Page 3 of Indigo

I go to speak, but he shakes his head, telling me everything I need to know without saying a word.

I don’t love you like that.

I don’t want to come with you.

I won’t fall apart without you.

Every silent statement feels like a bullet as I repeat them in my head, and after absorbing the blows, I nod and turn my focus back to the ocean. The waves crash against the shore, and the air is cold. Too cold.

Pax groans from beside me, and from the corner of my eye, I watch him run his fingers through his hair, a clear sign he’s frustrated. His hands shake as he pulls at the loose strands. “You’re going to be amazing, Blue,” he begins, sounding panicked. “Going to go off and do all the things you’ve been talking about since you were fifteen. You’ll wander the streets of the city, meet new people, learn all kinds of shit at Uni. I’m not… I can’t offer you the things you’re asking of me. Shit, there are things you don’t know. I’m not who I want to be when we-”

“Please,” I beg, cutting him off, pleading with him to let me in, to tell me what’s holding him back, to come with me and let me heal him the way I’m aching to.

He drops his chin to his chest and sighs, and I know then that I’ve lost him. When he speaks, his voice wavers a little, but his tone is firm. He’s made up his mind. “I’m sorry. Fuck, Blue, I’m so sorry, but I can’t. Not now.”

I’m sorry. I can’t.

Over and over, the words replay in my mind as the silence between us grows louder.

Neither of us moves. We both know that when we leave this jetty, it’s over.

He may not have been mine, but he wasmine.

Tonight has changed everything, just like I knew it would.

“I should go,” I croak, slowly standing to my feet. Sitting here and letting him see my pain isn’t doing either of us any good. He made his decision, and it wasn’t me.

“Blue,” he says, reaching for me, but as I shake my head and step back, he stops, and leaves his hand hanging in mid-air. After a moment, he nods to himself, staring down at the wooden planks of the jetty, and lowers his arm.

He pushes himself up, stretching to his full 6’5 height beside me before bending again and grabbing what we left behind. “I’ll walk you,” he murmurs, his eyes looking anywhere but directly at me.

I want to protest, tell him I don’t need him to, but I simply nod and accept that there’s no scenario in which he wouldn’t at least follow me to make sure that I got home safely.

I say my silent goodbye to the jetty, to my safe place, and to Pax, as I walk toward the shore. He remains behind me the entire way home. I don’t have to turn to check, I just know he’s there, and as I reach my porch, I pause, willing myself not to turn around, but I can’t help it.

Peeking over my shoulder, I find him standing at the front gate, shoulders hunched, head hanging low, his hands stuffed in his pockets.

He doesn’t look up as I reach for the door handle, or as I open it. He doesn’t stop me as I step inside, and as the door clicks shut behind me, the pain in my chest feels like it’s going to split me in two.

I slide down the wooden door, pull my knees to my chest, and sob into my hands. Hard.

“Indie-girl?”

I raise my swollen eyes and huff out a sad laugh when I spot Mum standing in front of me. “Are you okay? Where’s Pax?” she asks, dressed in her blue striped pyjamas, brown curls an absolute mess, her patchwork quilt wrapped around her shoulders and her ridiculously oversized reading glasses at the tip of her nose.

Shaking my head helplessly, I whisper, “Gone.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” she sighs, and makes her way over to me.

Rather than pulling me off the floor, she plops herself down beside me, drapes the quilt around my shoulders and pulls me into her side. She strokes my hair and sways back and forth, singing “The Book of Love” by Peter Gabriel softly into my ear as I sniffle against her neck. Being the only song she knew all the words to when I was born, it became my lullaby, and as I got older, the one song that seemed to make everything better when sung in her beautiful, raspy voice. Tonight, however, it doesn’t bring the same comfort it usually does.

Getting over this won’t be as easy as recovering from a bad day at school or having a fight with my best friend, Paisley.

This hurt is deep.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” I cry, fresh tears blurring my vision as I remember it’s not just Pax I’m leaving behind. It’s Mum. Her cuddles, her encouragement and her ridiculously over the top personality. It’s Paisley, Jagger, and the other friends I have to say goodbye to.

I’m moving away from the home I grew up in, the one that is still covered in decorations from the party Mum threw me earlier because she hates cleaning. The stained glass windows and green couch always seemed a little too hippy for me until this very moment. My dad’s apartment, the one he’s letting me live in, is sterile and white. There are only two windows and I’ll have neighbours so close I’ll be able to hear their toilets flush. I won’t have the wonky dining table Mum and I have eaten at every morning for the past twenty years, and when I shower it won’t take ten minutes for the hot water to come on.

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