A Piece Of His Heart

Twenty-five

Waleed

Once my eyes were hurting, my brow was throbbing, and I was well and truly too burnt out to stare at the screen of any electronic device for a second longer, I rolled my neck and threw my head back with a grunt, rubbing at my eyes.

The irony of being the owner of a tech company but being absolutely done with anything related to technology.

As my head hung back, my eyes flitted to the closet in the back, burning holes into its dark wood doors. There was something inside of it, something that I'd come across just a few days ago after forgetting it was there, or that it existed at all.

Since then, I hadn't found an ounce of true peace because the second my mind was blank, pictures of the wooden box and what was inside started to creep up into my head and invade it as my hands itched to just pull it out and open it.

Maybe I'd do it today, if I found the courage.

But with a stretched sigh, I stood up and walked toward the closet before I could have second thoughts, making sure Eliza wasn't going to come up any time soon. She'd left the room, saying that it was depressing watching me work so much, so she was going to be downstairs in the living room and I was to come get her whenever I decided to take a break.

It wouldn't harm her if I called her a little later.

With enough force to break the doors off their hinges, I flung them open and dug behind the folded clothes and jewelry boxes until I felt the smooth surface of the wooden box burning my hand and pulled it out, then took it to the bed and sat down, keeping my eyes on the door, afraid it would burst open any minute and Eliza would walk in.

She couldn't see this, not any condition. And I knew I should've moved it the minute I'd discovered it so she wouldn't accidentally stumble upon it as it was in a very obvious place, but I couldn't find it in me to even look at it, let alone touch it.

I slung open the metal lock on it then lifted the top, revealing its contents, almost all of them being papers or a product of it.

Paper rings to make our friendship last forever— made by Eliza.

Poems and notes about our friendship— written by Eliza.

Beaded bracelets that were actually 'best friend bracelets'— put together by Eliza.

Paintings— done by Eliza.

And pictures of her and I from years ago.

I had saved them all once we'd left the neighborhood and for days after shifting into our new home, the guilt of leaving without a word to her had plagued my mind. I couldn't even give her a simple goodbye, so why did I hurt whenever I remembered that she didn't remember any of the memories I held close to my heart?

Rummaging through the contents of the box, I caught sight of another picture but this one torn in half. I smiled, recalling what had happened that day.

Our mothers had taken us to a fare that had been set up for the season. And, naturally, being the mothers they were, they had taken several pictures, too. In the end, a few days later, when my mother got the printed photos, both Eliza and I had liked the photo where we both stood together, wearing sunglasses and holding cotton candy in our hand. Unfortunately for us, there had only been one copy of it that we ended up tearing in our fight to decide who kept it. In our tantrums, we'd both taken whatever half we first got our hands on, and ended up with torn pieces of each other.