Forgetting Sylva

Fears

Ever since I was six years old, I have never slept alone. 

Sometimes it's my mother; sometimes my father; but more often than not, it is a boy. This boy has hair as dark as bitter chocolate, cropped close to his head, but it's growing out slowly, so that it's almost long enough for me to run my fingers through, if I were ever daring enough. His eyes are a bright blue, clear as a summer sky, his lashes long and thick. His face is made up of sharp lines, but, for me, when he smiles, it is made soft. As of late, I have noticed, he has had to shave more often; when we were fifteen the hair on his face started to grow and, most days, there is a light, rough stubble on his cheeks and chin. He is tall and strong and well muscled, but not overly so, more lithe and lean than built. This boy is beautiful. I've never told him that, though. 

He's my best friend, and has been since we were born in hospital beds beside each other, the fingers of our mothers linked together over the gap between them. We came into the world, our screams mixing together so it almost sounded as if we were one. I love him. More than a friend should. More than anything. But I'd never do anything to jeopardise our relationship. 

Tonight, as we sit on my bed, he runs his fingers through my hair, gently twisting it into a loose braid; I used to do it myself, but my arms cannot stay up so high any longer, so he learnt to do it for me. "I'll be your arms," I remember him joking, the first time he did it. But will you be my heart? I had thought. Foolish, stupid girl, I think now. Idiot girl. 

"So soft. Like liquid silver," he says, his fingers gentle as he combs through my hair. Long fingers, slim and capable. I shiver a little as they run over my scalp, and force a smile when I know he is looking at me. 

"I'm fine," I say emphatically. "You're just taking so long, my back is getting cold." I'm sitting up in my bed, him behind me, the blankets pooling around my waist. 

"Sorry. I'll be quicker, master," he says, completely serious, and I laugh softly. 

His fingers thread through my hair now, deftly separating it into three parts and then winding them together. "Besides," I tell him, "liquid silver is molten. If my hair were actually molten metal, you wouldn't have fingers anymore." 

"It was just a comparison," he says, tying off my hair. "Albeit a fanciful one." 

I pull up my blankets a little, because now my lie is true and I really am cold. "Well, let's stick with reality, alright?" I sigh as he lets the hair tie go with a snap and settles my braid against my back.

"Done," he says. I can feel his knees against my back, and his breath on my shoulder. "Would you like to lie down, Madame?" he asks. 

I make a blustering sound at the word, but can't help a smile. "You're so stupid sometimes, Marcus." His knees leave my back as he gets up slowly, stretches, and then eases his arms beneath me, lowering me back down into my bed so that my head rests against the pillow. When I am lying down, I sigh: lying down does not require as much effort as sitting up does. But then, neither does sleeping compared to being awake. I fight it, though. 

He leaves my side and walks into the wardrobe, and I can see his back, well muscled and lovely, through the open door: he isn't shy about getting changed in front of me, probably because we've known each other for our whole our lives. Probably because he thinks of me as a sister. 

I close my eyes as he changes, and open them when I hear him sigh as he settles himself beside me beneath the sheets, carefully, so as not to jolt the bed. He claps his hands, and the light goes out, leaving us in darkness. 

He is on his side, looking at me with those bright eyes that pierce the darkness. I roll my head to the side so that I can look at him, too. He smiles a little. "Syl," he says quietly, sleepily. "I need to tell you something. Something important." 

I smile as he yawns widely. "You can tell me anything," I reply, my voice a whisper. 

"But not now," he says. "Later, maybe." 

I look at him, bemused. "Marc, you can't tell me that you have something important to tell me and then not say it." He frowns. I'd do anything to make him smile again. "At least set a date or something, so I have something to look forward to." 

He grins sleepily and yawns widely again. "Alright. Ten days from now, I'll tell you." 

"The twenty-ninth, you mean," I correct him, and he rolls his eyes before closing them. 

"Whatever, calendar." He sighs as he puts his arm over me, his hand resting on my stomach beneath the sheets. His fingers are so long and I am so small that his hand, with his palm against my ribs on one side, reaches all the way across to my ribs at the other side. I hold my breath a little at his touch, but force myself to breathe normally: in, out, in, out. 

"Syl," he says again, and I wait for him to finish the sentence. "Sometimes I'm afraid I'll roll over and hurt you, in my sleep," he whispers. 

This is a fear he expresses often. I think for a moment, and then whisper back in response. "Sometimes, I'm afraid I won't wake up in the morning, but I still go to sleep." I wake up because you're there, I don't say. 

He shifts closer, so his long body is flush against mine, his fingers curling around my waist, his forehead touching mine. I press my feet against his legs, clad in old, worn tracksuit pants; my toe finds a hole and squeezes inside it, as if that will hold us together. 

Most of my wardrobe is filled with clothes I'll never wear: the other section is full of Marcus' clothes. He's here often enough that mum and dad joke that he's one step away from moving in. If only that were true. 

I close my eyes and try to sleep, but I can feel his eyes on me. "You're not going to squish me in your sleep, Marc. Close your eyes." 

"I wasn't thinking about that," he says softly, and I open my eyes to look at him questioningly. "I was thinking about... what I would do if you didn't wake up in the morning." His last words are so quiet I barely hear them. 

I think about it, and it makes me sad that it puts pain in his voice, the thought of me dead. I put my hand over his against my side, and he moves his fingers so ours fit together like a mismatched, irregular puzzle piece. "You'd be sad, for a while," I murmur. "But you'd get over it. You'd grow old and have a family and forget that I ever existed, that I ever stole seventeen years of your life, and maybe, on your birthday, you might remember the girl who used to share it with you." 

I closed my eyes somewhere in my story. I feel his lips press against my jaw, once, as he holds me a little tighter, though still careful, achingly careful. "You didn't steal anything from me, Sylva. I shared it gladly. And I could never in my whole life forget you, not even if I lived to be a hundred with Alzheimer's in an old people's home. I'd be raving to my nurse about my best friend, a girl with silver hair and the best person I ever met." 

I smile a little. "That's an over exaggeration, don't you think?" I say. 

"Never," he whispers. And then he falls asleep, and I drift away to the sound of his even breaths and the feeling of him next to me.