Page 1 of Indigo

-PROLOGUE-

INDIGO

“READY FOR YOUR CAKE, birthday girl?” Pax asks from beside me.

As he leans forward, his shaggy brown, shoulder-length hair falls to the side of his face. A fake smile pulls at his lips. He knows it too. Knows that we need to have this conversation despite his attempts to distract me.

Every time I sit here, on this jetty, in this exact spot, the rickety salt-damaged wood holding me up as I watch the sun disappear into the ocean, I feel a sense of peace.

Tonight feels different, though. The air holds a chill I’ve never felt.

“Yeah,” I reply quietly, wrapping my cream cardigan tighter around my body. “I’m ready.”

He grins at me, his eyes sparkling with a mix of anxiety and excitement, the gold and green flecks in his hazel irises more prominent from the reflection of the orange hues on the horizon.

We do this every year, him and I. We sit on this jetty, just the two of us, and we celebrate my birthday.

“Close your eyes,” he whispers, and as I do, I hear the paper bag he’s been clutching to his side for the past two hours crinkle, and the sound of a lighter igniting.

His warm breath hits my ear as he tucks a stray honey blonde curl behind it. “Open.”

His tone sends a shiver up my spine.

I turn my body a little more toward him and open my eyes to find a pink sprinkled donut with a single candle sticking out of one side cradled in the palm of his hand as he uses the other to shield the flame from the ocean breeze.

I take a moment to memorise the black ink he has winding up his wrist; a random pattern he tattooed on himself when he turned seventeen. It disappears beneath the sleeve of his white crew neck jumper, and I can’t help but notice how the material moulds perfectly to his thick forearm, like a second skin.

“Go on,” he whispers, holding it closer to my face, his eyes darting back and forth between mine. “Make a wish, Blue.”

I close my eyes as my heart clenches in my chest.

Blue.

I can still remember the first time he ever called me that.

“Pax, this is my friend Indigo,” Jagger, one of my best friends from school, says, gesturing to me with one hand as he clutches a football to his chest with the other. “Indigo, this is my big brother, Paxton.”

He has a black eye, a busted lip, and a mop of unruly dark hair, and when he grins at me, his eyes sparkle with mischief. “Indigo? Like the colour?” he asks.

I nod enthusiastically, and he laughs, taking me by surprise.

“So your name is Blue?”

Being five, and more than a little argumentative, I pout, cross my arms, and say, “Indigo is more purple than blue.”

He shakes his head. “No, it’s not. It’s blue. Look it up.”

Jagger interjects before I can get another word in. “Don’t be mean, Pax. Leave her alone. Her mum’s cooking us dinner tonight, remember?”

Pax observes me for a moment before nodding. “Fine. Guess we’ll see you at dinner then, Blue.”

And just like that, Paxton Shepard came into my life.

Pax and Jagger spent more time at our house than not after that, my mum being overly maternal, and their daddy being a drunk.

Pax became my protector against bullies, the boy who put band-aids on my knees when I scraped them, and then, as we grew older, he was the first boy to make my heart race.

He was four years older, but the age difference never really seemed to come up until he turned eighteen. Something changed then. He made sure to keep a distance on the couch when we watched movies, stopped sleeping over, drew a line in the sand I knew I couldn’t cross.

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