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You’ve always loved the spring.
How the chickadees sing, perched in their willows, announcing the end of their slumber. Squirrels drift out of burrows and the creek’s currents push fish downstream in a low hiss. Newly coloured branches burst into the skies once more and sunlight that has remained dull behind the barricade of grey clouds stuns at full force. There’s something almost comforting about the fresh start, about watching as the world comes back to life.
You sit by the brook, legs swung over its rocky edge. The one in the woods behind the park, with the blooming pastel flowers and ivy creeping up the stones that sit in the water. The one with broken wood panels that mark the path to get there, although you know the route so well you could find it blind.
You check your watch - he’s late. He’s always late.
Your body reclines to face the sky and you squint as the light catches your eye. It’s hard to tell if the nerves you feel are delight or apprehension. He’s turning eighteen today, and he’s finally free, and you’re happy for him. You really are. But it also feels like the end of an era. Like the beginnings of a conclusion that you are not ready for. As the days slip by faster and faster in a whirlwind that drags you along, you are desperately trying to grip onto a reality that is slipping away. Because he’s eighteen today, but you’re still seventeen. In less than a month he’ll be in Glasgow and you’ll still be here, sitting by the brook. And you’re not ready to sit alone.
A voice echoes down the path behind you. “Hey, I brought coffee.”
You spin around to see him walking towards you, a to-go cup in each hand and a rugged smile plastered across his face. His hair is a cropped and unkept dishwater blonde, uncombed but still sparkling in the light. A broad frame and tall stature is complimented by a fitted cyan flannel, and he saunters towards you in dirt-stained too-worn Kodiaks.
You feel your heart rate rise. Just a little, though. Just a little. Just enough.
“I know - I was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago, you don’t have to tell me.” He says, handing you a cup and sitting down beside you. You chuckle.
“I’ve stopped trying. You do know how to tell time, right?” You reply, nudging his shoulder. “Because I can arrange for a kindergartener to tutor you, if that would help.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“I know.”
You grin, taking a sip of your latte.
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looking up at you expectantly. “So, you said you had a surprise for me. You made me wait three days to know what it is,” he says eagerly. “Tell me.”
“You made me wait twenty minutes,” you jab back, reaching into your back pocket to fish out a small parcel. His smile widens as you hand it to him and he looks like a giddy child. That little boy you’ve known for millennia has somehow grown into a man. When did that happen?
He flips it over in his hands, examining the shoddy wrapping loosely tied with a scrap of twine. He delicately pulls apart the string and peels back the paper to unveil the gleaming pin below. It’s a silvery-blue, made of aluminum, molded into intricate strands that twist and cascade downward. It looks like water and shines as he holds it up to the light. He cocks his head.
Your heart rate quickens again as you gesture to the creek. “I dunno, I just thought that when you go to Scotland, it might, you know, remind you of, of -”
“Us,” he finishes. Your smile falters.
Three weeks and he’ll be gone , whispers a voice inside of you. Not your heart, something deeper than that. A being that resides beyond you, one that you have no control over. Three weeks and he’ll be in Glasgow and you’ll still be here and unless you say something you’ll never see him again.
“It’s not much,” you murmur. He softly shakes his head, turning to meet your gaze. You stare into his eyes, his beautiful glittering eyes, that are pale and shining but dark and mysterious. That drew you in like a dance to a rhythm all their own.
He places his free hand around yours and squeezes your palm. “No, no, it is,” he says, understanding.
Now. It urges again. You have to know if there’s a chance.
He reaches up to his chest and pokes the pin into his flannel. His lips turning up at the edges as he breaks eye contact. “I’m going to miss this the most,” he says quietly, turning to look at the creek. He squeezes your hand again and it feels like you're ripping in two. Because it’s hard to articulate the impossibility of breathing when his hand grazes your lower back, or his laugh sends vibrations through your chest. When he looks at you with that rugged smile, or when he squeezes your hand.
You have nothing to lose. So what are you so afraid of?
And maybe it’s him, or you, or the brook, but today you listen to that voice.
“I love you,” you exhale, unsure whether you’re telling him or yourself. And he looks up at you.
But suddenly you’re in open air, suspended in a space between the stars. You feel as though the void surrounding your limp frame is tightening like a noose, as your vocal cords restrict in a desperate hunt for words that will not come.
So, you curse your heart. Your heart, that has always moved one step faster than your mind. That is always threatening to pump out of your chest and that you don’t know how to contain. Your heart that has screamed for him, constantly for him, always for him .
Maybe he’s always heard it. Now he certainly has.
His response is soft and distant, an echo. “Since?”
A question you do not know how to answer. There is no beginning or end, only an endless wheel from which you cannot escape, though you don’t want to leave. But you don’t know how to tell him that, so instead you say, “Three years.”
Your gazes remain locked and you can see cogs turning behind his eyes. Behind yours a world is burning down, your world, as you wait for a response. It feels like the blood running through your veins has turned into fire and you can feel the force of a million earthquakes running through your shaking body. You’re not sure if he can tell. You hope he can’t.
So, with a final surge of irrationality, you squeeze his hand back.
But carefully, delicately even, he pulls away. And you understand. Your gut wretches, your eyes flood, and your shoulders turn limp and helpless. But you understand. Because understanding is all you know how to do.