Everything I Never Say ✓

[ eighteen ]

Eighteen

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I'm twenty-one now, and capping my pen, putting away this hardcover journal holding all my dirty little secrets, of which you are the purest and yet most painful one.

I tuck it under the mattress of the bed, the least original place and yet the one place nobody will look for it because of that reason alone. Not that it matters; I trust my roommate. But it's always better to be safe than sorry, and you are a secret too precious to risk being brought into the light.

I arrive early to the institute I enrolled in a year back, a platinum status provider of the course I want to follow and get a degree in. My earplugs are snug inside my ears, From Here To Mars by We The Kings drowning out everything else as I stroll through the garden of the institute.

There's a football ground about eleven metres away where local clubs sometimes host small-time matches, and I can make out the outlines of a few boys running around, dark blue and black jerseys catching the sun's rays.

I wonder if you still play football, Daniel. You have always been such a huge fan. I don't know your favourite team, though. I don't know who's your favourite player, or if you have even been able to pick one.

Maybe you have outgrown that phase.

Maybe it was never just a phase, and you are still every bit as passionate about it.

I don't know. I don't know. I know nothing about you these days, weeks, months.

° ° °

Months later, just when I am done with my first exam sitting in that year, I visit home. You do too.

I arrive two days earlier than you.

You arrive two days later than me.

Years have passed, and our timing is still horrible. We were built to miss each other, Daniel—in this lifetime, and probably every other one after it.

The pain is not so crushing and overwhelming now, but it stings. Just a little.

My love, too, is no longer flooding me in gigantic waves or wrenching out my heart. It sits there, within the safety of my ribcage, where it is nurtured and looked after with a tenderness that my hands could never give it. It is just... there. As constant as the air I breathe, the growth of trees, the rising of the sun, and the steady pace of my bruised heart's beats.

The water doesn't drown me anymore; I am there, on the surface, feeling the warmth of the sun above me and catching glimpses of the endless depth beneath my feet at the same time. I know how to stay afloat now—I know that it's okay to float now. I don't have to choose between drowning or planting my feet in dry land. It makes me feel a lot more stable, to be honest.

"Hey," Bash snickers, nudging my side with his elbow as I gingerly move the cone of icing around the cake, allowing the mixture to drip onto the chocolatey surface. "You know, Hadley and I arrived last night and we were going through this album of old photos. Aunt Vivian had taken them to record you and Dan growing up, apparently."

There's a pang in my heart, followed closely by a fluttery feeling that somehow licks away the aftereffects of that sting.

"And you know what I suddenly remembered?" Bash grinned. "That you once told me you had a crush on Daniel."

My hand jolts and a large drop of icing spills—splat!—against the countertop, missing it's mark on the cake.

"What bullshit," I snap, the words rushing out in a heated second, a frenzied heartbeat.