MERISSA VICTOR

He told me a story once.

 

Of a girl he once knew. Rose.

 

Rose with the hand stitched hems on her bell-bottomed jeans. Rose with hands full of books she had meticulously marked-up. Rose with the hair as big as her smile. Rose who, he found from the scent she left on his jacket when he first bumped into her, actually smelt of vanilla. Rose who left his room eternally redolent of the coffee she spilt from the first time he invited her over.

 

Abraham was twenty-four when he first met Rose.

 

***

 

I was never one to think that in a world populated by billions, only one person could enamour you so. But it happened. 

 

His colour was red. The shoes he wore, the only dress shirt he owned, the adjective that made up one third of the title of his favourite film, the colour of his eyes when I first met him, his colour of choice when he decided to spray paint his bike at one that morning, the colour he left on my hands as I shook his goodbye— all red. 

 

I was twenty-four when I first met him.

 

***

 

He told me a story once. 

 

Of the girl who made it hard for him to breathe, the girl on the dance floor. 

 

Under the glow of the red strobe light, Rose spun. Abraham stood watching in the warm Christmas air. Off and on. Off and on. With every flicker of the light, the frozen fragments of this enigmatic girl were etched into his mind. 

 

Abraham was never the cautious kind, even going as far as sneaking out the window, despite the broken leg earned from a bike injury, just to catch a midnight movie. But with her, he was. As he watched her weave her way across the crowded floor, he begun to feel light headed. 

 

In the process of watching her every move so intently, had he forgotten to let the oxygen fill his body?

 

Suddenly and as if he hadn’t been harbouring any hesitation or doubt, Abraham strode across the room, pushing past the sweaty bodies. Maybe it was the lack of oxygen or the adrenaline surging through his veins that lead him to take Rose by the hand— but if Abraham was sure of anything at all, he was sure that something within him had changed. With that they danced, and he thought they would never stop. But everything does, at one point or another, Abraham knew that. 

 

As he left the party, entranced by the girl who had danced under the flicker of the strobe light, he finally felt the excruciating pain that was growing in his chest. But it was already too late. 

 

Off and on. Off and on. 

 

***

 

I was never one to think that in a world populated by billions, only one person could enamour you so. And to the very end, I was never one to believe that Abraham would be taken away. 

 

As I watched him make his way towards me, it seemed like time itself had stopped. Off and on. Off and on, the red strobe light went. The liquid courage that coursed my veins made the feelings I had been suppressing so palpable, that I could almost taste it in my mouth. The words I was never able to string into a coherent sentence, finally, on the tip of my tongue. The adrenaline, moments away from forcing them out of me— but nothing happens. I’m jerked back into reality—into the present. 

 

As I catch myself slowly slipping into my own memories of the boy with red hands, I am reminded of the diary he left behind after his passing. Beyond the last pages of his life, I wonder how hard it must have been for him to say his last goodbyes to his loved ones. He never delved that far though. And his story, his stories, they always ended the same: “She, too, is human and wants a better boy and not a sickly man like me.” 

 

But, I did Abraham. I did. 

 

***

 

He once told me a story.

 

Of a girl he couldn’t keep.

 

Abraham was twenty-four when he first met Rose and I was twenty-four when I heard him say goodbye.