"What is love in this temporal life, if not just a distraction from the pain that doesn't seem to end."
After losing his best friend to an unexplained suicide, Mateu finds himself left to pick up the pieces with his best friend's younger brother, Fe...
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"I find myself thinking about my time in school a lot," Ferran confided in me the day I was supposed to leave for Marseille. "Do you?"
Ferran had come to send me off at the station. We had arrived to the station about a half hour early, and had some time to spare. We were waiting around at the lobby, and I even had time to get myself a cup of coffee.
"Yeah," I said, shrugging. "I guess."
"Those were happier days."
"Yeah."
I took a sip from my coffee. That had me thinking, Ferran never really told me about what happened after we graduated. Not once did he speak about it, and I never bothered asking. But something within me that morning aroused my curiosity. Maybe it was that feeling of dissatisfaction that I never got the answers I sought for. That I needed at least to take away something from my summer trip to Perpignan.
"You never told me about what happened after I left for Marseille," I said, somewhat awkwardly. It seemed more poetic in my head.
Ferran was silent for a while, folding his arms as we sat on the bench.
"What's there to say, really?"
"I want to know what happened in school," I said. "I need to know."
"Why do you need to know that?" the boy replied, his tone getting cornered.
"Look," I sighed. "I've spent months here with you and I still don't have a clue what happened. I've been trying to pick up the pieces but you've just left me more questions than answers. And answers are what I really need right now and I feel like I'm going in circles with you leading me, going nowhere exactly. And now my time here is up and I'm heading back to Marseille more confused than ever."
There was a long silence. But I could see the hurt in the poor boy's eyes and immediately regretted my words. He bit his lip, in an effort to stay composed.
"So that's what I ever was to you," he replied. "But I suppose it was about high time we both were honest with ourselves."
His voice was cold, and I could almost feel the sharpness of a metallic blade press against my cheeks.
"I was just your little key to open the mysteries that my poor brother's death left in its wake, wasn't I?" he said looking at me with those pretty eyes of his. "And when I'm not cooperating like how you want me to, when I'm not giving you the answers you want, your true colours show."
His words were cold, but I could see it in his eyes how hurt he truly was.
"And I was just afraid of being alone," he mumbled, turning his gaze away from me for a brief moment. "But I'll have you know that I'm not a witness on your stand, and you don't have the right to press me for answers. You don't have the right to insist on things I'm not ready to talk about and that I owe you anything. You lawyers are all the same."
