"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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It almost seemed to me like nothing happened the next morning. I woke up to Momo packing our bags – he had already showered and dressed up, his hair still damp. When he turned to look at me a smile appeared on his lips, but he averted his gaze. That was when I knew it wasn't just nothing. The guilt was still at the back of our minds.
I didn't see Ferran until we were ready to leave. He had packed up early, and only met us when we were checking out of the hotel. None of us had eaten breakfast, but to be frank I had no appetite. I was pretty sure the other two felt the same.
None of us mentioned anything about the night before, not even as we got into the car. Momo helped put Ferran's luggage in the boot wordlessly, while Ferran entered the car, sitting in the backseat. Here we go again, I thought to myself. Another long, tense drive. It was almost nothing had changed – but of course it did, there was no use denying it.
I took a few steps away from the car and lit up a cigarette to calm myself down and take in my surroundings. The shuttered windows and the plastered walls of the houses across the street, the comforting warmth of the spring sun shining through the cloudless sky, the limestone cliff faces in the distance towering towards the heavens, covered in the scrubland green of the garrigue. I took a deep breath, inhaling the comforting smoke that had accompanied me in my loneliest moments.
Shutting the boot, Momo walked up to me, his hands shoved in his pockets. He stood there awkwardly, biting his lip as he cocked his head to the side.
"Do you want to talk about. . . last night?" he finally said.
"No," I mumbled, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. "Not particularly."
There was a brief silence as I blew out another stream of smoke. Everything had just been so painfully awkward. All I could think about ever since I woke up this morning was about last night's incident, and the guilt that kept creeping up behind me. On one hand it didn't feel real – a part of me wanted to believe that it was just a fever dream, but of course it wasn't. Everything about last night was real, as real as the cigarette on my lips, and as real as the boy standing right beside me. Momo had worn his favourite sweater – a knitted blend of maroon and dark blue. At a glance it almost seemed like a dark purple. Admittedly the colour looked great on him, but I couldn't help but notice how he stood out from the shades of sand and limestone that surrounded us.
"Do you think we shouldn't have done it?" Momo continued, a nervous quiver in his voice.
I hesitated for a moment.
"It was your idea wasn't it, shouldn't you be asking yourself that question?"
Momo only looked at the ground, a sad smile on his lips.
"I saw the way you looked at us," he muttered. "It's something that you've beenwishing for all long, isn't it?"
