What Lovely Kidneys You Have (An Eyeless Jack P.O.V & Romance)

12 - You've Got a Beautiful Smile

I had stopped with my stomach to the grass and I propped myself up on my elbows, crossing one ankle over the other as I looked at her, feeling a slight bit dizzy, “Satisfied?”

“Very,” she smiled, twisting herself around so that she was lying on her back, although now she was even closer to me, her arm touching mine, “You’re the best.”

“Oh yeah?” I questioned, raising an eyebrow, “Why’s that?”

She shrugged, “Lionel never did what I asked him to do.”

Hearing his name on her lips was a slight bit of cancer to my warmth for a strange reason, and I dropped my gaze down to my gloves, “Perhaps best not to speak of him. He seems to bring your mood down, and I can only help but wonder why, although I’m quite sure I already know.”

She thought about what I had said, her own gaze falling for a short moment, “I’m sorry. It’s really selfish of me to bring him up; he’s a downer so, bringing him up only makes it awkward for you.”

I nodded a bit, “I’m not awkward. Just, uncomfortable. I am in no place to speak about bad people, but the fact that you and him have a not-so-happy past makes me sorry I wasn’t around during it.”

“Why’s that?”

There was a slight pause before I spoke up, “I can’t imagine a version of you whose annoying happiness was oppressed by someone of his stature and capabilities. I’d pain me.”

Her eyes lit up a little as she brought them back up to my mask, “It’d hurt you to see me sad? I didn’t know you could feel emotional pain.”

I laughed a tad bit, obnoxious enough to cause her to smile, “I will have you know that I can most defiantly feel emotional pain. And although I have perfected a way to hide it, it’s still there at times.”

She nodded, “Well maybe if you weren’t wearing a mask, it’d be easier for people to see your true emotions,” her face became serious, “Take it off.”

“No.” Was my immediate response. It was like the moment someone proposed removing my mask, a part of my brain quickly declined.

“Jack,” she began, her face so compassionate that it made me feel compelled to listen to her, “I want to know how you feel when you’re around me, and I can’t tell because you hardly laugh, I never get to see you smile, or frown, and you can disguise your voice to hide your emotions. I don’t care what you look like; I just want to see you.”

There was a brief moment of silence as I swallowed, demons and nerves crawling at my back, “I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” she smiled, her purple speckled eyes reflecting the light of the stars as they glistened, “Just for a little while.”

Could I? I mean, I trusted her, I did, but then again, what would she think? Of course her opinion shouldn’t concern me, but it did; everyone’s opinion concerned me. I had to mask what I truly was, which is something I could hardly understand. I was blind, yet, I could see. I had no eyes, hence the name, and that was enough for her to know.  She didn’t have to see, no one did. Perhaps it was just superstition, but I felt that no one else but the ones like me could handle the image of my bare face, my soulless pits cursing them into an irreversible eternity of insanity. I mean, insanity’s what caused them to be plucked from my skull, so insanity can work its black magic again on innocent eyes.

“It’s safer if you didn’t see,” I finally concluded, warning her.

“Safer?”

I nodded, “Yes. Safer.”