perfect sokeefe

the question of love

Another time, Sophie had been stressed. More than usual. It was obvious to anyone who spared a second glance to her. Hair that was tied back into a messy bun, the clothes that wrinkled with every movement, and eye bags darker than they had ever been before.

In the late afternoon, Keefe had finally spared some time and found Sophie on one of the broken-down metal tables outdoors. Keefe sat beside her, watching as she furiously jotted down more notes. He greeted her, "Hey, Foster."

Sophie shushed him, a bit harshly. "Be quiet."

He paused, contemplating his next move. "Would it be better if I left?"

"No." Sophie grabbed his hand with her free one. "Stay here and hold my hand while I study."

He didn't complain the whole hour they had sat there.

There had also been some other small gestures that Keefe had blown way out of proportion. Their shoulders brushing against each other in a crowded bus. Hands swinging past each other as they walked side-by-side through their campus. A person pushing Sophie nearly flat against Keefe's chest. The blonde girl offering a small caramel candy to Keefe by pressing it to his lips, and then commenting on how pretty they looked.

Did she want him to die?

There had even been that one time when she had even told him about her first kiss.

Some strawberry blonde in the same year, who had a crush on her for nearly a year.

Sophie had told him the specifics of her case and went on to tell him that she didn't regret it one bit. However, Keefe knew her, there was some type of hesitance that made him doubt.

"Would you have rather had someone else be your first kiss?"

The girl looked up at him, and it was how she did, with so much raw and unfiltered intensity in her gaze that made him think, just for a second, that maybe, just maybe, that she had wanted him to be her first kiss.

Then, she quickly said, "I don't know. The feeling of love is foreign to me."

At one point in his life, it had been the same for him. And it still was.

It had merely been a feeling that he knew existed but never had been associated with. It had been a desire for him as a child, to experience some type of love, but the wanting had clung onto him for so long that, eventually, it was bound to grow tired.

However, Sophie had sparked the desire back to life, and this time, it wasn't just the inclusive desire to just be loved. It was the specific desire to be loved by Sophie Foster, and by her only.

There had been other signals that had been thrown to him, not just the ones Keefe had recollected from his failing memory. Sophie complimenting his lips, caressing his hands and cheek, eyes telling a story that her mind restrained, shoulders sagging once alone with him, mouth curing with a smile when Keefe entered her same room.

All signs that she probably hoped Keefe never picked up.

Or signs that Keefe had been imagining this entire time.

The blonde boy badly wished that he was correct. That both blondes were crushing on each other because if he wasn't, it wouldn't just mean that what he wanted was never possible, but it would also mean that he was wrong. no gray in the middle of the black and white, just wrong.

The look in Sophie's eyes when she looked at him. The amount of admiration and (assumed) love in the stare was imagined. None of it was real.

It would hurt mainly because he would know the reason behind it. He knew that the only reason he willed himself to believe it was because it had been a longing ever since childhood. To be properly loved, and this had blinded him to the present. It had caused him to misread the moments shared between the two as merely just friends as something more.