Dear Noah,
Cold smoke trickled from my throat as sunlight bled through lilac clouds.
I was left stiff from hugging my knees all night. I stretched my arms up slowly, but was stopped short by the rough wooden roof of the tunnel I was slumping in. I looked up, taking in the cracked paint—once yellow; now, resembling a dirty vomit-beige—and my eyes were drawn to my hands, covered in streaks of dry mud; and to my wrist, where I could see the tip of a long gash streaming down to my elbow's crease.
I crawled out of the tunnel, collapsing after an attempted two-footed position. My legs were shaky and my knees painful, but moving my muscles felt blissfully aberrant—my veins thawed and body woke in time with the sunrise. I'd have watched the star mount itself into the sky, but I'd seen more than my fair share of sunrises. They no longer held the majestic sense of a new day, because there were no new days—before you. There was only the same day, oozing into a continuous sludge of the weeks and months and years that had made up my life until then.
Instead, I tried standing once more, shamefully pleased to find my legs were, once again, functioning in their correct manner. The cold metal bars of the park fence bit my fingers as I climbed over them. I shoved my hand into my pockets. The material was course against them.
Aching trees surrounded the park, and they groaned to me and about me as I traversed their dappled depths. My stomach growled with the birds' chirping, but, knowing that I was already late for Madame Reena, I decided against stopping in town or at the house. I used to wonder if, had I chosen to go home first, any of this would have happened; but you were a fervent fire growing steadily duller (or louder, depending on whether I love you or hate you) and, your heart, constructed in its tessellation of glaciers, was always going to sink—one way or another.
Madame Reena's house was small and cosy and covered in floral prints. There were approximately three billion chairs—winged chairs and club chairs and slipper chairs and occasional chairs—all with such thin, spindly legs, you were pumped with adrenaline just standing next to them; never mind allocating actual weight to their threadbare surface. There was always the faint scent of dog and tea in the air, heavily masked by the flowery perfume Madame Reena received every six months from an 'admirer' in Belgium.
Of course, you knew all of this. You lived there.
I don't think you knew the whole story behind Madame Reena, though. She was not actually French. Rumours circulating her arrival thirty-two years ago suggest that she was really the daughter of a long-dead banker in England, who insisted that if she did not finish her education properly at the university of his choice, she would have to leave home immediately and forget her inheritance. Being the free-spirited, fiery young woman she was, she packed her bags and spent five years travelling Europe, living off the good heartedness of locals in foreign towns. She settled briefly in France; enjoying wines and perfumes and onions and romantic, forgotten towns in the mountains. Thus, Madame Reena was born.
Except Madame Reena found her life of hedonism unfulfilling. She heard a report about the growing number of orphaned children in America and made the decision to move and look after as many kids—within fostering law—as she could.
I know all of this because I've lived in the same town (Thomson, Nowhere, USA) as her all my life—that is, all eighteen (almost nineteen) years of it. Thomson, Nowhere, USA hasn't always been big enough to be called a town, and I think that its improved status from Nothing, Nowhere, USA to an actual living, breathing town was directly proportional to Madame Reena and her unquenchable desire for carting new kids in every few months. I suspect that if you gathered up all the children that she had ever fostered and stuck them back into Thomson at the same time, it's population would be large enough to rival that of the Big Apple's.
Madame Reena really enjoyed taking in kids with problems. Her cherry on top was grinding them up and using their dust to recreate the better person they were always supposed to be. The rest of the town never ceased to be amazed when watching the transformation, and regularly showed its support by helping Madame Reena in whatever way it could: baking her cakes, weeding her yard, fixing her plumbing.
I was given the immensely imperative task of walking her dog.
Everyday at ten to five in the evening, I would drag my worn-out sneakers along the cracked concrete leading to Madame Reena's house. I would arrive at five o'clock sharp. She would invite me in for tea, make me question my safety with the most dangerous-looking chair of all, occasionally offer me the latest skirt she'd been sent from Italy ("It simply won't fit me,"), and then, at half past five, I'd leash up her crazy bichon frise, which had that pretentiously luxurious aura which allowed her to be called Mariette and get away with it, and I'd be out the door and up the neat path and on my way.
I walked Mariette early on Saturdays—really early. It was freezing that day, and I was wrapped up in a thick blue coat. I hope you wouldn't remember it. Thomson hadn't been so cold for years, and I hadn't needed such heavy insulation since eighth grade, so a large, faded-yellow paint stain ran the length between my elbow and wrist. I hadn't thought I would be seeing anyone.
I scuffed my way up Madame Reena's path. I must have been stepping on all the cracks and unknowingly challenging the universe to give me back luck. I stopped at her front door, painted powder blue to match the shutters, which were always flung wide to complement her own open personality. You know and both know it wasn't because she was too lazy to close them all every night—I don't think Madame Reena is aware of the unfulfilling pleasure idleness can bring.
My knuckles were halfway to the door and I was contemplating why I could not yet open it through the telekinesis powers of my mind when, in a divine intervention sort of moment, it was yanked open from the other side.
You stood there, staring at me with the sort of expression that made me feel as if I was in the wrong; as if I was an idiot for standing in front of you, and should immediately move back and run run run. And then I realised how hot you were.
You were tall, in that leanly muscular way, with a head of explosive dark hair; the colour the night sky turns when there's no moon. You had a slender, defined face, like it had been chiselled using wisdom and the breath of a wintry breeze. My eyes fell instinctively to my feet, to my scruffy jeans and sneakers and God-awful coat. I was embarrassed, I remember that, and you just kept staring at my face, before—
"Can I help you?"
I don't think you ever realised, but your voice was this oxymoronic mix of husky and smooth; reflecting that same way you'd brush your coarse gaze against my skin and then wrap it up in velvet.
"Uh, no, well—" I started.
"Good," you interrupted. "I wasn't going to." Then you stepped forward, so that you could shut the door, hard, and stalked off down the path, turning stiffly at the end and onto the sidewalk.
An hour and a half later, I returned Mariette to her owner. I paused in her doorway, taking in the sun as it cast its perennial eye over us. Dew was melting on the grass surrounding Madame Reena's house, making it burst green and bright. A cold, vibrant day: the type winter enjoys throwing around only so often, to remind us that beautiful things could just as easily be bitingly bitter.
I shut my eyes and breathed in so hard it felt as if I was trying to suck life from the air, or something. It must have worked.
"What are you doing?"
I snapped my covers open, appalled to see you standing at the end of the garden path. Your mouth had quirked up slightly to the left. Oh, God. You were smirking at me.
"Just standing," I replied.
"Could you stand somewhere else?"
I nodded quickly, because my mouth would have failed to produce a witty retort, or anything remotely comprehensible. I moved to allow you access to the doorway. As you approached, I noticed your appearance wasn't particularly up-to-scratch: your clothes were dishevelled and your shoes scuffed beyond repair. Though your hands were both jammed into your jeans' pockets, the sleeves of your black shirt were too long for you, and hung limply at your sides. Slung around your neck was a piece of string, two safety pins looped through it. (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.) Your dark hair was tousled but dead, like you'd been dragging a hand through it for days.
You came to an abrupt halt and looked at me.
And despite your tired demeanour, you were beautiful. Warm pale lips and unfairly long, dark lashes. A defined jaw structure emphasised your hollow cheeks. In the pastel beginning-of-day light, I found myself thinking that all the sunrises since the birth of the world could not give me a better sense of a new day than your exhausted young face.
"Are you alright?" you asked, your eyes sliding to the distance behind me, beyond the house, like you were searching for an answer to a question I would never ask.
"Yes," I said. "Are you?"
"Never been better."
"... Cool."
You brought your cerulean eyes to mine for just a second too long, Noah, because I knew then; I knew about the myriad of shrouded enigma just below their inky surface. They held the kind of secrets I'd find in my dreams. I dropped my own gaze to my shoes as the breeze picked up a strand of hair and threw it into my face. I tucked it back, conscious of your watchful presence.
"Yeah, cool," you said.
"Cool."
"I think we've established that yes, it's cool," you said. I brought my head up, not sure whether or not you were joking, relieved to find the corner of your mouth hitched up again.
"As long as it has been established," I said.
"What's your name?"
"Cadence," I said.
"Cool." You grinned—a controlled action. "I'm Noah."
And then you started walking again, brushing past me ever so softly. I shivered, and I have a sneaking suspicion it had nothing to do with the cold wrapping itself around my bones. I turned to watch you, your posture astute and weary; like you were carrying the sins of the world and you knew it.
I'm sorry. I'm crying.
______________________
oh boy