From the Other Side of My Bed

14. Love, Madeline

I wanted to write you this letter for a long time, and i did, several times but never sent it to you. I didn't know your new mailing address, and also I didn't want to disturb your life with the messiness of mine.
Instead I burned those letters and saved this one because I thought it was kinder, sweeter and well, I wanted to declare that the one thing good in my life was you.

So here's the letter I never send you, nikkolas.

-

I remember when you and I met.
You're those kind of memories in which I just have to look ahead, concentrate enough, until all the colors are at first clear, but then fade out of focus, becoming blurry. Everything closes up to me, glitching to black.
Then the light comes, just like you.

We met in summer time.
When we were forever wild, your hands on my thighs, feeling the velvet of them, thinking to ourselves how this was such beautiful life. We were young, having you being two years older than me. I had just turned fourteen when I met you, and lied about being fifteen.
Either way, I never had looked my actual age, so it didn't matter then, or now.
The details of how everything led to our first encounter were odd.

Because our first time meeting was not really the first time.
I first saw you in Rhodes junior high, under the shade of the cafeteria's threshold as I sat with my friends. A girl was telling us how cute you were and how she was going to go talk to you. As she spoke, I looked at you.
You were laying back against the bench, your ball cap tilted down as you were doing your homework. I don't know why that was meaningful to me.
You were just a boy.
Then the girl stopped talking and I watched her go up to you.

For some reason, I had you as a friend on the social.
And we never talked directly.
But one day, that changed and it changed because of your friend.
When you saw your friend getting at me in a group chat we all had, talking complete nonsense, you texted me privately and that's how you found out about my mother's cancer.
You felt awful about it, and wished me to be strong.
You were the only one who ever told me this, and only one who knew about her cancer, apart from my family.
Since the very beginning, you have painted my black skies with all the colors of the sun.

Eventually, we decided to meet, and we chose the location to be the high school where I was going to attend soon after the summer.
Funny enough, you were going to be a sophomore there.
A varsity player, too.
And it seemed we couldn't wait any longer to meet because we scheduled to meet at 9am in the morning, after your practice, at the school.
God, how stupid.
It was so hot that day, I remember the buckets of sweat we both shed and the lack of wind when I was walking toward the school.
I wore this beautiful lacy, floral tank top with denim jeans and my black hair danced in the air as I wondered what the meeting was going to be like.
Remember we couldn't find each other?
It was so annoying!
You kept telling me to go to the front of the school; I was there.
You told me to go near the "vending" machine; what's a bending machine?
I decided to walk toward the west side of the campus. I wasn't lying about how sunny it was that day because I remember the sun was directly in my sight, completely blinding me as I tried making shade with my hand.
Right when I was going to text you, I saw a figure walking toward me.
My pace slowed, I wanted to see who it was, but the sun was so bright, it hid its identity.
I stopped; the entity kept walking.
I took a full body examination.
White v neck shirt, denim jeans, vans backpack hanging off the shoulder, a muscular body with tan skin but no face.
Then the sun eased.
And I saw you.
The sun shone behind you, just as you walked toward me.
It made it look like you had angel wings.
And there was this moment of ultimate silence, no longer was the commotion of the cars passing by, not the falling leafs were at sight.
All there was just you and i.
I wasn't the only one who felt a change in atmosphere, because the second you got to see me better, up close, you slowed down, then stopped abruptly.