Everything I Never Say ✓

[ five ]

Five

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Your hair was annoying.

I can't recall how old I was when I even began paying attention to your hair and letting it register that it was annoying—probably around nine—but I do remember finding it annoying.

It was almost black. Except for when it was under direct sunlight—then, it looked a shade of brown. Dark, dark brown.

Just like your eyes. But that's a different story.

I can't think of a time when we were kids that you cut your hair; I doubt you even entertained the idea. You were, after all, very conscious of the way you looked and took immense care of your appearance. My mum used to chide me, used to tell me to take better care of my skin and hair the way you did.

There was probably no one who was a bigger fan of your hair than yourself. It used to reach down your neck from the back, brush against the tips of your ears, and occasionally fall across your forehead and into your eyes. And then you would shake your head, tossing those strands away to the side until they slanted sideways against your forehead and danced along your eyebrows.

You had such ordinary hair. Soft-looking, dark, and straight. I don't know how it felt then, as I do not know how it feels now. These fingers of mine have never caressed your locks, nor ran through those dark strands. Back then, my hands never ached to do so. But back then, I also didn't know any better.

I know better now.

I now understand why I found the way your hair fell across your forehead annoying back then.

The gap between then and now is an eternity, a few lifetimes or so. And I have no idea how to fill such a vast expanse filled wih our yesterdays. It is this long, long road from that starting point to here; each time I take a step forward towards tomorrow, the distance grows that much longer. And these eyes of mine are always looking back, longingly and with a subtle kind of desperation that coils my stomach into a knot.

But that road remains empty and deserted. You are there at the starting point, at that first crack, unaware of this path—blind to the road stretching out beneath your feet. And I am here, on the other end, wondering where exactly is the end, because the road only continues to grow and extend with each step I take.

It needs to stop extending, I know that now. The road needs to come to a stop, to find a finish line—but this heart of mine knows no boundaries, knows no limits, and so it goes on.

It will be pretty brave of me, if I can bring myself to take a hold of your chin and gently tilt your head in the direction of this road. Gently, of course. Force will not work with you, and neither do I want to exercise it.

You will probably walk the entire distance, to the point I'm at, and then part ways for good. Or I walk all the way from this point back to the start, and veer into a completely different path that I'd have otherwise taken had that first crack in my armour not occurred.

I don't know which option is better, but I can acknowledge that I know both choices lead to us eventually parting ways, Daniel. I may have been this silly girl with a hopeless heart, and perhaps I still am, but fantasies don't dwell in my head.

And I know now as I knew then, that we could never walk down the same road —we've never even existed in the same versions of reality.

You, in one where I was Deborah Barclay, just that childhood friend and the girl you watched grow. And I, in one where you were—are—Daniel Harrington, the boy with the night sky in his eyes and a piece of my heart that's no longer mine to claim.

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