Blue | Rafe Cameron

xxxi

I'm in love with you, Rory.

I love you. Three words, eight letters.

And declared to me by my best friend, someone I considered family, by JJ Maybank- and I didn't have an answer to give him back.

Because what is love even? How do I know what love is, how do I even begin to comprehend it?

I know that when the accident happened and I saw my father's unconscious body beside mine I loved him, that if he died something in me would die too.

I knew that moment when John B had fallen off the tower and Sarah gripped his still body and sobbed for him, I knew that I loved him. Knew that I loved my friends with every atom of my being because they were the only reason, I got out of bed every morning, that they were the reason I didn't let myself drown that day.

I knew that I loved JJ- sweet, charming, funny JJ who made me laugh until my stomach ached, who made me smile even when tears burned my eyes, who made me feel safest when I was most scared- I knew that I had so much love in my heart for him.

But to be in love with someone- no, not just anyone, to be in love with JJ, that was something I didn't understand.

I sighed, crossing my legs under me as I settled on the shaggy rug on my bedroom floor, glad for the bed at my back, easing the tightly coiled ache that had settled at the nape of my spine. I stared, unblinking, at the small pine chest I had before me, sitting and patient as if silently beckoning me to look inside.

The box wasn't unfamiliar to me, I recognised the dark pine of its rectangular shape, the way the patterns merged and interweaved as the lid arched over, knotted, and secured by a rusting metal latch, a heavy and embellished lock dangling from it.

It was the biggest mystery to me as a child- a mythical, locked chest, hidden away in the darkest corner of my parent's room, away from prying eyes and sticky child fingers. The first time I had seen it I was six years old, and I was convinced that it was magic, a whole realm of fantasy and daydream concealed from the world.

In a way, I wasn't wrong. There was something special in here, something magical and beautiful and something that I didn't appreciate at the tender age of ten and hadn't been able to appreciate until right now.

I run my hand over the cold wood, sparks shocking through my fingertips as I gently pull back the heavy lid, and just like the first time I had ever seen the inside of this chest, all the air expels from my lungs, in a great, devastating whoosh of air.

Letters. Dozens and dozens of letters.

Ten-year-old me had been sorely disappointed, agitated even- I can still hear the melody of my mom and dad's laughter, their amusement at how disgruntled I had looked to see paper, boring, enveloped paper, sitting inside.

Not Fairies and Wizards, or magic and fantasy but letters upon letters- sent back and forth between Carolina and Daniel, starting from age sixteen. Love letters, I had cringed as a child at the word, and yet now, now I yearned to understand it, to feel it.

I could feel the lump in my throat, could feel the silence of the room, of this house, no longer filled with my mother and father's laughter, suffocating me, the rustle of the letter I picked up the only indicator that this was real, that I was here.

I turn the worn, ageing envelope over in my shaking hands, knowing that this had been the most intimate moment shared between my parents, the same age I was now, feeling the kind of love and connection that most people would never experience in their entire lives.

September 1st, 1994

Dear Danny,

My father told me to stay away from you again. He said and I quote 'That boy is bad news, Caroline dear, you have too much potential to waste on him."