Oliver

The sound of papers moving about was the only thing that filled the current silence; yet even that currently felt like too much noise. A distraction amidst what I currently needed to do. It was something that had been bothering me since I had seen Enrique, the tiniest of tingles now living deep in the back of my head.

"Where did I put them?" I mumbled, digging through the back of my walk in closet. Behind several boxes of old art supplies, notebooks and school assignments I hadn't had the heart to part with… none of it was what I was searching for. "I know I kept all of it." As angry and hurt as I had been with Enrique back then, I hadn't been able to talk myself into getting rid of them, even though there had been a point in time shortly after he left where I had added them to a pile of things to burn, a tradition some schoolmates and I had during the first night of summer.

Truthfully, I hadn't even considered burning them. Not really.

Lifting a large box out of the way, my eyes quickly caught interest in the gold rimmed sketchbook, hidden in the dark, untouched, for all these years and now containing the thinnest layer of dust that would likely give my mother a hernia. In most cases, the cluttered filth would have driven me crazy as well. Currently, though, I didn't even bother wearing gloves, instead allowing a bare finger to run a line across the cover before lifting it to my chest, moving now from the discomfort of kneeling on the hardwood floor to sitting, back pressed against a bare wall as I set the book gently in my lap, opening up to the first page with what could only be described as a wave of nostalgia.

24.05.2002

Based on the date that resided at the top of the page, I had been almost fifteen at the time, still keeping to myself the secret that all had claimed to already know and creating a mild irony in regards to the fact that I currently sat looking at the book in, of all places, a closet.

Enrique

I had written his name off to the side in cursive, his smiling face that I had sketched with a graphite pencil now staring back at me. It wasn't my best work, but I couldn't say it looked terrible for something drawn by a fourteen year old. I actually remembered making it. I'd had to squint due to the lights being dimmed at the time, which affected my progress but also made it easier to hide that I had been blushing, watching him on the couch across from me with the corner of my eye while Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain played on the television in front of us.

Given, I wasn't doing anything inappropriate. I really was just drawing him, but the fact that I was doing it without his knowledge felt somehow intimate and although he was aware that I was sketching, I remember being secretive about the fact that it was him. I didn't want him to catch me and make some sort of 'Draw me like one of your French Girls' joke.

I flipped through a few pages now, some that I'd drawn of myself, one of my sister who must have been around ten at the time, then another of Enrique. After that, it had turned into a sketch book of mostly Enrique… one that was utterly humiliating to be looking back on. I had started hyper-focusing on writing his name as nicely as I could, finding an entire page that was just an attempt on improving my penmanship that was dated a few months after the first drawing, and containing what was probably the deepest and darkest secret I had carried throughout most of my teen years.

I felt my face flush just from looking at what I had written, the I in his name dotted with a small love heart that only a fifteen year old going through puberty could possibly think was a good idea. Turning the pages once again, I watched my artwork gradually improve, most of the drawings humiliating, but at least innocent, just a silly phase where I had behaved like a twelve year old girl in an attempt to understand the ideas and concepts that had been going through my head at the time.

29.6.2003

I stopped for a moment on the page, allowing myself to take in the date that was scrawled on the top corner. Only eight days after I had turned sixteen. We had gone to the beach that week, my family and three friends. I had only sketched Enrique, though. It was the only time I had drawn him shirtless, making him more toned on the page than he actually was in real life and giving definition to arm and chest muscles I was rather confident he hadn't really had. Actually, the art itself was quite well done; it was easy to tell I had spent a lot of time on it. I remembered being extremely proud of the way it had turned out and had even flipped it over in order to sign my name, something I didn't normally do in any of my sketchbooks.

It had been the last picture I had drawn of him. I remembered exactly why, now dreading turning to the back where I had signed it, finding the love heart I knew would be there looking like a doodle you would find in a first years school notebook. Although I was currently alone, I could feel the heat of my shame fill my cheeks, our names centered inside the childish design.

Oliver & Enrique

I had forced myself to stop that day. The thoughts that had begun taking over my head the older I got becoming too much to bare. The fact that I had liked the way the drawing had turned out was the only reason the page hadn't been torn from the book and thrown away, something that now forced me to accept the feelings that I'd had for him at the time. He'd begun making my heart flutter, becoming the first real crush I had ever developed. I had known immediately that it was stupid, that I could ruin the friendship I'd had with him in and instant if I had done anything other than force the thoughts out of my brain. We had known each other since we were children, meeting for the first time through our parents when we were merely ten and eleven.

The pages currently in front of me were proof of what I had hoped to forget, holding the lost realization that I had only been fourteen when the feelings first developed. I remembered getting lost in myself when I stared at him, the way my heartbeat would speed up and my palms would sweat. I remembered telling myself that pushing those feelings down was my absolute only option and how I would destroy everything I had with him if I allowed them to surface.

I remembered what it felt like to have my heart shatter at the realization that it had been destroyed anyway, and that by coming out to him I had single handedly ended everything I had tried so hard to save.

Wrapping my arms around the book, I held it tightly to my chest, pulling my knees up until I was in little more than a fetal position. It was the reminder that I needed now more than ever. Maybe, years from now, if Enrique could prove to me that he was genuinely sorry and regretted everything he had done, we could start our friendship from scratch. I couldn't let him in the way that he wanted, though.

Even if it meant scaring him away once again, even if it meant making him believe that I absolutely hated him… even if it meant ignoring him for the rest of my life.

I could never let him back in.

He could never know the extent of which he had broken my heart.