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In a year (or two, or three) you won't be sure of the shade of his eyes, or the shape the wrinkles on his forehead had when he frowned. Try as you might (and fuck you tried), you still couldn't commit every inch of him to memory.
But right here, and right now, you don't have to.
The details are in front of you, in all their glory. Mo's living and breathing and beautiful, cooking distracted in your kitchen one last time. He is breathtaking. You find that your eyes linger on his hair, on his eyelashes. Three of his freckles, together, could look like stars.
In a year (and in two, and in three) you'll think that you didn't enjoy this moment enough. You were so busy trying to memorise everything, He Tian, that you forgot to live the present. You lost time because you were trying to save the moment for later.
In a year, and in two, and in three, you discover that you cannot save the moment for later.
There will always be gaps, parts that you can't quite reconstruct anymore. Your brain distorts the memory, a little bit, every time you relive those moments inside your head.
You relive those moments many, many times inside your head.
In a year, and in two, and in three, the memory is deformed by the unforgivable passage of time and by your fucking longing filling in the gaps. The him inside your head doesn't talk back quite as fiercely, and, sometimes, he loves you back.
Of course, the him inside your head was constructed by you.
If you couldn't memorize him, then you should have lived the moment fully. You wasted time trying to save for later something that would be lost anyway.
You pause. For a moment it hurts so badly you can’t fucking breathe. You lost the moment anyway. Shit, it aches, deep in your heart, pain pulsing through your veins. You lost it anyway. And when you were there, in front of him, you wasted time. You wasted wasted wasted wasted wasted time. You wish you could have made him laugh. You wish you could have held his hand. You wish you could have made him fall in love with you, just a little, just a fraction of how far you've gone yourself.
All you have is your fucking memory. You're starting to resent even that.
In a year, and in two, and in three, you won't be sure of anything you remember anymore. In a year, and in two, and again in three, the uncertainty is mixed in one big ball along with the resentment, all your fucking bitterness and hurt.
All you know is that you love him. You love Mo Guan Shan.
And even then...
You love a him that doesn't exist anymore. People change with time, you know that. You sure as fuck are not the same boy you were at 15. You can't love the current him, you argue, because you don't know him.
Shit.
You imagine him frowning at you, just this side of amused, shaking his head.
You're imagining the 15 year old, dammit, the one that you'll never see again.
The one you'll never get to see again.
Right. Ahem. Right, yeah, no matter how badly you hurt you keep on breathing, you’ve been here before. Right. So, you don't know what the current Mo would do. You can't love the current Mo because you don't know him.
You love him anyway.
Ain't it funny?
Goddamn hilarious.
You pull out another cigarette from your pack. It's gonna be a long night.
On a whim, you glance up at the sky. Somewhere, he might be looking at the same stars.
Fucking hell, He Tian, you're being a sentimental idiot. Fucking stop.
You take a drag. Close your eyes.
In a year, or in two, or in three, you probably won't hurt anymore. In a year, or in two, or in three, you could be lying in his arms. If he forgives you, eventually, somehow.
You blow out the smoke. Something to look forward to, you guess.
You tell yourself you're not being foolish. Just cautiously optimistic. To get through the days, you still need something to believe in.
Somewhere behind you, they call for you. Yeah. Work time.
You put out the cigarette. One last look at the stars.
A year. Or two, or three.
You can wait.