"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...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
I could never forget that day – the sky bright and clear; with not even a streak of cotton white to mar the canvas of blue. The Mediterranean breeze was blowing in from the sea, spraying the faint scent of salt in my face. The warmth of the summer sun lapped against my bare chest. A warmth that even until this day still would never leave me, thinking about those times.
It's funny how I associated that memory with Ferran, when I had a multitude of other memories to pick and choose from. We were there on the beach, relaxing – just the two of us. Slowly the entire scene would come back - the long dry grasses swaying in the gentle wind, the faint hum of the waves crashing into the beach, the occasional gawks of the seagulls circling above.
It was an empty beach. Just like it always had been.
Ferran lay down, totally at ease, with his leatherback journal in his hands. I remembered how wavy his blond hair was, how smooth his sun kissed skin looked under the thin veneer of sweat. But most importantly, I remembered the faint scratching of his pencil. Of graphite against paper.
"You promised to not look until I'm done," he said, a sharp edge in his voice when I tried to sneak myself a peek. I relented and let him finish. There was no use prodding him.
To be truthful, my mind was mostly somewhere else. But for the life of me I couldn't recall what I was thinking about as I stared out into the sea, lost in my own thoughts. The troubles that had seemed so monumental in that moment had all just vanished through the slow passage of time.
But other fragments remain crystal clear, just like the sketch of my profile that Ferran showed me. He had captured the image of me so well, from the way my jaw curved to how my curls went wild in the wind. There was a very raw quality to the sketch, though the strokes of the pencil felt ephemeral and soft. Like everything Ferran did, there was a faint tinge of sadness.
"Wow, you're really good."
He smiled, a rosy glow creeping to his cheeks.
"It means a lot coming from you," he replied.
"You just underestimate yourself," I said. "You're really bright."
There was a moment of silence as I watched the smile disappeared from his thin lips. He put his journal down and turned to face the sea. In that moment I could only hear the waves crashing against the shore, as his eyes stared into the horizon.
"I can never be him," Ferran said, his voice soft and mellow.
He had folded his knees in front of him, bringing them close to his chest. His blue eyes were filled with sadness, revealing the frail boy that he was inside. The boy that tried to hide himself from the world.
"And you never will be," I replied.
As soon as the words left my lips I felt a pang of regret. I didn't mean it to make it sound like the way it did. Rafel was irreplaceable, and nobody could take his place. Even if it was his own little brother. Rafel was Rafel. He was special, and would forever have a place in my heart.
