Dad.
We spoke of you today.
No, it wasn't the family, or Mom. It wasn't Jenna because she doesn't come back till tomorrow.
Aura and I spoke of you today.
It's easy to talk about you with her.
She doesn't walk on eggshells around me with regards to you.
Today, I spoke of you.
And she listened.
And it felt like a load was being lifted off my chest.
Then, she did this wonderful thing.
She put the tips of her fingers to the corner of my mouth and told me that I have your smile.
In that moment, I felt this overwhelming rush of emotions towards her; too many for me to put a finger on. Everything from relief, to thankfulness and happiness and so many other things.
I don't think she will ever understand what that statement did for me, but maybe, I'll have my entire lifetime to repay her for the feeling.
It's like I'm the Grinch, but instead of Christmas, she's the one who makes my heart grow.
Aura and I decided that, considering that she's my sister and Aura's friend, we're going to tell Jenna when she comes home tomorrow.
No doubt she's going to have a permanent smug smile on her face after we do, but she wouldn't be Jenna if she didn't.
Aura and I spoke of more things today.
She told me that she expects open, clear communication – anything that I'm feeling, I have to tell her, regardless of whether I think it'll hurt her feelings or not because she's not willing to sit around and try to solve problems she doesn't know exists. She said she's not interested in relational implosions that could have been avoided by a simple conversation.
I told her, "Aura, I will tell you all my thoughts."
The moment I said it, I realized that I'm already not sticking to my word. I had so many thoughts about her even in that moment, that I was unable to vocalize.
Even she cocked her head at me, smiling, when I told her that. She looked a bit dubious.
"All of them, El?" she asked me, "That's so many thoughts."
"Alright," I agreed, "The important ones. Sometimes the not important ones."
She shook her head. "No, tell me all the thoughts you want to tell me. Sometimes, tell me all the thoughts you have to tell me. I'm not interested in just the good day thoughts. I also want all the bad day thoughts. Those might be more important."
I told her that I look forward to telling her my thoughts and hearing all the thoughts that brew in that head of hers.
Her hand was in mine and she smiled at me.
It looked almost as if she wanted to tell me something, with the way she was looking at me, but she said nothing.
So, I leaned over and told her, "You just promised me your thoughts. Tell me the most recent one. The one you're biting down right now."
Her face went pink.
I think she wanted me to let go.
I wasn't really willing to.
Finally, she said to me, "I like holding your hand."
Holding my hand.
She likes holding my hand.
Of all the things in the world that she could have been thinking, that's probably the best thought I could have heard.
Feeling like I could take on Zeus at Mount Olympus, I grinned at her – probably idiotically – and I told her, "Well, I immensely like holding yours, too."
Then, I had the unprecedented pleasure of seeing her turn even more gloriously pink.
This is going to be fun, Dad.
It's easy, it's relaxing, but it's also going to be fun.
If by agreeing to her conditions that night, I signed up for a life of this, then, Dad, it's going to be a fantastic life.
She asked me what I thought would be the most challenging part of being with me.
I told her it would be the fact that I had such little free time, most of the time, and the only reason I was so free these days was because I was on leave.
She seemed to consider it.
Then she said, "I get that. Your job takes up a lot of your time. My job takes up my time, too, but probably not as much. Over the past month, I've come to realize how erratic your schedule can be." She paused to think. "I can understand that and I can deal with it. But I do expect some of your time. See, El, I get it about the fact that time is a luxury for you. So, I will always do my best to understand that. But I need you to know that I'm clingy, sometimes. Sometimes, I want more attention, more time than other days. I'm not saying it'll be easy, but that's the truth. I will always do my best to understand your situation, but there will be difficult days."
It was so honest, Dad.
No pretense that she would always be completely okay with all the time I have to spend away, because there's always been tough times.
No trying to make me feel better about anything.
She told me the complete, honest reality about what things may be like.
I think it's then that I really realized that this was it; the real deal.
I told her yes, some days will be difficult, but I will do my level best to give her all the time that I can.
Then, she told me, "I think that might be the hardest part about being with me. The clinginess. It's not all the time, because I like my solitude. But some days, I'll want more time, more attention. The problem is, I can't predict those days, either."
I told her I'm ready for all of those days and all the others.
She told me that I was crazy to agree to all of the things she was saying.
I told her that it's more of a reflection on her mental state because I may be crazy, but she actually likes me.
She rolled her eyes at me.
Those eyes get me.
They really do.
Everything is expressed in those eyes.
She narrows them, rolls them, widens them, scrunches them, squints them, closes them, opens them. I don't think there's a person in the world who is more expressive with their eyes than she is.
One of these days, I'll be able to pin point what all of them mean.
We were quiet for a while, her hand in mine.
I brushed my thumb against her knuckles.
It made her look down at our hands.
"I'm going back home at the end of the month."
That statement hung in the air, like some sort of invisible dagger, waiting to strike me down.
I think the sigh that left me was a bit on the dramatic side because she laughed at me, softly.
"Calm down. It's not the 1800's. It's not like we have to write letters," she tried to console me.
But even as I looked at her, I knew even she was a bit sad about the whole ordeal.
I'm not going to ask her to stay for me.
Especially because I wouldn't go if she asked me to.
I've started something and I'm going to finish it.
She has her own work and I'm not going to stand in the way of that.
But it's going to hurt when she's gone.
Instead of focusing on the hurt, I asked her, "Do you not like letters?"
"I love letters," she told me, "But there are also more efficient methods of communication."
She had me at 'I love letters.'
It's then that I decided that I would, indeed, write her a letter; maybe more than one.
"The world won't keep us apart for too long," I told her, already making plans on how to meet her after she goes back to Andrusia.
It was when she whispered, "I hope not", that I knew I just had to find a way.
She squeezed my hand.
Sometimes, when she holds my hand, I feel like there isn't much in the world that I can't do.
Maybe it's silly of me to think that because she's held my hand so few times, but still.
We spoke about our friends.
She told me about hers.
I told her about mine.
Somewhere along the line, she asked me my favourite colour. I thought it would be too cliched to tell her that it just might be the colour of her eyes. Especially, considering the fact that brown doesn't seem to cut it. Of course, that might be the bias talking.
So, instead, I settled for telling her that it was the colour of her soul. "Yellow."
I love yellow anyway, so the fact that she very much has a happy, yellow soul is a happy coincidence.
She told me hers is lilac.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom, but I actually walked over to the lilac tree behind the ice cream place and picked a bunch for her.
When I presented it to her, she looked at me like I was some kind of magician.
It was a good feeling, Dad.
I would definitely recommend it.
When I told her the truth of the matter, she rolled her eyes at me again, told me that it was awfully convenient for me that good Samaritans plant these trees for me to look good, but thanked me again.
Then, I asked her if no one ever gave her a bunch of lilacs before.
She shook her head.
She told me something that broke my heart a little: "Before you gave me that bunch of baby roses, no one had given me any flowers before."
Fighting my own urge to pick all the flowers in the vicinity for her, I told her that someone as special as her should get all the flowers, all the candy floss, all the M&Ms.
She only laughed.
I said to her, "I mean it, Aura."
"Not all," she told me, "Just a few. Sometimes."
I know my job isn't to fix everything that other people haven't done for her, Dad.
I know that.
But it'll be my mission to show her how people should do for her.
At least, I'll try my best.
All of this was yesterday.
Days of us are going by, Dad.
Today, Jenna and Juliet are somewhere in this house, because Mom made them promise to spend a few days here.
Today, we tell Jenna.
Wish us luck.
Any guesses about Jenna's reaction? Are you excited for it?
Fun thing: Link the gifs/pictures/videos/TikToks that remind you of Aura, El or both here. Let's see what you make of them :)
Much love.