao Zhang, he would definitely be willing to come out, but if his wife found out, it would inevitably be another quarrel.

The longer you live, the more helpless you feel in this world. Sometimes walking home alone, I feel that the moonlight is very clear, but unfortunately there is no one around me to share it. But now, the guy named Guo Jiu volunteered to take her home every day.Sitting in his SUV, listening to the FM station, occasionally chatting in traffic.He turned out to be her high school alumni.He said that he had also learned to paint upstairs in her house. Yeah?Maria wanted to lift the curtain of memories and remember the events of that year, but found that she had no memory.For her, his memories are like telling someone who has never eaten crabs the deliciousness of crab roe.One sweetly smacked his lips, and the other was helpless and anxious. But she still responded to him in a joking tone: "You are like this, I thought it was you who wanted to chase me." "Can you?" During the 120 seconds of the red light pause, Guo Jiu turned to look at Ma Liya. Think again about the reason why he didn't confess his love to his first love Maria, probably because the clip of her sitting next to a man smoking a cigarette frightened him.He was too innocent at that time, thinking that love was as clean as Akagi Haruko treated Rukawa Feng.But now he also has a past, and it can be regarded as a long time ago. They are equal, and he wants to give it a try. Most of what she heard about her in her teenage years was gossip.It seems that she is not pursued by so many people, and it seems that she has never rolled her eyes at anyone.And the man she was sitting next to smoking with was her father, Lao Zhang.After she was ten years old, her parents divorced, so she took her mother's surname.It was true that her grandmother was Catholic. That day, he asked her if he could pursue her.She froze for a long time without answering, and finally hiccupped embarrassingly. Later, when he returned to the company and continued to work overtime, he received her text message reply, "I am older than you." Guo Jiu laughed, thinking there was some drama.Age is not a problem, she doesn't have to worry about it at all.So he replied to her: "Tomorrow morning, I will pick you up to go to work." Guo Jiu, who worked overtime until midnight, woke up early the next day, refreshed, and his cells were all puffed up. Before going out, he sprayed perfume a little pretentiously, like a beast in heat. He waited downstairs with her for forty-five minutes before getting a text from her, "I'm leaving first, sorry." The divorce of her parents caused Maliya to have doubts about heterosexual relations in her teenage years.Her ex, who had been chasing her for five years since high school, did many things that moved her to the point of astonishment, but after they got together, he was the one who cheated and left first.Her father, Lao Zhang, left his mother to marry another woman, but the marriage did not last long. Lao Zhang's current wife is not a few years older than Maria. For Guo Jiu, it's not that Ma Liya doesn't trust him, but she doesn't trust herself.That morning, she saw Guo Jiu's car parked downstairs, and he wiped away the mist from the front window.She thinks his serious look is very good-looking, and he looks happy to meet his lover, which suddenly makes her feel shy.She escaped. During the busy morning, Guo Jiu stood in front of the window and looked across.He couldn't see Maria, but he knew she was there.A very small thing that disturbs the mind is love. He wasn't angry because of her breaking the appointment, he just felt anxious. When he was a teenager, he easily gave up getting acquainted with her because of a misunderstanding. This time, he wanted to try his best.Otherwise, if you think about it later, it will still be a pity, like a joke. Sitting on the toilet in the bathroom, he sent a text message to Maria. He told her his heartbeat when he was sixteen years old and the joy of reunion.He said that if age is regarded as an obstacle, it is an insult to love.But he understood her concerns, so he was willing to wait.It's like waiting for a flower to bloom, but good things are worth waiting for. At the weekly meeting, Maria's cell phone vibrated suddenly, and a long text message was sent three times.The boss was very dissatisfied and asked Ms. Maria to talk about the reasons for the decline in the company's performance this month. Maria was tongue-tied, and finally replied, "Take your time." She also replied to Guo Jiu with this answer.Take it easy.In this era of fast food, wait patiently for a good meal and a good person. They ate hundreds of meals together, watched more than a dozen movies, drove across nearly half of the city's roads, and sent thousands of text messages.In the end, there is the cliché game between men and women, the plain climax of sweetness and bitterness, the hell and heaven of love, and the plain and trivial life itself.