"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 walked Amélie to the door. I had called a taxi for her, and shoved some euros into her palm for her fare. She tried to refuse at first, but I told her to take it as a token of appreciation, and as a way to say thanks for everything that she has done for me.
"One last thing," I said, as she walked out into the corridor. "If you don't mind."
She stopped and turned around. I struggled to cough up the right words.
"What about us?" I asked. "Do you think. . . We could go back to the way things were?"
She was silent for a while, before letting out a shallow sigh.
"I've moved on, Mateu," she finally said, clasping her palms in front of her. "And you should too."
I watched her walk down the corridor, slowly getting further and further away. Her pretty blond hair was let down, no longer in her fishtail braid. She had changed a lot in my absence. In a sense I was happy for her, but I couldn't help but feel like I had been left behind.
I returned to my apartment and closed the door behind me. Only after her leaving did I realise how lonely I truly was, the emptiness creeping into my home.
The lone branch in the vase lasted a week. A strange sadness washed over me as I watched it die – the peony pink petals turning pale and lifeless, before dropping off. The branch turned limp, its leaves turning yellow and wilted. I felt like I was watching Rafel, watching him wilt and die into nothingness. I wondered how he was doing now. Cold, dark, and alone with only the worms and snakes for company. How could someone so warm be extinguished just like that?
I started to ask these questions. Questions that I had been ignoring for months. Amélie was right, running away wasn't going to solve anything.
If there was one person who was hurting more than me when Rafel died, it was his little brother.
I thought about what Amélie said. Perhaps I should talk to him. I didn't even know how he was doing now. There were only a couple of months left before the school year ended, so I guess he must've been busy preparing for the baccalaureate, and if he were to try for the more competitive universities, he would have to sit for university entrance exams. I still had his number, sitting in my contacts.
I pondered over it for the next few days. Every time I wanted to pick up the phone and give the boy a call, I felt a paralysing hesitation, and eventually I never did.
I had an itching feeling to find out how he was doing, and in the end I gave in and looked him up on social media. I struggled to remember his handle, so I had to search for him from Rafel's account.
I hadn't viewed Rafel's profile in a very long while. I was hit by a wave of nostalgia as I scrolled down and looked at all the pictures that he had posted. It all seemed like a lifetime ago. And in a sense it was – from a life that I could never have again. A life where my best friend was still alive.
