'I kept staring that photograph for a minute, maybe 10 seconds. He took something out of his jeans pocket. "I forgot to give this to you yesterday."
He was holding a little ice cream cone made of plastic, small and defenseless. I stopped bre...
I stepped each step with difficulty. The cement spread coldness to the air, and at a moment I saw my breath coming out as vapor. Some flights more, and I would arrive at the written wall.
My friends and I had found the written wall on my first days at Oxygen building. Someone thought it would be funny to graffiti, mark and crayon some square feet of white wall, drawing symbols or writing predictions.
Which some of them were true.
I heard a noise. It was like a piece of metal being scratched against cement. I slowed the pace, heart bumping a hundred per hour.
He was really there.
A strong smell of smoke hit my nostrils. It was somehow sweet and terribly, awfully disgusting.
What is he doing?!?!
Oliver Snowfields was crouched by the written wall- writing something on it. There was dirt and scratches all over him, from his shirtless torso to his sneakers- once new, white sneakers I saw him using in what felt a lifetime ago. The worse thing about that image, though, were the cigarettes- a hundred of them, splattered onto the floor around him, all with different lengths and models, used or not, from marijuana to... crack- and the thousands of bottles of alcohol- all colors, all sizes, all types. All of them empty.
Oliver was destroyed.
And he had just destroyed me too.
There was a voice inside my mind saying to turn around and leave as quietly as I could. But there was something else preventing me from doing that, something that glued my feet there and wouldn't move unless a troll surged from the shadows to attack me.
Which was almost what happened, kind of.
He turned his head, feeling my presence.
It was as if I was meeting those green eyes for the first time.
"Hey, Angel..."
My heart answered hi but nothing came out.
"I think you should go." He turned to the wall again.
"No." I said.
"No? Why not?"
"Because... because I haven't come up here just to go back."
"Yes you did." He looked up at me again. "That's what I should've done as soon I stepped in here at the first place. You know what? I delayed years to figure out this was my brother's handwriting." Oliver drew a line on the wall with the metal thing he was holding. That's when I realized what is was.
"Chain." I murmured. He was drawing circles and random letters like Vince used to do. With the chain. Maybe the fake one, maybe the real one, I just knew it was the chain- I would recognize it anywhere.
"Uhum" he answered.
Some seconds passed. And then minutes.
"Why, Oliver?" I felt myself slowly going forward. "You know you are not like him. I know that."
Oliver coughed- and made a strong effort to get up. His big gorgeous feature made me step backwards again. He passed the chain over his head, wearing it like a long, dirty necklace. I couldn't help but glancing over his chest, the area I was ridiculously avoiding looking at.
I gulped.
"Thanks, Angel. You are the first one."
It is so muscled, so beautiful.
"Can you believe that I- Oliver Snowfields- ran away from responsibility?"
Some parts of his torso are shinny
"I ran away like a chick"
It is also tanned and healthy as hell
"And now am smoking those things one after the other"
It looks like mountains contented by valleys
"This is what I gained for being so perfect all my life"
I could draw these with squares.
"Are you listening to me?"
I mentally slapped myself.
"Oh, Angel... I'm proud of being your Finder, you know?" He took a small white tube of his pocket and examined it slowly.
"Please don't do this" I said.
He shrugged his shoulders- and lit it with a worn lighter.
"You can't smoke, Oliver!"
"Of course I can." He licked the cigarette. He licked it.
It gave me the most profound type of disgust. I abhorred cigarettes. My father used to explain how drugs destroyed lives. I couldn't bear that image, so I slapped Oliver's hand. The cigarette flew away from his fingers and he watched as it popped onto the floor; then turned to me.
"Wow. You have changed a lot since we met, hu? Is that mother fucker making your mind with that red head of his?"
"Don't you dare talking about Sebastian like that!" I stepped back. He was beginning to scary me, scary for real. Oliver didn't have that vocabulary, he would never insult someone. Never.
99% of what people say under the effect of drugs is true. I couldn't let Oliver say those things just because he couldn't think before saying them.
"Sebastian is way better than you." I said.
He laughed. "Admit it, Angel..." He caressed the chain around his neck slowly. "The moment you saw me all you wanted to do was take me to bed."
My heart gave a jump so high I thought it would stop beating. I gasped, oxygen suddenly becoming more than a necessity. "It's enough, Oliver. I'm going to take you home."
He laughed and raised an eyebrow. "We don't need to go home, we can stay right here. We can spend the night here. Me and you." Saying that, Oliver stepped forward and took both of my wrists. I tried to pull away but he was just too strong. "We can hide from everyone. We can hide under sheets."
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