"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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Momo's question had opened up a whole pandora's box – Did I truly love Ferran? Or did I love the sense of familiarity that being close to him brought? I truly didn't know.
Maybe I had just been convincing myself all this time that what I felt for Ferran was love. Sure, I cared for him deeply, but I still don't understand it enough to dare to put a definitive label on it. And after all that time I was apart from him, certainly things have changed. We both have.
But was it even an answer worth knowing? Sometimes there were just things that were better off unanswered. For the truth might hurt.
"What is love to you?" I had asked Ferran as we both sat in his balcony garden.
It was sometime in early February, after Momo and I had been going on for a few weeks with our new arrangements. Momo would let me know when he was going to see someone, not because we were insecure about it, but we just made it a safe practice. Especially when Momo met someone for the first time, which he seemed to be doing a lot. Meanwhile, I spent my time between my two lovers. With Ferran, I preferred to spend time at his apartment – I mean, it was beautiful and had such a magnificent view. Who wouldn't want to spend time there?
Ferran was seated beside me on his garden chair. His wavy blond hair was slightly longer now, his soft locks barely covering his ears. He wore his signature white shirt, this time not even bothering to iron it, with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In his hands was a bright pink camellia, twirling between his fingers. You could almost mistake him as a troubled protagonist of a romance novel, deep in thought, absorbed with his own romanticism and ideals. But knowing Ferran, he was none of the sort.
The thing about Ferran was sometimes I just didn't know whether he didn't hear me, chose to ignore me, or was just struggling to come up with a reply. His silence could mean any of those.
"Devotion." Ferran said, turning to look at me.
"What kind of devotion?" I asked.
"The kind. . ." the boy began, twirling the camelia in his fingers by its short stalk. "The kind that's undying."
"Absolute devotion?"
"Absolutely."
"So you want someone to be with you all the time?"
Ferran fell silent, placing the camellia on the table between us, before slowly getting up.
"No," he said, shaking his head as he walked towards the sliding glass door, heading inside. "That's not what I meant."
I stood up and followed him inside.
"Then what do you mean exactly?"
The boy sighed, before giving me a slight shrug.
"This is what happens when you ask me all your difficult questions," he said, shaking his head. "I feel like you're trying to mess with my head even though I know you don't mean it and it's just me. . . but it feels so draining."
