city lights

♛ egypt

CHAPTER FOUR

            ✈ ✈ ✈ EGYPT

 

            My palms were sweaty and my mouth was running on auto-pilot. I couldn't remember the last time I was even given the time of day by a girl, and I couldn't exactly blame the female species because clearly the lack of an arm is a pretty horrifying thing to look at. They usually just tried to look away, sound un-pitiful, and act normal. Tried, because it never worked.

This girl stared at the sky. She stared at my arm. She stared at the people staring back at her. She stared at everything and anything with such intensity that made me nervous, even when I thought I was accustomed to every kind of staring there was in the world: Horrified staring, surprised staring, curious staring, and even intrigued staring. Her staring had no description, because she looked through you and into you at the same time, and I couldn't comprehend that.

I had to comprehend it. I had to comprehend her. There were too many gaping holes in my life; things I couldn't understand, events I questioned, and answers I've decided to stop finding. I had to prevent more holes from opening up, because if I didn't I would end up like a huge expanse of nothing. And I didn't want to be a nothing – not when all my life, before the accident, I had been a something. So I had to know, had to understand, what it was like to be able to stare through something like it didn't matter, and yet stare into it like it was the universe's biggest secret. I had to know.

So I stopped her from running away from the horrible kind of stares by talking to her. I didn't expect her to actually stop and stay with me. Maybe a quick apology or something, but not to stay. And maybe she just didn't have anything better to do, but something in me warmed at the thought that she had stayed. Anyone else would have left, like how everyone in my life left, but she had stayed and watched the sky with me.

 Her presence made me nervous. I didn't know what to do when people stayed – not anymore.

And now we find ourselves here, in this moment, where we simply stand here side-by-side, smack dab in the middle of the street and staring up at the sky. We let the silence between us float like a bubble amidst the smoke of nightlife noise enrapturing us. We just stand and stare as I turn her words in my head: “Who wouldn't stare? The sky is beautiful. 

I want to say that it's she who makes it beautiful. That anything would turn beautiful under her gaze, under the way she looks through and in at the same time. But I don't, because the nervousness claws at me. This was new. This was different. This was adventure. This was treasure hunting in a pirate ship in a world trapped under her gaze.

The need to fill the silence overwhelms me, so I suck up the nervousness and try to sound as confident as I possibly can. They said confidence is key in starting conversations after all. “If I were any good at charming people, I'd say, 'No, you're beautiful.' But I'm not, so I'll just agree with you.”

She turns her surprised and confused gaze at me, and I mentally smack myself because stupid, the beautiful sky talk was five minutes ago. I try not to look too horrified, and thankfully her face dawns with comprehension. She flushes a bit, the color contrasting with her pale skin under the harsh street lights.

“Sorry,” I apologise, willing the butterflies in my stomach to shut the hell up. I can do this. “I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm not in the company of girls a lot.” I can feel the confidence untangling from me, and I struggle to clutch it close. No don't go, not yet, I can do this.

More silence.

“Do you want some...yoghurt...or something,” I offer lamely, handing her the half-melted and half-finished yoghurt in my hand, which I realise right after is 1) gross 2) weird and 3) very un-gentleman-like.