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She sees him on T.V once, every news channel broadcasting his face, standing on a platform, talking into a mic. His blood red highlight is gone, so are his long locks. He wears a deep blue navy suit, looking resolutely ahead while his lips move. Something about his father, something she should be paying attention to.
She can't shake the disappointment coursing through her veins. But it shouldn't affect her like this, that he is a normal, successful man. It shouldn't bother her as it does.
It's just that her fantasy of him is broken now. Picturing him still serving noodles at the Paper Lantern and wearing those black biker gloves with the tips of the fingers cut off has lost all meaning. No, it's no good now.
***
She's dressed in green from head to toe, holding a long banner at the head of the crowd. They've spent hours painting the slogan a dark green shade and the fabric feels almost solid in her hands.
“SYSTEM CHANGE NOT CLIMATE CHANGE.”
It stretches about 50 metres along both her sides. She feels the hands of other people, women, men and children holding it as tightly as she does.
They start walking, she thinks to turn around but she hears the screaming, the chanting behind her and she knows there are hundreds, millions of them.
So she walks ahead. And when they turn the corner, cameras start flashing. There's clapping, there's booing. She's in first row.
If she'd followed the fixed path ahead of her right out of high school and became a superhero, maybe her face would mean something else than just another girl in a march. Her voice could be heard properly and not just in her college debates, she would have the world as an audience, people looking up to her, willing to follow her command.
But she never truly wanted to be above anyone. She wouldn't have been a superhero, she would've been a sidekick. To Will, probably, if they had stayed together.
It nags at her though, thinking of what it could've been. It bothers her especially that she would let these selfish thoughts take root. She's fine where she is, she doesn't need a report card telling her how great she is. She's perfectly content with anonymity.
She holds the banner impossibly tighter, walks on.
***
She's lost count of their Fridays. It could be the 10th or the 30th Friday for Future she's attended.
It's the goal of every week, the thing they most hungrily expect and what they untiringly work towards from Saturday to Thursday.
They design the banners, they make sure to pass around the flyers (in recycled paper, of course), they organise the debates, they organise most of the awareness campaigns. Not to mention Layla still attends classes and has grades to maintain.
But Friday's are the most rewarding days of all. Seeing how massive the movement has become that they even have a day assigned to them makes her heart swell. She remembers still when the warnings were ignored, barely an afterthought of society, though the truth to their words had always been there. She remembers her own experiences, being laughed at by classmates, belittled by teachers, even by partners. (Will tried to make an effort, but it hadn't been enough).
That Friday she's not at the front as usual, though. She's further back, doesn't even see the large banner that guides the procession. She had wanted to bask it all in, to be in every corner at least once.
It's because they're losing momentum and she knows it. Summer is around the corner and no one wants to stress over serious issues on their holidays. Only a handful do it all year, Layla among them.
That's a problem for later, still, today's attendance and spirits are both high and she feels anything can be achieved. That's her most favourite feeling.
A group of girls laugh beside her, school uniforms still on. She starts scanning the crowd around her. Most of them are teenagers, no more than fifteen or sixteen. To think that she was once that age, it seems a lifetime or two ago.
She doesn't have anything on her that could pin her to any organization, she could be anyone, just a girl who finished classes for the day and decided to check out what all that noise was about. She could be a newly-wed, a soon-to-be-mother or maybe an immigrant, just arrived from some part of Europe or South America. A realm of possibilities lays ahead of her and—
She bumps into someone.
“Oh, I'm so sorry,” she says.
It's a man, wearing a deep navy blue suit. He turns around immediately and of course, of course.
It's Warren fucking Peace.
“No worries, Mi– Oh.”
They stay there, staring at each other, people passing them by on all sides but time seems to still around them. His hair is short, laid back and foreign and Layla can't deal with how handsome he looks. He doesn't look a day older than when she last saw him and somehow he's unrecognisable. He smiles at her suddenly and she finds she's smiling too, maybe she has been for a while.
“Layla.”
"Warren.”
“No ‘cutie’?”
She's about to retort when a woman appears by his side. She takes his hand. She looks down at her, smiles broadly and Layla swears her teeth shine. She's tall, the tallest person she's ever seen, auburn hair longer and healthier than hers.
“Hello, I'm Savannah,” she greets her in a husky, enchanting voice.
Suddenly, the deafening sound of the strike surrounds them. They say virtually nothing, asking how they've been and barely anything else. Somehow, he asks for her number and she yells it over the crowd. He nods and says his goodbye, Savannah kisses her on both cheeks like an intimate friend. They move on.
Layla can only watch.
***
It's a Thursday when he calls.
“Hey!” She says cheerfully.
“Hey, it's Warren Peace.”
She clears her throat. Of course he would call when she's tending to her crops.
“Oh, hello Warren, you just caught me watering my plants.”
She doesn't know why she has this urge to talk to him like no time has passed, like they've never stopped being close, like their familiarity never ceased.
(Maybe it never did, maybe it was just suspended in time, waiting to be picked up where they left it).
“Why would you water them?”
He sounds perplexed somehow. “Huh?”
“I only mean that… you can make them grow instantly… you know… with your hands?”
Oh, that. Her powers. She fights the need to clarify that it requires a great deal of mind effort, it's not just hands.
“Yeah, but, I wanted to do it the natural way for a change. For the experience.”
He chuckles lightly and she doesn't know if it's the phone or time itself, but the unexpected hoarseness of his voice makes her blush.
“Of course, Layla.”
Why does he have to say her name like that? Lay-la. Lay-lah. Lah-ee-la.
“I was wondering if we could meet.” He's as forward as she remembers him.
“Yes.” She doesn't care if she sounds desperate when she says it.
She doesn't care at all.
***
Yes.
She had said yes.
And now she's in the Paper Lantern on a Thursday and their waiter is not him.
Warren's hair isn't slicked back this time, it looks fresh out of the shower, a free mess. He wears an orange sweater. Ordinary. She likes this look much better.
“So," he says after they've ordered, “you look good.”
She hopes the restaurant's dim lighting keeps her burning cheeks hidden.
“So do you,” she compliments back, “though I almost didn't recognise you out of your suit.”
“Oh, that old thing.”
He chuckles, like he'd done on the phone, and if she thought the sound couldn't be better, she was definitely wrong. She presses her legs together and curses herself.
Warren's look changes, gets conspiratorial. He edges closer. “It's the only one I own, hippie.”
She laughs. He does too. They regress back to their old, fifteen-year-old selves, laughing just like that in that same spot all those years ago.
When they settle down, she avoids looking at his face. Doesn't want to catch sight of his non-existing long hair.
“So it's the same as the one I saw you wearing on T.V then.”
The waiter comes back with their food. Her soup is warm and salty and why did she ever stop coming to the Paper Lantern?
She even hums on her third spoonful.
She almost forgets she's not alone. Almost.
“I wondered if you had seen that.”
“I didn't really, I was in quite a rush,” she lies shamelessly, "I couldn't catch what it was about.”
He looks distressed all of the sudden. A bit relieved, that too.
“My father died.”
“I'm so sorry, Warren.” Her hand finds his over the table. He squeezes and she does so back.
“It's alright, really. He left me trauma more than anything,” he chuckles again, and there it is, her inherent need to protect tugging at her heart, “He also left me quite a large sum of money, hence the press conference—”
Someone screams in Chinese in the kitchen, some kids outside are laughing.
She feels like Warren is about to give her a gift or a realization. She holds her breath and for a moment the world does too.
“It wasn't actually because of the inheritance but because of what I announced I was going to do with it – what I did actually –”
The kids have entered the restaurant and raucous laughter drowns Warren's voice. She reads his lips though.
“You bought the Amazon rainforest!?” She screams, yells actually, the whole restaurant turning to look at them.
“Just some acres. About twenty-thousand.”
He's smiling at her. That cocky, breathtaking smile of his. He really hasn't aged a day.
“Warren Peace!”
Because that's all she can say. Warren Peace.
He doesn't know what it means to her. How she feels lighter, full of something magical. How she wants to weep and run and run some more.
From how he looks at her, maybe he does.
“Every penny to my name.”
“You can't know how happy this makes me.”
His eyes change colors then, like when they used to before his fists lighted on fire. The difference is that they're calm, friendly.
“Trust me, I can.”
Somehow she feels he did it for her. And that's maybe the most selfish thought she's had of late.
This is a man she hasn't seen in six years. A man she once used to get another one to notice her. (It's not the first time she's regretted not seizing what was right in front of her).
“Thank you,” she whispers.
It's for putting up with her fake dating shenanigans, it's for being her friend, it's for telling her a truth, even if he didn't come up with it:
“To let true love remain unspoken is the quickest route to a heavy heart.”
“For the rainforest. For everything.”
“There's no need, Layla.”
***
“So, Savannah?” she asks.
It's the second Thursday in a row they're having coffee. It's this tiny coffeehouse Warren said had the best croissants she needed to try and so they had arranged it.
Now, they're trying the bagels and it's the stupidest excuse she's ever heard. It makes her stomach flutter like it's made of wings and not flesh. She wonders when they'll say it plainly though she's having so much fun dancing around the subject.
“Oh, she's a very nice girl,” he says, setting his coffee cup down, “Not for me though. We went on a couple of dates and that was it.”
“You took her to the strike.”
“That might have been the kicker," he chuckles around his bagel. It's funny how she's come to crave that sound in such a short time.
“She's a redhead,” she says it like that fact alone exposes him.
By the way he looks away from her, she thinks it does.
“I've always been drawn to fire.”
Layla doesn't know if it's better when he does look away, when his eyes don't come back to settle on hers with such an intensity she could melt where she sits – like he does now.
“I don't want to fuck this up.”
It's a shared sentiment and she wants to tell him just that. But it is true that no matter how deeply connected to him she feels, their bridge to each other is built on air. Empty, unknown air. Years of not hearing of each other, changes and opinions and entire cosmovisions that they ignore and she wants this to be perfect as much as he does.
But they've waited before, they've waited without knowing and Will happened and she lost a dear friend.
She doesn't want to lose him too.
“I only went to that strike because I saw you in a newspaper, holding that enormous banner with all the people around you. I only bought those acres because I didn't know what to do with the money and – and I thought of you.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, sighs. He has never been just a friend.
“We can – We should try,” her foot finds his under the table, “We deserve to.”
He nods fervently, warm coffee cups forgotten, his hand grabs the back of her neck. She mimics his desperation, her hand goes to his arm, her eyes widen — she sees him getting closer.
Layla closes their distance and soars, higher than Sky High, higher than any bird or person has ever been. His lips are soft and they burn, a good burn, one that comes from deep inside him.
They disentangle from one another, panting, smiling. Coffee spilled, bagels on the floor.
Fridays – fridays are special. They make her feel hopeful and purposeful. But maybe there's a magic to Thursdays too.