Next chapter! It's already decided, the next chapter will be the end of this story, and I must admit that I have the idea for it, I just need to get it out, and since I finally finished with the semester in school I can do it soon. I already know about the spelling mistake in the title of this chapter, but you'll find out the reason why it is named so. Fav, follow or review, and without further else to say enjoy :)
I lofe you
I'm not the kind of person who asks for a lot of things, or the kind of person who receives the small amount he asks for, so having asked Ben for a single dorm and that such an event actually happened only an hour later it's something like an achievement, a great achievement. One to the short list of my achievements.
I finish spinning around with redoubled step at the same time the music ends, I take a deep breath so then I drop on the bed and look at the ceiling, then I turn my head to the left, to the right, so then I place my arms behind my head while I close my eyelids.
It's always good to take a little break after exercising, and dancing is my way of exercising, since I finally quit the tourney team since I simply can't keep doing something that I don't like, besides that now I can do it in my dorm, in a single dorm. Freedom.
It's not a very large place, in fact my room on the Isle is, at least, a third larger than this place, or so it's how I remember it, however the few things I have brought and those that brought the guards sent by Ben for my moving on are mine, I have got them or they have been given to me.
I have a wide and comfortable bed, with soft sheets that will wait for me every night although it's about the same size as the last one. I was expecting a bigger one.
Sunlight comes in through the abundance of windows, about five if I count the small skylight on the ceiling, the view from the outside allows me to see a fraction of the citadel, a castle that seems to be tiny at the end of a large forest, and the movement of the ocean along with the boats that furrow it.
Curiously I can't see the Isle, not unless I pull out my head and stretch the neck enough to distinguish it by its yellowish glow between the trees. The dorm is located on the first floor, more or less I think it's at the same height as the shared one, and perhaps the only disadvantage of all this is that I should have to use the communal bathroom to shower and everything else.
I don't feel that kind of complexed about my body, in that way I will overcome it.
I reach out to gropingly take my cell phone from the nightstand, I draw the unlock pattern and get into the texts.
I stare at it, realizing that I only used it out of necessity and nothing more than that, just to take spare pictures of me or the advances of some of my inventions, or just to use some applications and games.
Jay had it in his possession when I stopped being with him and with everyone else, it had the pattern since then and he memorized it in a matter of a single second, and it still seems that it was yesterday when I saw him at night, sliding his finger over the screen and looking carefully at each picture again and again, laughing with sad tears in his eyes, confused when he saw the progress of what I did or the images I sent to Doug and the guys from the Mechatronics team.
The rise of his emotional expression occurred when he saw the photos and the video I took when he was on his knees, asking, panting and rolling over himself on that day when Mal conjured the spell where she turned everyone into dogs. Every time he got to that part he moved the phone aside, he held a pillow against his body and curled himself up, when he began to wonder to himself why I had made that decision and why he had pushed me to do it.
I just watched him until the cry made him fall asleep, the next morning he eliminated all traces of 'weakness' and continued with his day to day.
I snort and turn my attention to the phone, only to find three messages that the sound of the music didn't let me hear when they arrived. Nothing important.
Mal: Jay asked about you and why your crap isn't in his dorm anymore. In the language of Auradon I'll tell ya to be careful, unless you want me to intervene and kill him once and for all. ;)
Ben: Hey, buddy. I hope the dorm is to your liking, and I also hope we could talk soon, you know where to find me. :)
Ally: I don't know if the rumors are true or not, and I don't know why I'm expecting an answer to this if I'm not sure what I'm doing, yet I don't know anyone smarter than you, not even Doug. Anyway, I have a Physics test very soon, could you help me to study a little and clarify some things? I would greatly appreciate it.
I roll my eyes and snort again, I text back to Mal to don't do anything against him (yet), that I'll do something or some explanation I'll come to me to say that I'm making drastic decisions to both and for both of us, one of them is being a Little detachment between us so we can both breathe.
Yeah, I feel suffocated by everything I'm doing in Jay and the confusing way he approaches to me wanting to communicate himself without knowing the words or the right way to do it, but doing it anyway.
I've learned on the hard way that too much proximity can leave some serious consequences, like in the case of two atoms that are about to make an atomic bomb to explode once and for all and it to erase all traces of the things that were around it, and every one of the things that are around me are too good so that proximity, besides the mistakes made by two people, were enough to erase all the traces of those things.
It wouldn't be fair to any of the parties.
And it's not fair for me.
I text back to Ben that I feel good, comfortable with the extra space I have, and that in any time that he has available we can talk so that little friendship between us isn't lost.
Right now I could begin to make a list about the people I can consider close to me again, friends and enemies, good ones and bad ones; split up each and every one of the different relationships I've formed in this couple of months, but that would involve thinking, thinking carefully about everything I've gone through so far, how they behaved in my absence, and how they do it now. In some way I would have to limit my life into a huge set of zeros and ones, something like a binary code in which no other factor can be made present or it would mess up the origin that things should have, the way in which everything is planned or, supposedly , it should follow according to a plan.
Thinking is painful, observing the details from a certain distance is it since it allows to see a very different nuance, besides for me the fact of thinking about the part of relations has always been somewhat difficult because a fear that, if I got very fond with something or with someone then some other superior force that exceeds me will be in charge to destroy it, to remove it from me.
Mom was that force.
She's no longer here, with me, there's no way she can leave the Isle, there's no way she can force me to do things I don't want to, to think and act in a way that doesn't seem entirely mine, like a puppet.
I don't have to fear anything else, now I'm a free boy who can do whatever he wants and act as he wants. I shouldn't be afraid. I shouldn't be afraid. I shouldn't be afraid. But… do I really shouldn't fear? It would be strange for me not having to look over my shoulder at any kind of threat.
But now I have the magic of dad with me, that makes me think seriously about the possibility of a complete freedom.
I text back to Ally that she can come over at any time, I specify her the location of the dorm, and drop the phone without some kind of remorse to the floor, listening a dry sound when it hits. It's not like I care.
I place an arm over my eyes and start thinking about the festival coming in this next weekend, the Blue Festival. According to what I read in the library and in the electronic collection it is one of the oldest celebrations around here, it went from being a small celebration that took place in each of the kingdoms, in which there was a humble offering to, it's not difficult to guess, the Blue Fairy, for it to become something completely opposed to humility, becoming stunning, something with fireworks, too much joy, loud music, and a great opportunity for all of them to release some academic tension (the latter as I heard it from the students who only see that day as a break).
It receives the name both for the Fairy and for the fact that it coincides with an environmental phenomenon called 'blue hour', where there is neither daylight nor total darkness, only a period of time where the ambient light is enigmatically dyed from a light blue hue. Also, according to one legend, it's at that time in which those people with the most honest and pure hearts can make a wish, and it will be granted if their intentions are totally good.
In some universe thinking about that possibility would make anyone skeptical, but this is Auradon, magic happens in the least expected place, or it can reach the least expected person. I am a good example of that.
I remove my arm and rub my fingers against the palms, awakening the grayish current and seeing how it moves over my skin, the brightness is of such intensity that it produces a barely visible trace on my face.
This way of seeing it is new to me, I got used to seeing magic in the form of Mal's green glow, Freddie's purple smoke, Jordan's golden snaps, Jane's bluish flashes, or being channeled into objects, but never in an image like this. Oneness, yeah, that must be the essence in each of the people who have magic, each one pf them must be unique in their own way.
I interrupt my thoughts because of knockings on the door, two knocks, a pause, and two more knocks.
I stop the music, which stays about two meters away from me, and I stand up. While I walk towards the door the things around me are moving, at my will: the books that were scattered around the dorm begin to pile on the desk and at the foot of the bed, the notes and the few books I have about Physics stand open on the mattress, the windows get closed and some clothes go back to their place in the chest of drawers.
I hold the knob with my whole hand when the movements stop, which allows me to smile broadly.
I don't need a tutor to learn how to control my magic, all I need is to know that I have control and that almost nothing can beat me.
I say almost nothing to not close the door to any possibility, such as being hit by a car or sent to the Isle at the slightest provocation.
"Who's there?" I ask, something I should have done before even thinking about getting up.
"Oh, it's me, Ally" she replies with her peculiar accent and half yawn.
I put down the barrier that I set against the door, it was there because he could enter when I least expected him by knocking it down with his shoulder or with a kick, as in his failed attempt to enter the museum, and I open it a little to be able to see Ally, with her blue eyes about to close, disheveled except for a sloppy ponytail, with circles almost as dark as mine around her eyes, and with such a physical appearance that can be termed as terrible.
The school year is getting the best of her.
"I know, I look like a complete disaster" she says, yawning and stretching just like if she had just gotten out of bed.
"I wasn't going to say anything about it, so…".
"You thought it, I could see it written on your face, but that's okay, there are those who have no tact to say it" she doesn't have makeup and seems to be dressed the first thing she could find at hand. Until not long ago, maybe half-week ago, she was walking down the hallways glistening in her bright blue sky dresses, like if she could face anything the school threw at her, "but this test is going to be a great weight I will take off from my shoulders once I approve it".
"Then let's not waste any more time".
I open the door completely so that she can come in, before she could finish doing so she approaches towards me to surround me with her thin and short arms, she tilts her head so that her ear is leaning against my heart. She sighs.
I let the door close slowly while I return her the action, passing my arms over her shoulders and placing my cheek over her head, enjoying when she begins to move a little sideways and laughs a little. I like Ally, she's the kind of girl who does the things that she has in her head, a bit impulsive maybe, but without getting to be a total freak.
"It's good to know you're back, because I didn't believe it until now".
"And I'm not going anywhere" we move apart and her bright eyes stare at me, we both begin to smile and that's when I notice that light pink tone that shines in her cheeks, something that she doesn't stand for a long time since she looks down and moves her body away from mine. "Fine then, let's prepare that test".
Somehow she seems to surrender to what she was thinking since she smiles, with something like a hint of sadness, and she keeps walking until she sits on her knees in my bed, flipping through the notes I made to fall there.
Does Ally like me? Does Ally like me as Jane did/does?
It wasn't me who left stuff clear to Jane, Jay did, and with all that I caused then I don't think they can see each other's faces, just like with Audrey. However I feel bad for provoking things in her, and if it is the case now with Ally then I also have to clarify the situation. For her sake.
I swallow the tense knot that suddenly forms in my throat and walk with more confidence than the one I have, I move swinging my arms more than the necessary and pretending like if nothing strange was going on through my head.
Acting casual still isn't a thing that comes to me naturally.
"So, Physics, huh?" «subtlety isn't my thing either».
"Yes, I really don't know what I was thinking, I thought it would be simple".
"I've never heard anyone think of it as something simple, rather like something everyone would fled, like us when we were passing by" I say while I also sit on my knees on the mattress, watching her while she frowns at my notes and laughing at my lousy comments. Oh, Ally.
"I'm not what many people would call as an ordinary girl, I'm intrigued by many things that happen here and in Wonderland. That's why I chose that elective, I want to know a little about the physics of alternate dimensions".
"Is that a thing?" I ask, really surprised that there's something with a name that would make many people irritable.
"Of course it does, my mother talked to me about it, she studied it to give a more scientific sense to the trips she made to Wonderland without everyone thinking she was crazy or something similar" she looks at me in the eyes with each word, her jaw clenched like if she thought I'm judging her, or her mother.
"Okay, like that I understand your motivation a little more" I say, ducking my head, as I usually do with Dude before he decides to get nuts and attack for no apparent reason. "Tell me what you want me to help you with".
She smiles once more and begins to explain to me the doubts she has had since the beginning of the semester, from one moment to the next we get into a deep talk about the theorems and theories, mechanics, electromagnetism, properties of matter, relativity, particle physics, Linear algebra, geometry, calculation and applied mathematics, we practically apply one or two exercises of each one of them to clarify things that are left behind and to solve new ideas that I hadn't got before without having done a review like this.
Ally is good, very good, she's able to understand the theory perfectly, each of the concepts and definitions that we review she couples them in her memory and recites them even if we read a lot of time ago. In the applied exercises she makes some mistakes and corrects them before I can even got to remark them, she's never exasperated if she doesn't succeed and she's always willing to tell me if I'm wrong in something that I'm also doing. Reciprocal learning.
Maybe we can't have anything more than this, if it is what she has in mind or if the predictions that are in my head are real, but at least I can get a friend that is an intellectual challenge.
"What momentum means?" I ask, reading one of the many text cards that we made to speed up her review and punctuate the most important things. I glance at the clock on my nightstand, and I didn't think we'd take that long in this; eleven o'clock sharp.
"It is a magnitude of vector type that describes the movement of a body, or in other words is the amount of movement product of the mass of the body and its speed at a given time".
"Correct, I think it's a good definition, albeit a bit confusing at the beginning" I say, moving on to the next card, waiting for the moment when I can feel tired once again. Today will be another long night in full vigil until the sun rises on the horizon, "now tell me: in a very simplistic way, how would you define Vaschy-Buckingham's theorem and what would be its usefulness?".
"I have a feeling that's one of the hardest, and it's something that surely will be asked to send many of us to the slaughterhouse" she says, making me laugh for a real reason. "In a very basic way it states that given a physical relationship expressible by an equation, where there are n physical quantities or variables, and if those variables are expressed in terms of dimensionally independent physical quantities, then the original equation can be written equivalently as an equation with a series of n-k dimensionless numbers constructed with the original variables" I nod with my head while she responds and I look at her closely, fascinated to see the dedication that she's putting in all this. "Its main utility would be to reduce a dimensional problem to a dimensionless one with fewer parameters".
"This test will be the simplest thing for you, I'm pretty sure you're gonna get the highest grade of them all" we look at each other in the eyes for a moment and I give her a smile, receiving one as a way of thanking for the compliment. "Okay, next question…".
"Let's take a break for a moment, my brain hurts for all I have to memorize, and the test is practically at the beginning of the day" she snaps, rubbing her temples to emphasize her words.
"In fact the brain doesn't feel pain, nothing actually, it's the nerve endings of the skull what communicate the painful sensation".
"Are you talking serious?" her voice sounds like if she has just acquired a curious data with which she can engage in conversation.
"I swear it, I had to read about it to write down an essay, and the same goes to the lungs and stomach, the pain comes from nerve endings around the problem zone".
"I'll write that at the end of my test, if I don't approve in Physics at least I'll have something about general knowledge and curious data" I laugh once more at her comment, she indeed makes me laugh.
"I'm sure they'll take that into account, and I could use a break".
Without need of another word she makes the notes and the books aside, she looses her hair from the sloppy ponytail so that she can lie down completely on my mattress, she crosses her hands on her stomach and plays with her feet, moving them from one side to the other in intervals of three seconds.
I do the same thing as she and I lean on her shoulder, my face literally next to hers when she lifts her head over my shoulder, while we remain silent we both look at the ceiling and we hear the sound of crickets while the wind blows outside, the cold wind that no longer sneaks into the dorm for having the windows open all the time.
"You want something to eat?" I ask after a moment of silence, in which I thought she had fallen asleep because of her measured breathing.
"Oh, no thanks, I don't feel like going to the cafeteria, and because of the time I think it must be closed".
"It's not necessary, I can make something appear right here, and neither of us has to move in the slightest" I say, tilting my lips to the side where she can't see me.
"Is that true too?" she moves her head in my direction just a little, I can feel her breath lightly against my neck. "Now you have magic?".
"Uh, yeah, it's true, although I don't use it that much" «and it's not like if I'm going to like using it too much».
"Great, but no thanks, the foods generated with magic have a very peculiar taste and texture, they are somewhat dry and tasteless, that if you get used to the taste of many types of food".
"Then what do you want to do while we are on a break?" I ask, and in the act I wish to repent since I opened the door to many possibilities.
"I don't know, talk maybe? I think it's a good idea to change the scene".
"I had in mind to tell you that you are the first who hasn't asked about what happened to me, or when I came back and what happened then" she sighs, tired.
"That's because I suppose it brings you bad memories, and although I can be a little annoying at times, I don't like to make people remember their bad moments before making drastic decisions".
To say that wasn't like a blow against my pride, or against my dignity, would be a great denial, but I try to pass it by.
"I'm sorry if I offended you, sometimes I have attacks of gross honesty".
"That's fine, there's no problem.
She begins to hum a song that, on the Isle, was used to be sung aloud and with off-key notes by the guys who lived in the streets, as a mockery of each and every one of the princes, princesses, kings and queens of Auradon, while she takes one of Dude's toys, a squeaky ball that he hasn't destroyed since it's new, and Ally found it as a way to clear her mind of the stress by squeezing it from time to time for the sound to calm her down. Dude has been asleep since she got here, and he hasn't wake up at all.
My cell phone vibrates on the bedside table, it's like the eighth time it does to warn me about a text message, and I've ignored each of them for focusing more on helping Ally.
I know who the messages are from, at least one of them must be Mal's repply and another from Ben, Evie doesn't usually send them since she prefers those long calls to tell me what's going on outside, and the other contacts are relatively closer to me. I have distanced myself a little from the girls, since I told them about the new dorm they disagreed, at first, and then Mal decided to make it a new ward of evilness for acts against specific victims whose destiny should be get disappeared. Understand Audrey and Jay in there, although Chad is on that list but nobody said his name directly.
The messages come from Jay, it's deductible by simple elimination order, and I don't want to know what's in them for fear that I'll continue to act again and again contrary to what goes on in my head, inside me.
It's true, I still have my feelings for him, each and every one of them. It's easier to act in the total opposite, but I'm getting tired of doing it, but again there's this latent fear of getting hurt, to be hiding behind something bigger than me to seek protection, to find someone who takes care of everything that it surpasses me in intensity and strength.
Why do I want to keep trying to be the opposite of me? All that facade is going to end sometime, and at that moment I will not know what to do to get out.
"Can I ask you a question?" she says quietly, like a whisper, like if she thought the walls are listening or something. I do believe they do it since the rumors run fast here, very fast.
Probably there's already one about what she and I will be doing here, and if it reaches Jay's ears then it's certain that I will not see its end.
"Is it about something embarrassing?" I ask defensively, feeling my cheeks getting warm gradually.
"It's rather intimate, and you can ask me about the same thing".
"I think it's a fair deal, if a bit nosy" I say, letting out a sigh that would rather be defined as a snort. "Ask then".
"Are you still in love with Jay?".
I know Ally well enough to know that would be her question, and it makes the ideas to move inside my head, for me to start thinking. Guaranteed pain.
I move there in my place, uncomfortable, like if I were in the middle of a test, or in another trial. I close my eyelids, take a deep breath, and concentrate on the first idea I can take from my mental ocean. The first that leaps into my memories is Jay's bright brown eyes, the curve and texture of his lips along with the mocking, arrogant, malicious, and yet warm smile that he used to give me when we were little kids and I was feeling scared, when I was afraid that surely I wouldn't see him the next day because of the beating mom would give me, or simply when he caught me looking at him and he was trying not to raise my levels of distress.
I can almost hear his velvety and deep voice, that voice whispering those things in my ear, those that were totally foreign to his way of acting or thinking, I can almost recall all the touches of his hands on my body, every kiss he gave me, every moment we spent and how I reacted to it.
I can remember each and every one of the things that we lived. Jay is the foundation in many of my best memories, which in essence were the pillars of my happiness in these last couple of months and throughout my pathetic existence.
With that I can conclude that all this, since the day before leaving the Isle, has been a moment that I can never erase from my memory, nor with my best attempt, that I hate and I don't totally hate many people here, and that even when I had to die for everything that happened, all that gets supplemented by the fact that my feelings for Jay are real and still existing, what I felt and lived with Jay was and is a crazy, intense, deep and unequaled romantic moment.
That seen from the positivist side of it. In its opposite are the comments with intention to hurt that he threw against me, as a game, the blows and all that we had to do by nature.
If I return to my thesis about being good and bad then it's going to be a sickly vicious cycle that will last until either of us ends up completely dead for real or at the opposite end of the galaxy, we will be forced to act and be aware of what the other does, of what bothers him or what not, that only in order to not end up in a tense situation that causes concern in everyone else.
I open my eyelids again and Ally smiles at me, eager for an answer.
"Honestly it's kinda hard to answer" I say, to answer, not knowing where I want to go, again, "now I can tell you that I'm still being it at the same time that I wish I weren't" she arches her eyebrow, not understanding what I'm trying to say with a few words. "I see it more or less like if we both were a song: it has bars and rhythms, arrangements and tunings, he could be the melody and I the voice that sings, or vice versa, but there are exceptions in which a melody doesn't need a voice, or the singing doesn't need a melody that accompanies it and yet it still is slashing. They're complements at the same time they're not vitally necessary, and that's how I feel that Jay and I are now, complements but not vital".
Just like a prediction, or some kind of curse, my cell phone starts to vibrate with intensity on the bedside table, something unusual since I don't usually get any phone calls, much less at this time of the night. I take it to look at the sender and I immediately would like to reject it.
"H-he's calling" I say, feeling that I blush to see that absurd image of him smiling, which at one time seemed delightful to me.
"Well, do not make him wait, pick it up" she says, taking the phone for me and placing it in my shaking hand. As a reflex act my thumb gets placed on the symbol so that, with just sliding it, I'd be listening to his voice on the other side of the line.
"I don't think I'm ready to…".
Again she decides to act for me by sliding my thumb and slowly bringing it towards my ear, which I thank her deep down. Our glances meet each other's for a moment before I achieve to be able to regain the necessary sanity to establish some conversation, I also let out a short sigh and give her a small smile when I lower my gaze.
"I didn't expect you to pick me up on the first try" he says, laughing, and I swear he'd be smiling if I had him in front of me.
"Hi to you too" I say, laughing too.
We fall in silence, a deep silence, which gets broken only because I hear his breathing, and even so I feel obliged to move the cell phone and watch the timer marking continuously its course, every second in which nobody says anything. Ally limits herself to look at me, to reread the notes a little and smile, as if she were in that world that seems almost unique for her.
"So, you left" he says after a full minute of silence, to which it's impossible for me not to snort.
"I just changed dorms, it's not like if I was transferred from school, or like if I had returned to the Isle" Ally tilts her head, and I suppose my subtle attempt to whisper was anything but subtle.
"Even so, I would have known about if for Mal and a great string of insults that almost ended in me punching her lights out".
"She would have shattered you in the next second, we both know it".
Yeah, let it be clear that I care about his well-being, even though he doesn't even think of the risks that his impulsive and reckless acts can bring. And since I don't either then I suppose that all this was more than destined to the imminent ruin and destruction for both of us.
"I told you I'd face Maleficent for you if I had to, Mal is nothing more than a collateral damage to all this" I blush again, this time for remembering that absurd 'promise' he made before we left the Isle, and I'm really surprised that he remembers it since he's not someone to make promises, they are rather deals in which he must obtain some kind of profit.
That makes me think that the gain in that deal was me, and I almost laugh to think of myself as an object that can be exchanged for something that is better looking, or valuable. Or of a different gender.
"This is… uh, uncomfortable, and truth is this isn't the kind of talk I'd like to have on the phone".
"I want to see you" he snaps, like if what I just said was nothing more than a loose comment, of no importance, and it really doesn't have it. "Also I have a kind of surprise for you".
"You know I'm not very close to surprises" I argue, noticing it's now when I start to get defensive, something that frustrates him enough to growl on the other side of the phone.
"Can we act like two ordinary persons at least for a couple of minutes?" he asks, and because of his voice I'm sure he's not trying to hide the anger that he has for dealing with me and trying to approach to me in some way so that he can ask for my forgiveness again. "Can we act like if we were best friends again even if it's only for a little while?".
I'm not quite sure where it happened but Ally is sitting by my side, listening carefully to what he says and what I'm answering, and towards that question she does nothing more but to look me in the eyes, she nods before preparing to keep the notes which we did, to put the books on the floor, and to tie her hair once again in another sloppy ponytail.
"Tell him yes, anyway I must go back to my dorm before I break another rule about curfew" she whispers, and for some reason when she does that her accent becomes more pronounced.
I remain quiet since I don't want to please her with an answer, nor him either, but ending the call just like this would only arouse his insistence, and an insistent Jay is something that I would least like to deal with.
"Carlos? You there?" he says, taking my attention back once more. "Listen, it's not something you have to do, I'd like to…".
"First floor to the right, dorm nineteen" I interrupt him, yielding once more to his requests. How many more will I have to yield in?
I finish the call when he was going to say something else, I sigh again and look up when Ally's weight stops sinking the mattress. She smoothes her clothes before stretching again, just like the terrifying cat that sometimes chases her through the hallways or appears on the tree branches.
A cat should not lose his head so easily, literally.
"Fine then, I'd better get going before causing a problem in that paradise you two call your friendship" she quotes in that last part, then she turns and walks over to the door before I can even stand. "Oh, I almost forgot, and apparently Evie also forgot it. Tomorrow we are going to do a dance number for the Blue Festival, both Evie and Evie asked me to tell you if you would be a dancer in our choreography".
"Do you expect me to memorize a full dance number for tomorrow night?" I say, raising the tone of my voice with each word, sounding extremely altered at the end of my question.
"It's their request, not mine".
I narrow my eyes in her direction, and because of her relaxed attitude I know she's telling the truth, and I hate the girls for not telling me before. Goddammit!
I pinch the bridge of my nose, thinking that my final projects are in their final stages to be delivered, my homework is finished, and after all I have nothing to do in another sleepless night.
"I suppose if I get the choreography I can make a try".
"You're the best ex-villain in the world!" from one moment to the other she throws herself over me, she hugs me and kisses me on the cheek, then she moves away and returns to the door while jumping in her walk.
"Wait, I didn't ask my question" I say, remembering our deal.
"Oh, that's true. Ask then".
I bite my lower lip because I'm sure it's just something that happens inside my wild imagination, there are no facts that substantiate what I'm thinking. I swallow the knot in my throat anyway.
"D-do you like me?" «I need to write an essay about the definition of subtlety and the consequences it can bring not to act with it, although she asked only like it came to her mind, so it's something similar».
"Oh" she says, lowering her eyes and settling the hair that covers her forehead behind her left ear. She's not blushing. "I'm sorry if something I did make that impression to you, but no, you're smart, attentive and charismatic, but I don't see you otherwise beyond that, Carlos".
"T-that's okay, it was just something I had in mind" I scratch the back of my neck, relieved and tense at the same time. "Anyway, sleep a little, and I wish you success in your test; I would say that I wish you luck but that's for mediocre".
She gives me a smile and leaves my dorm, I hear her footsteps while she walks down the hallway until the point where the only thing I hear is my breathing, not even the crickets continue to tune their melodies on the outside.
I get up and drag my feet to my chest of drawers, I take gray cotton pants and a tank top, I change my clothes and throw them at the pile of dirty clothes that I will send to the laundry, something Ben told me that someone else could do so I wouldn't have to keep worrying about doing it myself.
I don't go beyond four steps towards my bed when I'm interrupted once again by someone knocking on the other side of the door. It's time.
I open the door ajar, enough so that the light of the interior illuminates the half of his face, so that his left eye gives off a brightness that makes me move in my place, an act that fortunately is hidden by the door between us.
His nose is covered by his hand and it has some pinkish color, like if he had a cold, something that wasn't very usual to happen before. It's covered by an improvised handkerchief made with a few pieces of brown cloth, which are dripping, telling the ice cubes that must surely be in there to decrease the swelling of his nose.
"I-I'm sorry I punched you" I say, opening the door wider so that the light completely illuminates his face. "Truth is I'm not sorry".
"Easy there, no grudges about it" he smiles in defeat, "I had it well deserved anyway, besides I didn't think that someone as thin as you was going to punch so hard".
"I changed when I could return".
"And I wasn't there to witness it, or to give explanations if you had doubts".
He looks into my eye, a very fixed eye contact, and if it's true that the eyes are the window of the soul, or whatever, then I'm sure that I'm looking straight at his repentance, being it feigned or not it gets something inside me to move by the way he seems to enlarge his eyes, like Dude when he does something wrong and hopes that with a similar gesture I try to ignore it. And it tends to triumph.
I watch his face, the features that before have looked better and that now look a little haggard, probably because of the lack of restful sleep and the constant stress for being a target of insults in addition to looks of contempt, and I see that his lower lip trembles a little, which tries to mitigate by biting it from the inside.
"You can come in" I say, lowering my gaze and opening the door completely, making inevitable the shivering when his arm rubs against mine.
He relaxes his shoulders in the moment I grant her access and I step aside to give him enough space to come in, before which I look down and cling to the door to suppress my nervousness, making inevitable the shudder that comes when his exposed arm brushes against mine.
I see his wide back while he walks and stands still, I notice that his hair doesn't move with his movements, which must be fastened with the beanie and the hood of the sweatshirt he's wearing, a black sleeveless sweatshirt, which it's clear that he ripped off since the seams are broken at the shoulder height.
"You have a nice place" he takes one entire spin, stopping just two or three seconds to look at something, then he approaches to a window and places his fingers on the frame, watching like if the height was a simple challenge to make a forward somersault with a perfect landing before he begins sprinting towards the forest and disappears in the dark, in the style that he used to do on the Isle.
"I like the extra space" I say, being honest with him now that I have him here, and with me by saying what I have in mind. But I'm just saying it, what I'm not doing is acting how I would like it, "I feel a little more relaxation".
"Certainly it seems so" he snorts and pulls away from the window, he walks over to my bed and sits over the mattress, moving a little until he finds a more comfortable place, though not quite since he frowns. "Soft mattress, it sinks and it's small, I don't like it".
"Well, the mattress is only for me, so…" I leave the sentence unfinished since he frowns more, and also see him filling his chest with air reminds me of the few times when he feels uncomfortable to be in a certain place.
"That's true too".
With all of his complaints, and the motivation that brought him here in the first place, he smiles broadly, showing all his teeth. A sincere smile that strains his eyes, one of the ways to identify its authenticity.
He pats the space next to him, inviting me, tempting me, and like the lure that I used to be in some of the missions imposed by our parents I obey him without question, I walk to his side but before sitting he raises a finger, stopping me three steps away, I lower my gaze when he gets up, I look at the floor, at the door, but never to his face or him in general.
"First I want to see how you changed".
"I'm not something that's on a dresser for the highest bidder" he makes me look up since he places his hand under my chin.
"I'd pay any amount to have you, I really would".
I bite my cheek from the inside, almost hissing through the pain although that doesn't stop the blush that takes over my face, over my whole body, and the next second we're dangerously close… for him more than anything, his hands are placed in my shoulders while his eyes do the work of inspecting all that he lost in due time, then he spins around me, like if he were some kind of majestic lion stalking his defenseless prey.
I don't doubt that he has done this kind of thing with someone else, but it's not like I really want to stop and ask about it.
What worries me the most for now is that simply by stretching out my arms we'll be touching each other again, again I'll be falling into the vicious circle that is our life as friends and as individual beings. However that's what I most want now, to yield one more time although later I'll regret to have done it.
"You look so different, tall, with other features, a little more of muscles and a different style, but it's like if nothing in you had changed" I raise an eyebrow when he appears to my left and stands in front of me, "everything in you is still unique, from your freckles to the strange way you comb, and even so I know that I can always see you as a unique person".
He looks at me and makes me want to shrink for some strange reason, but I don't lose our eye contact. It's too difficult to see him without imagining again his panic at seeing me as energy in the dorm, and when he saw me in the dorm alive one more time. I still find it kind of annoying to think that I did something like that to him; it doesn't seem to bother him at the moment that his lips tighten in a very, very hidden smile, he takes my hand and this time he makes us sit on the edge of the bed, his pinkie entwined with mine.
"You said you had a surprise for me" I say, reminding him the reason why he's supposed to give me this visit.
He smiles and separates our hands, he lets out a long sigh before removing the hood from his sweatshirt, in fact the beanie I gave him is down, but when he takes it off it makes me pant on the spot, by surprise.
His hair… his hair is gone…
It's not like he's bald either, no, but it's just the fact that now it's nothing more than the shadow of what it used to be, as short as Doug's hair when we got here in the first day, so absent, so little usual.
I don't know if it's because I got used to seeing his hair grow for all the years we spent together or what but his head seems smaller, with a certain degree of deformity here and there, besides he doesn't seem so threatening or huge anymore, he rather seems like a common sixteen year old guy who just had a radical and completely new haircut.
By inertia my hands start moving towards his head, it's simple curiosity what takes hold over my fingers when they sink between the short locks. It is soft, very soft, and the tingling it produces on my skin makes me shrug a little; while I'm on it he closes his eyelids slowly, letting me to act in a free way and without me seeing his bright eyes, inspecting each one of my actions, which makes me feel relieved and tense at the same time. He sighs from time to time, tilting his head to the left or right while I approach to his neck, and if he were a cat I'm sure he would be purring.
"I thought you wouldn't cut it off unless you screwed it up big time" I say, to what he frowns.
Those words were spoken on the Isle, when we were under the front door of his house, eating a few strips of oat that he stole in an oversight of the barter market. He was thirteen and I was eleven, the girls were gone to I don't remember well what to do, but it involved something ordered by the Evil Queen.
He said he would only cut it off if some robbery was thwarted by some strange variable, if he was trapped in a simple holdup, if he screwed it up, or if he felt that he had defrauded someone important to him, and the only important person for him is himself, and perhaps his father in moments where his narcissism ceases to be a definition of his personality.
"Well" he begins to say quietly, slowly opening his eyelids and stopping my hands at the level of his cheeks, he manages to entwine his fingers with mine before bringing my knuckles to his lips. The proximity between the two of us is still something that causes me discomfort, "for the first time in years I feel that I have defrauded someone important in my life, the person I have seen grow up and who has had to endure hundreds of my bad decisions, and the only person who really showed me that there is a limit to the thousands of nonsense that someone can commit".
Just like the steady attack coming from a snake he leans forward, something my body knew he would do, I knew it since something like the survival instinct became more present in me. I manage to move my head back, making him to kiss the air between us, so that he sighs again and lowers our hands until they lie on the sheets, still entwined.
"Now what, Carlos? What follows after so many bad decisions gathered together in just a few days?" I take a deep breath to reassure the storm of emotions within me. "This simply can't keep going forward, it has to stop at some point. But, what's next?".
I lower my gaze, then I fix it intensely straight in his eyes, causing him to move in his place, which reminds me of what he said about the way I stare at things, carefully.
"What's next is that I'm gonna tell the truth, a couple of things that may be uncomfortable for both of us, so I hope you to listen until I'm done" he does nothing but smile and nod.
Here I go.
"Strange as it may seem to you, I'm going to apologize for being that person so alien to me, distant and aiming to teach a lesson in the bad way to someone else, it was something stupid, I'm stupid anyway, and I really don't wanna make you to go through another embarrassing moment like that".
"It takes a million lives for me to apologize completely, and that wouldn't even be enough" I arch my eyebrow when he interrupts me, and he responds by shrinking minimally. "Sorry, I had to say something, and now that I don't think I'm able to stop I wanna say that I love you, and I'd like to say it more than once, strong and loud, but I know you deserve better than me, someone better".
"I've thought of that, and I realized that I love you too, but not in the way that these people in Auradon do it, I love you but with an ef in the middle of the word" I snap, and towards the bewilderment of his eyebrow raised up I split our hands just to take the piece of paper that I was writing behind him, which states the nonsense I just said: I lofe you.
He looks at it, he reads it over and over, turns it in his free hand, like if on the back it had another thing written to deny what I said, or to collate, or whatever, but with the aim of trying to ignore this I'm trying to express.
Why is it so difficult to talk to him?
"I don't understand, what does this mean?".
"It means that loving you, at least from my part, is a mistake" he opens his mouth to argue, which I prevent from thinking that he stands still, which happens when my magic does it. I didn't even have the opportunity to tell him that new feature in me. "I know that I was an inciter to all this, I know it was something initiated primarily by me, and now I realize that it was a mistake. We're villains after all, as such we don't seek a happy ending, but if we're close enough to get it there will always be something to stop it, that something was Audrey in your case, in mine was the constant uncertainty in what I wanted in the beginning by having you by my side and in what could happen next".
I inhibit the effect of my magic when he ceases to be catatonic and moves again, like if he had been petrified for centuries.
"I'm not saying you're a toxic person or something… well, I actually do it, but since I'm one too I think the most important thing now is the well-being of both of us, something we can achieve if, once and for all, we put an end to all this and we are no longer involved in a commitment that doesn't end up pleasing either of us, not to us or to others".
His expression breaks when he hears that last part, and for some reason I imagine something like that must have looked like when Freddie broke up with him, because she's a person who was influential in his life, and I know that I too have been someone who has taught him a few things about himself, so I do understand that he has that same reaction for my words.
His body also reacts, he bends in his place, he begins to breathe more agitatedly, like if he were terrified by something else I can do, his hand still entwined with mine begins to tremble slightly, something that I try to eliminate by caressing his back with my thumb.
"I-I never thought you thought in that way, you seemed happy n-no matter what was going on a-around us, and t-the worst part is that I-I'm aware of your words and a-about my a-acts" hear him sobbing slightly and see how his eyes fill with tears makes me feel on the verge of crying… and apologizing. "W-would it be quite daring from me to ask o-one last kiss?" I look into his eyes, I hold my breath since I never thought I'd see such a high degree of vulnerability in him, like if he were a puppy found in a cold winter storm and were asking for a home for at least a couple of minutes. "P-please?".
"It would be, although…".
I act on what I want, accurate in my actions, the same attack he was going to do against me against him, so that's why I hardly have time to place my hand on his nape before his lips slowly presses against mine in a clumsy way, without a sudden movement or a crashing, nevertheless it's a pressure that speaks of total necessity.
He opens his eyelids, shocked, before I close mine slowly his hands get placed ephemerally over my cheeks before sliding down towards my chest, there they slowly become into fists while our lips are speaking and they meet again after so long.
I don't deny it this time, I missed him too much.
It surprises me that our lips are moving again with the perfect synchronicity of before, like if we had never distanced ourselves, like if with each time his lips touches mine the days that we we're apart would have been only a couple of milliseconds, and they were just a few.
His tongue pleads for access, which I don't grant even though every fiber of my being is willing to do so. His left hand takes me by the hair and with the other he holds my chest, his lips move with more determination and strength against mine.
I feel dizzy from so many sensations caused by my emotions, by the struggle for dominance that he's anxious to initiate, and by the same intensity of reviving that flame that threatened to become extinct.
However, it all comes to an end after a new act, when the wetness of the tears running down his cheeks causes me to slowly open my eyelids and see Jay crying so clearly, being emotional even though he struggles against it with nails and teeth.
I pull away slowly, causing the little knot of limbs to undo and now we stare at each other, catching our breath and with a couple of things to say but which none of us is brave enough to express.
"I think I'd better go".
I don't do anything, I don't move, I don't speak, if it were possible I wouldn't breathe, and because of my lack of actions he stands up, he puts on the hood from his sweatshirt again before slowly approaching to the door, he takes the knob and the metallic sound pulls me back to everything I just said, to what we have just done, and the fact that I didn't consider that the proposal to see each other once again shouldn't end up exactly in that, in our break up.
It's something hard to think, impossible to say out loud, that's why I feel compelled to say something, anything, anything to see the expression on his face after he allowed himself to cry.
"And… uh, well, I think you already noticed it, but I can do magic" he stops outside the door when he opens it, he closes it before giving me one last smile and the last view of his devastated emotional state.
"It's something we could talk about later".
Before I can answer to that the door closes completely, by the light of the outside I see his shadow in the back, standing there waiting for me to get up, or maybe waiting for me to say something, and since in the next minute I don't do a thing I just see him turning on his heels, walking slowly until once again all I hear is my breathing, heavy and fast.
"Or maybe it will not happen again…" I whisper as I look at the space he just left next to me, and in me. He left the beanie here.
I think of the nights he spent without sleep, in the kind of uncomfortable and unbearable moments that I make him get through; I just threw him again at that, to turn into a ball and sob until he fell asleep, to think about the kind of things he did and what he could do to remedy it.
I'm almost certain that there's no going back, unless our friendship has left intact from this minefield. We're not in terms of friends, or acquaintances, not even of allies, we're practically nothing since we didn't named this.
When I'm about to rationalize about that I receive an email, it's not difficult to guess who the sender is.
Anyway the night is long, enough so that I can memorize a stupid dance number and that I can be in some grief for having lost my first real relationship, one more pillar in my memories and, probably, to my best friend.