Work Text:
Our love lasted for nine nights and eight days, and existed without a single I love you. I couldn’t say for sure whether he knew we were in love. It happened and then disappeared like a mirage, and should have left what was between us ambiguous. But we were definitely in love. Nine nights and eight days is 204 hours, and for those 204 hours my heart throbbed so much that I thought I would lose it.
It startled me when I realised we were in love.
He picked me up to drive me to a party in the evening. Prior to that, I’d been baking, so I offered him the culmination of my labour, a donut; the good kind, teeming with cream and baked enough to crunch like a potato chip. My mother was exasperated with me for them and shouted at me frequently for tarnishing the reputation of donuts. She believed in a different kind of good donuts to me, just as she believes in a different kind of love, and it was probably because of that reason that she raised me alone. “Lyra, you should only love yourself,” she drilled into my skull even now, and so I would nod and smile and keep quiet about the thirty-four boyfriends I had so far.
Silver wasn’t one of them. We never dated, and I rather that, could you imagine dating a man for 204 hours, nine nights and eight days? It would be a tragic story, the ironic kind, which you unveil at a meetup with your friends to illustrate yourself as a total joke. No, Silver and I never dated. And I dare to say that if you can date someone without loving them, then the reverse should also be just as feasible, that you could love someone without dating them.
I didn’t prefer this kind of love, not usually. But loving Silver was a different endeavour entirely, so I supposed something as worthless as my morals was renounceable.
When I gave him the donut I made, he accepted it without glancing at me and took a bite. I had firm faith in the integrity of my cooking and could assure you that the moment he did the filling would have oozed into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully, eying the donut, which was now, having been bit into, revealing its fluffy white insides. “I don’t like cream,” he said, in a highly distasteful way.
And then he ate the whole donut anyway. It occurred to me on the final bite, as the last of my homemade donut popped into his mouth and we were pulling into the driveway of our destination. That Silver was in love with me. And it was very likely that I was in love with him. That was the start of it, and my heart began to ache tremendously.
Whenever I think back to that night the last of the things that I recall is the party. I was typically a rabid animal when it came to parties of any type, design, and calibre. There was something referred to as the life of the party, and I filled this role so excellently that my friends invented a new term, the Lyra of the party, which is essentially the same thing except much louder and a crucial requirement of any party should it wish to see a booming success. Graciously, I accepted this role, and strove to enjoy every party I attended, wholly and entirely. Yet, for some reason, I hardly remember the party that night, only the desperate clawing at my chest throughout it, and it didn’t quench, not until Silver came and found me to drive me home.
We got back into the car, speaking little; as was tremendously his habit, and tremendously unlike mine. And then, we kissed furiously, like little kids.
His lips were so cracked and so dry that it hurt a little to kiss him, and I thought I would offer my lip balm to him later. I swore I could taste a trace of my donuts on him, which was definitely impossible. We kissed for so long I thought I would cry. Kissed until I was sure time had stopped existing, and then he pulled back and drove me home wordlessly.
That suited me, because I had become so breathless I couldn’t form words and my face had warmed up. I forgot all about the lip balm by the time we got to my place. Before I got out of the car, I asked him whether he wanted to come inside. He said no, and so when he drove away I did start crying, because I thought I was the only one with those overwhelming feelings and I should learn to forget what had just happened. That maybe he didn’t love me after all.
I got home and feel asleep feeling cold, oblivious to the fact that our love had began, like a lovely sunrise. It was a shame sunrises were over so quickly.
That period between us remained hazy in my memory, in the way that time seemed mostly a blur. I couldn’t pick out a chronology from it, only narrate the intoxicating emotion that dizzied me. I didn’t think I’d ever been that happy.
We spent much of our short time together and when we didn’t I’d press my hands to my cheeks, trying to quell the aching. Silver had made me redefine the concept of love itself. Love, I realised now, was something you felt constantly, thrumming through every cell in your body, in your heart, in your fingers, in your head and even in the tips of your toes.
In that way, love was an illness, all-consuming and terrible for your constitution. Sometimes, I thought, that maybe I wasn’t in love, only really, very sick, because it often felt the same to me.
We had a signature ritual when we met each other, and it was that after we would exchange pleasantries, I’d wrap him in a hug and try to squeeze him so hard that perhaps I might kill him. He’d let me be the one to pull away, like he didn’t mind dying in my arms.
Though I didn’t think it was possible to die from being held for too long, or from loving someone too hard, for if that was the case both he and I would certainly be dead already. Which I wouldn’t have minded. Death was something I considered often, although my mother found it unbecoming of a young woman like me.
But I only thought about it so much because it was inevitable, and if I was going to die anyway, I wanted it to happen on a good note, like after an extremely good party or an especially crunchy donut. Or, now that I’d thought about it, being loved by someone very dearly. That would also be a suitable end. So I thought about dying a lot around him, because our love made me so unbelievably happy that I thought I would be alright with life if it cut off there.
We went on a couple of typical dates, went to the movies and walked around in the park. But our love flourished best in secret, behind closed doors. It seemed to work better that way, so we let it be, just as how it seemed to work better to not tell anyone about us, simply to let whatever happened happen. It was a miracle in its own way, since nothing ever did well indoors. Every plant I’d tried to grow stood as testament to that fact. Even so, we would always end up at my place some way or another.
He would come inside and I’d hug him in the way that was our habit. If he didn’t die, we’d go into the bedroom and he would sit down on the bed. He would then pull me into his lap and I’d start telling him all about my day.
It wasn’t just my mother who’d grown frustrated with me, even my friends would explain how I would talk too much and too fast and they couldn’t understand much of it and also couldn’t care less. Once, I wondered how much of this was true, and so I recorded myself babbling and then played back the video to see how long I could stand myself. My friends were entirely right – I discovered that I was more or less chattering on nonsensically and it was a trying task to attempt to distinguish the end of one sentence from the start of another. As to whether I was able to endure through it, let me just impart that the video was about fifty-three minutes long and with scarce pause for breaths, and perhaps that could answer the question. I didn’t think I had flaws, only things to work on, and if I had to compose a list of them, I’d put this at the very top. I had four guys in the past end things because I talked too much.
But Silver, in the nine nights and eight days that we were in love, visited my house eleven times, and every time he wanted to hear me talk. I didn’t know if anyone else had ever done that for me. It was nice, sitting in his lap and telling him every single thing that had crossed my mind since I last saw him, no matter how infinitesimally useless, because he would listen. He would listen to me prattle on, every single word, and then he would murmur, “Oh really?” and kiss my hair.
Instantly, I would have nothing more to talk about, as if I had found a miraculous cure to my incessant chatter.
He would never stay over for the night, but he sometimes lingered until very late. Those times we would lie down on my bed next to each other and I would tirade to him about my mum and he would wistfully reflect about his dad. And then we would discuss what was worse, having a mother that you hated or a father that hated you. We always stood firmly by our own side but only because the dynamic called for it. Hearing him speak about his dad, very wearily and a little sad, made me realise that although I despised my uptight mum, I was fiercely glad she cared for me. It made me dislike her a little less. I kept this to myself and continued waving my flag of spite around him, if only for the show.
He was an artwork, just not in the way that Michelangelo or Da Vinci or Van Gogh would have designed. If I knew any other classical artists, I would name them. If I was an artwork, I’d be one of those pop-arts from the 90’s, in garish tones and striking a dramatic expression. I loved the colours they came in.
That would make Silver the opposite of me. I imagined him as a secret piece of art, the ones that you don’t even notice and trample over, walk past without realising. Like a scrawl of graffiti in the subway telling you to have a good day, or a flowerbed of hearts etched into the pavement.
That’s what Silver was: a hidden, special artwork that not everyone got a taste of. I liked sharing, but I would never have wanted to share him. Privately, I was glad he nursed few friendships. I wouldn’t be able to say if he’d ever loved anyone, so sometimes I’d pretend that he was my secret artwork and I hoarded him in my attic like a haughty millionaire. In every way, Silver was too priceless to put on display.
Silver was beautiful, just not at first glance. It might have took me ten or twenty or one thousand times to realise it. And then on that thousandth time, I glanced at him and realised that the scratches over his face were nice to look at, and his eyes were so dark and sharp it made for a unsettlingly lovely gaze. He didn’t smile, ever, but very rarely, when he could afford it, he would, and that violent expression would be squashed to make way for the sweetest dimples in the world and two perfect rows of white teeth. He could be a different person altogether.
He smiled a little more than usual during that time when he loved me, and did it with a little more passion, or maybe in those nine nights and eight days I’d gone completely delusional. I felt delusional.
It was hard to tell when our love started and finished, like a song that faded in and out and so you never realise it was over. If our love was a song, it would be the dulcet piece of a glockenspiel. I always thought that each note from that instrument felt like the embodiment of happiness. I wouldn’t be able to play this song again, but that was okay. I wouldn’t want to get sick of it. It was better for it to be treasured like this in my mind, held close to my chest and beating in tandem with my heart.
I had thought, I hadn’t baked recently, so I concocted my trademark donuts again, and subsequently, urged Silver to try them. He accepted it without glancing at me and took a bite. He chewed thoughtfully, eyeing the donut. “I don’t like cream.” He put the donut back onto the tray and wiped his mouth. Oh, he really did stop loving me. And I felt nothing towards it, so maybe the same went for me.
And just like that, it concluded. All those thrashing feelings and lovely moments ended up culminating into nothing. That was our storm in a teacup kind of love.
It was funny how love worked, right? It vanished between us before I realised. Silver and I, we were still friends. But the love that existed between us, that wasn’t there anymore. It was also funny in the way that I knew it would always work out like this. From the start, I’d expected our love to finish, to expire like a gift card. I took it granted as a fleeting bliss, and maybe, if I’d put in more effort, shared him more, went outside with him more often, given him that lip balm, maybe then it wouldn’t need to disappear like it had.
Although, I hadn’t dwelled on it much. I only remembered our love on accident, as a nice memory that brightened my day, without nostalgia or pain. Above everything, I was glad to have had the experience. I didn’t deserve to be loved like that, so I was fiercely grateful for the chance I got anyway.
I had a new boyfriend now. He smiled a lot and bought me heaps of gifts. Silver did neither, and, occasionally, I would think of him. He wasn’t perfect, but I hadn’t loved him because he had been. I wasn’t perfect either, but he’d loved me despite that. I wondered if I would ever find anyone else who would listen to me talk on forever and argue about our parents and eat my crunchy, cream-filled donuts. I couldn’t be sure. No one had ever loved me because I was me. Oh well, it was good to have felt that way once in my life.
That was our love that lasted nine nights and eight days.