Untouchable

A New Face

"I knew I did from that first moment we met. It was... Not love at first sight exactly, but - familiarity. Like: oh, hello, it's you. It's going to be you."

- Mhairi McFarlene - via 5000letters (via perfect)

"Who's that?" I ask Nia, one of my friends who joined me in theater. 

"That's Oli, he's like my brother's best friend. He's kinda zesty." She answers with a laugh. 

"Yeah he does look kinda fruity," I say. 

In all truthfulness, I now realize that was my mistake. Calling someone 'zesty' does not, and I mean not, truly make them gay. I look back at the boy. He's with his friend now, across the gymnasium, laughing and smiling. He's cute. By cute, I mean like full-on hamster, fuzzy, fluffy, soft, warm kind of cute. Thinking about it now, he was beautiful. He had a fair complexion and cheeks that became rosy when he ran about. His basically golden hair swooped into delicate curtains on either sides of his face and when he ran his hand through it, oh my god, his locks of hair would just fall literally perfectly onto his forehead. I don't understand what kind of magic that was. Somehow, I was lucky enough to experience that. Why did he have to be so pretty all the time? Plus, he had these green or, I think, hazel eyes that felt like they were pulling me in. Even now, it makes me swoon. Weak in the knees. Falling into your already made bed and the bed is cold. Just how you like it. What brought him altogether, however, was his body. I won't try to even get into the details, but he was so freaking pretty I can't even comprehend it. He was a few inches shorter than me, had pretty hands, and I don't even know. Is it bad his body was pretty too? I was young and didn't even see him like that but still he was pretty like that. You would never catch me admitting that to anyone. I loved his hair the most though. However, he was untouchable. He was two grades younger than me. In no way was it possible I could like someone younger. I don't usually swing that low. It was only 18 months. Like Nick and Charlie from Heartstopper. Ironically, Charlie is my name. Unlike Nick and Charlie from Heartstopper, I won't get to experience how Charlie felt pining over Nick, who liked him back. Nonetheless, shall I let that stop me? Definitely not.  

"Oli, come here!" Nia yells, breaking me out of my trance. Shit, she must've seen me staring. Oh god, I feel it again. I can't put a name to the feeling. My heart races, time stops, my breathing slows, and there's a pang in my heart. Sometimes I'll even hallucinate things. In this case, when Oliver walks over, I see flower petals and pink but also golden sunlight. It's bright and shining it's warmth onto me. Is heaven opening up? I can't breathe. 

"Nia, what?" He spoke. He spoke. His voice. His voice. That feeling is back. I feel numb and unable to breathe. Now that he's in front of me, it's a totally different experience. He had moles scattered on his face, ran down his neck, and went along his collarbones. His eyelashes fluttered when he blinked. Him up close is different from watching from afar as I've done with all my previous crushes. Did I like him? I can't, right? Even if I did, I couldn't tell him. Not like I'd ever tell any of my crushes I liked them. She tells him something I don't hear. I'm much too consumed in my thoughts to know what she said. All I knew was that I was staring him down. And he was returning that stare.

"Charlie say hi!!" She says. What? How could I say hi?

"...Hi."  I laughed out of embarrassment. How could I let her watch as I stared him down? That was stupid. 

"Hi. Charlie, right?" He asked. He asked if that was my name. Is this a meet-cute out of those dumb, cheesy rom-coms? I honestly hope so. It'd be worth it for him. 

"Yeah. Oli?"

"Yup!"

His friend calls for him and I wave goodbye. I've decided to watch him throughout the musical auditions. The auditions were for dance so I got to see him run around. I was tired, but he wasn't. Did he have a battery pack on him or something? Either way, he still looked flawless. He barely sweat. Am I just jealous of him? That's probably what it was. He was pretty, I wasn't. He was white, I wasn't. He looked good in white, I didn't. He was blond, my hair was as black as night. That's why for almost 10 months I endured the pain. The pain of knowing I liked someone but they didn't. Of course, he liked me, just not in the way I hoped or wanted him too. He liked girls, and I wasn't one. 

It was the end of auditions and my mom picked me up. I remember going over everything that happened before I went to bed with a certain blond-haired boy's voice and eyes still lingering in my mind. Acquiescence took over. It filled my brain to the brim with the thought of Oliver, who may or may not have let me call him his nickname, which was very cute and fitting, and how he said my name. Charlie, Charlie, Charlie, Charlie. It was pretty. Like him. He made my name sound pretty. I still reminisce about the sleepless nights I spent thinking about him, and all the fake scenarios I had made up. They were beautiful, tragic, but beautiful. I keep every single one of them locked away in a chained box in the back of my mind. That's where they'll always be, and that's where they'll always stay. Because they were fake. Only fragments of my childish imagination that I wished were real. Of course, I knew they were fraudulent. They had no purpose, other than to fuel my hopes and dreams of the thing we call love. Or in my case, the infatuation that includes Oli. He haunted my dreams, and slayed my demons at the same time. It scared me, how much I could like him. And I wouldn't ever tell him I did, because, at the time of my thought process, I wasn't even sure. I knew I couldn't, and I most definitely shouldn't, but I did. I contemplated for hours on end whether or not I truly did like him as I believed I did. I doubted, and doubted, and doubted. And it should've been enough to discourage my attraction towards him. But it wasn't. And I fell into a deeper hole than before. 

Feeling the tears well up in my eyes, I nuzzled my face into my pillow. I pretended it was him. Fortunately, that helped me sleep that night. I proceeded to do that every night because it was comfortable. It did not provide warmth, but it gave me security. I was happy, I think. Still, there was a deep feeling in my chest. It lessened as I closed to the conclusion of my senior year, but it was always there, lurking in the dark corners and hiding from any sort of light.  I missed him. But I didn't realize I could get closer. 

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