4 - Colours

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Colours

"I don't know, after that I just kind of saw the world in black and white."

She paused to look at me. A smudge of cherry-choco ice cream at the corner of her lips caught my eye as she spoke with a bounce in her voice.

"Just black and white? No shades of grey?"

I didn't reply. I knew she'd add something - it was rarely one sentence with her. The flavour of vanilla danced on my tongue as I waited only seconds for her to ask another question.

"Not even a monotone blue or brown? An army Green? Grossly dull orange?"

I shook my head at her range of colours, only stopping to cock it slightly as I pondered about the "shades of grey."

"Alright." My icecream dripped lazily onto the sidewalk we used as seating. "I guess I see shades of grey."

She licked her choco cherry, taking one, long drag across the entire scoop before staring back into my soul. Emily was weird like that.

"Then what happened?"

My eyes made contact with hers, and I hummed in a questioning tone as best as I could. The ice cream was all over her mouth - it was hard to concentrate anywhere else.

"I said what happened?"

The words clicked before my brain could handle it, and they were out my mouth in less than a heart beat.


"You happened."


She paused mid-lick, eyes suddenly more interested in the blonde before her. I took her eyebrows furrowing as a sign to continue.

"You bumped into me that day I met you, and you were so clumsy you spilled your half hot chocolate, half whip cream drink all over me."

She laughed in that bright tone I liked, and a smile trailed its way up my face - as if she controlled it and not me.

"You were furious!" She gasped.Red dusted my cheeks at the memory of my petty attitude.

"I was," I whispered. "But you didn't care."

She wiped at the corners of her mouth with her hands. My eyes were back on her lips - they were always back to her lips. I sneaked glances like kids did of Santa in the mall, and my mouth moved but my eyes didn't.

"You asked me if I had a bad day, because 'surely nobody gets this heated over a spill.'"She chuckled quietly at that, and that brought my eyes to her own.

"And suddenly, you were something else. I yell and curse at you and you're still there. You're wiping up the mess of a stranger, despite the fact you could've lost your head."

"You would've taken my head?"

"At the time, probably. But when you looked up at me, I thought I was going to melt, or freeze forever, or combust into flames."

There was a momentary pause before she asked in a soft voice,"Why?"

"You were the biggest burst of color I've ever experienced."

I couldn't stop talking.

"All of a sudden, yellow was flying past me. It was in the stain and the color of your purse, hidden on painted nails or within flower beds."

"And I saw red, in the cheeks of a middle aged lady who gained second-hand embarrassment for me, or in the lipstick of an annoyed barista, whose face was twisted into a crude expression - probably thinking of the mess she now had to clean."

"There was blue in the clear sky out the window, and on the baby carriage beside the tired mother. Green was the potted plants and artistic designs on the walls. Purple was the icing on the cupcakes, pink swirled neatly beside them. Variations of orange were on every fall outfit in that blasted cafe."

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