ALL THE WORDS WE COULDN'T SAY

T W E N T Y E I G H T

Fucking say something then! What the fuck did you come here for?

Any and all rational thoughts had completely left my mind void of anything comprehensible. In the black-and-white scribbles that clouded everything, it was at least safe to say that nothing made sense.

And yet still, we managed to communicate so much in that time. What happened changed both of us. No, everything made sense. Some small part of me, beneath the rage and resentment I held for Killian, secretly wanted us to go back to what we once were. I knew he wanted that too. Two teenagers with shitty parents practising for some dumb play we couldn't even remember now (well, he probably could - that damn memory of his...). But now, as I stood in the doorway of his room, after two months of no contact, I realised that we'd never be the way we were. And perhaps that might be a good thing. Maybe we weren't meant to return to what we were. Maybe Killian was better off with someone with no rapist stepfather, someone who could eat full meals and could trust him and love him unconditionally.

Killian made a mistake years ago, and I became the very thing I accused him so much of. I was too selfish to think that he'd change. That, like practically everyone else, he wasn't the same person he was at fifteen years old. I realised that in order for me to move on, to finally let go of the unlucky hand I was dealt with at the start, I needed to forgive him. Forgiving the boy who I loved and hated and still loved but whom I was scared of betraying me again, it was the only way.

"Killian?" I finally spoke.

"Yes?" I finally heard him speak.

"I-"

"I know. Thank you, Persy."

Tears burned against the flesh of my eyes, and my heart burned with blood as I wrapped my arms around Killian's waist. Our grip wasn't tight, not like how we hugged before when we were afraid of letting go.

"Hey," he lowered his lips to my ear. "Let's go out for a while."

"Go out?" I asked.

"Yeah. Let's forget about everything and just do something normal for once."

He led me out of his room and the next thing I knew, we were eating lamb donner and chips whilst sitting on the edge of a wall behind some abandoned train tracks.

"That's such bullshit!" I laughed.

"You're so fucked if you think Goodfellas is a better film than The literal Godfather!"

"Ugh, you're such a basic bitch. Next thing you're probably going to tell me is that Star Wars is worth the watch."

"It is!" He insisted.

I blew a raspberry at him. After taking the last sip of my Coke, I looked down at the yellow, polystyrene box and realised that this was the first meal I'd managed to completely finish in months.

I pulled a deck from the side pocket of my cargos. "You don't mind if I..."

"You ever seen me with a fag? I'm good, Persy." Killian wiped his fingers with a tissue.

"I saw you with about a metric ton of cocaine so I wasn't sure where your limit was." I shot sarcastically but faintly regretted reminding him.

He exhaled with a smile, almost as if he was reminiscing about the time. As I lit my cigarette, the distant sound of a train came by. I started to take in the sounds of everything else. The spring breeze, the crisp branches of trees swaying and gently shedding small, white, blossom petals. One must've landed in my hair as I noticed Killian shift closer to me and brush it away. I suddenly became aware of his breathing, how deep and encapsulating it sounded, which sounds fucking ridiculous when it's literally just someone inhaling and exhaling. But I felt a great sense of comfort with it. It was the sound I wanted to hear last at night and the first thing in the morning.

The swift whoosh! of the train disrupted the peaceful equilibrium that had settled. The burst of wind that lapped towards us blew out my cigarette. Instead of lighting it up again, I relaxed my fingers and let it fall to the ground, my urge to smoke no longer high enough to care.

"Do you still get panic attacks?"

"Sometimes."

"When was the last time you had one?"

"When I realised you were overdosing."

"Oh... Sorry."

I stifled a laugh. "Well, I guess I might be able to forgive you sometime in the distant future."

With his memory, I knew he wouldn't have forgotten that same line he used on me after the first time I had a panic attack in front of him.

He laughed. It reminded me of the contagious laughs he had when he was high, how he couldn't stop even when he clutched his stomach in pain.

"I wonder what the future will be like for us," he said after recovering from his pants of laughter.

...for us?

What did he mean by that? Was he talking about our futures as two separate paths or a unified entity? I wanted to ask him but decided to hold my tongue, fearing the answer he might give.

"I don't know," I admitted truthfully. "I just hope it's worth the wait."

Killian turned to me, the electric blue of his eyes dazzled in the orange beams of the setting sun.

"It will be, Persy. It will."