The Borders in Our Veins

3

He doesn't know how to tell her that the heat of her hand against his cheek is killing him. That the green hold of her eyes burns him. That it scorches the future he sees - almost sees - through the long path of this peaceful meadow, if he could pretend there was never any blood poured into the soil. But it burns down almost as quickly as he can let himself imagine it. He doesn't know how to tell her that the gulf between them, that expanding word 'impossible', makes standing right beside her on the surface of things harder each day. A facade paper-thin.

He doesn't know how to tell her how much of his willpower it takes to not hold her hand as she checks under the plantago paste, to trace her fingertips and hold them in his and burn the memory of their smoothness into his memory. To put his hands through her long blonde hair as she presses her lips to his cheekbone. How these memories, these little flashes that might mean little to her, keep him up at night, pressing into his pillow and driving him mad.

He's wanted her ever since he knew what it meant to want someone - or maybe before then, because wanting "someone" had always been superimposed with her face; no celebrities from none of the popular movies, no blurred faceless bodies twisting behind his eyelids. There was no "wanting someone" and "Anya" separately - it was her. Her, her, her; even the smallest glimpse of her collarbone could keep him spinning and combing through math equations for an hour.

But he could never stain her, or their friendship, with those thoughts - however un-defined and fuzzy they were (he didn't even understand the full extent of them, only small flashes of images that brought heat to his veins). He would hate himself if he let his thoughts go untamed, if he let himself dream of her in secret. It was like it would hurt both his soul and hers. And god forbid he let that stain spread, let it engulf them... god forbid he spread that black ink all over the bright path she could have, would have, whenever they got old enough that they'd have to branch out onto their own ones.

It was dangerous to hear her say these things, that he was a part of her. It was dangerous to see that look in her eyes, one he knew familiarly; maybe one she didn't even understand yet, but he knew it was there.

He didn't know how to bridge the bruise he'd just made between them, how to take back his words or even if he should. They walked down the left edge of the pasture in silence, a path lined on one side with trees and leading down to a dirt road. Their footsteps fell into a rhythm, kicking up stone and sand.

Sia's arms were crossed over her chest, and her lip pouted though she didn't make a scene of it. Stunned silent - it was a rare role to see her in.

The dirt road would wrap around to the front of the house again, if they took a right and climbed up the hill that passed through most of the village. They stopped at the edge of it. Left or right? Sia's toes pointed toward the right - pointed back home.

"Wait," Ahmed's soft syllable poked up through the silence. "I..." he darted his eyes around, it had been a whole year since they'd walked all the way through the pasture and he wasn't sure where... "ah, here," he ran off in a brisk motion and tipped down the branch of a plum tree - the small yellow kind, Anya's favourite. Folded his t-shirt up at the bottom to fashion a pocket out of it, and filled it with those little yellow gems. "Your favourite, I know..."

Anya couldn't help but lift her lips into a grin. "Thanks, A," she reached down and grabbed one, but her movements were distant and careful like she was walking on porcelain.

"Wait," he said again as she spun her feet to the right. Why was Ahmed's tongue so tangled? What was it harder than ever to push his syllables through? "I don't want to go back yet. I want to keep wandering."

Anya nodded, warily. "Where?"

He looked to the left; a pine edge of a forest just down the lane. "Can we go into it? Have you ever?"