clocks

5

George

The only tell of time I have whilst my eyes are closed is how hot it feels. I know it's getting later out when a chillier breeze starts to float throughout the field. Somewhere along this interview, Gracie has laid against my chest.

"Do you remember when I came and found you in the library?" I smile, eyes still closed. My hand lays in Gracies warm fur, she's almost like a blanket. "It was the first time you actually looked at me like I was a human being," I laugh, the pictures flashing in my head, the mental photographs of the two of us sat at the library table making me feel sadly nostalgic.

"I let you try on my bracelet," he coaxes. I notice that the scribbling noise of his pen has stopped. He's not writing. "The golden one, do you remember it?"

Do I remember it, I almost scoff. He gave it to me when I went away.

It's still on my arm today, at this very moment. When Quinn and I went to France not long after I left I had it especially altered so it'd never be able to come off my hand.

I remember the moment I'd found it in my backpack at the airport. I'd been looking for a jumper— and it had fallen on the floor, right in front of me. At first, I had no idea what it was, and then it came back to me.

Just a moment later, my father was there to greet me, and I think we had what could be renounced as the world's biggest argument right in the middle of the airport. I think I had to be lifted onto the plane by his security, since I had refused to go willingly.

"I remember," I answer. "We got locked in the library that night and you were so worried that we were going to get in trouble, and then-" I laugh, as the thought comes back to me, "Sapnap scolded you at your dorm door, do you remember that?"

He's oddly quiet. I have the urge to open my eyes to look at him, but I know if I do, then I won't get back to the right headspace that I'm in right now. So instead, I stop talking, since he's stopped writing.

"If—" he starts, but then stops. He takes a minute or two, before he asks me what he'd been so unsure about asking. "If you knew, what you know now," he says slowly. "Would you go back and change how you did it all?"

I know where his question is headed and I know my answer to it before he's even finished asking. "No," I answer simply, not even having to think about it. "I wouldn't change it, any of it."

Then, I open my eyes, because I don't need to be trying to focus on my past to continue this conversation. The interview is over now, we both know it. My eyes take a long minute to adjust to the lack of light around us since the last time my eyes were open.

When they readjust, I look back at over at him. His notes are laid across his lap, but his pens have been abandoned on the blankets beside him. He looks as though he's not really looking at me, like he's looking at something more than just— me.

"Why not?" he asks, his tone lightly curious.

I think about it. There's a lot of reasons. Because we wouldn't be sat here together right now. Because I'd never of become the person I am today, even though I worry a lot of the time that the person I am today isn't a good person.

Because I don't think I would of ever discovered a lot of things about myself if you weren't there to comfort me on the balcony that warm night in Rome.

"Because if I did change it," I answer, "then I might not of met you." I think very carefully about my next words. "When I met you, I was already struggling enough, with a lot of things. You sort of saved me, in a way that I didn't know I needed to be saved."

He just stares. There's too much staring between us. He stares, and stares like he doesn't know what to say. Had that been to heavy? It's the truth, he told me I had to always tell him the truth if we were going to do this right.