Final Draft

"Push me more and I'll just fall, okay? So careful where you fucking poke."

said the blob of messy blond hair in the sunlight. Pine squinted his eyes at her, but he wasn't sure that it was the sun that made him frown. In any case, she couldn't possibly think otherwise, so he was safe for now.

"Didn't you say you loved her?"

"Yes, I did."

"Then why do you avoid her?"

at that he looked at me incredulously - his eyes were open wide, as if I was being impossible. After a while of silence that seemed to stretch into something I wasn't allowed to enter, he answered.

"Because loving is different from being loved."

When he closed his mouth again, his silence carried a different weight. It wasn't sadness, but somehow the quality of his silence reminded me of the nights I lay hurt and slowly dying, that sense of utter helplessness those nights carried. But before I could question further what he meant, he had already started his chronic coughing again, and the rare silence from him was gone as abruptly as it came.

"Just one question. Why did you care about me so much?"

"Just one question. Why did you leave me?"

everything began with the eyes staring directly at me.

dark, inquisitive, and almost passive.

a kind of sharpness that disguised itself in uncanny softness.

she was looking directly at me, and then at something much farther than me.

she didn't make any demands - she didn't have to.

I was already mesmerized.