Forever Never Lasts [✔]

Carnations

That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.                                                                                                                                                                                                   - Thumpa Lahiri

Carnations

  I always admired the Carnation. The white one specifically. The show of true love and good luck. Its funny how ironic that is to this story, that ends so abruptly. 

It was the main reason I had come to the park, to begin with, was to seek my best friend. Yeah sure, I had close friends and all, but I felt as if a Carnation was my only friend at times. So with my handy dandy book, I left my home to venture in the park. But though it was summer, it was too cold to find them. It was too early. 

So in the end, I was forced to lay on a concrete picnic table and read my most favourited book, the book I babied. Sing Me To Sleep was the name of it. I related to the book... More than anyone could.  

I wouldn't say I had the picture perfect family. At all. Did it start out that way? Kinda. My mother and father still kissed, hugged and loved each other along with me and my four brothers. I had neighbours that I played with and I had friends. I was the sporty little five years old who never let anything get to her. Who wore shorts and had a head full of crazy brown hair. The girl who always failed and scraped her knee, but got back up onto her bike and raced off again. 

Of course, I was born with a mess up, but we'll get to that later yeah?

It all changed though. Soon my parents were fighting, mainly by my mother's cause. My mother was a heavy alcoholic who worked at a book company and my father worked hard long nights as a cable employee. My mother started to stop being so nice to my father; In the end, my father got used and abused. 

When she left I was four.

She had chosen the alcohol over family and put the blame all on my father. I always saw my mother as in the right. I never thought she was wrong. Nothing about her in my eyes was wrong.  I grew a resentment to my father, a bad one; at times, I could hear my father cry at night as he struggled with bills.

We were forced to move into a 2 bedroom 1 bathroom trailer, which barely held us. My father quit his job and got disability which still hardly maintained us. We got fifteen thousand a year. We were under the poverty line. 

My brothers and I went to school with three-year-old shoes, nappy hair, wrinkled unwashed clothes, at least three days out of the week. But we couldn't help that. We couldn't afford it. My mother did come back, she came back and left more times then I can count, and my dad and I's bond just got broken more and more. I always found him at fault. Always thought he chased my mother away. By the time I was eleven, I was screaming at my father, saying cruel things towards him, and my father soon broke and took it out on all of us. I can't really blame the man. I went from tied to the hip with him, so I wanted him to die. 

A year later I was diagnosed. 

And that's where I will cut off that sob story because its pointless to this story.

Some called me attractive, and others thought I was disgusting. My years of being in the dirt had made me a complete clean freak and germaphobe, and we had only just got out of debt. I wasn't much myself. I didn't see myself as much anyways.

I was leaner then scrawny, but I had oddly broad shoulders that made everyone mistake me for an adult male. My long hair was cut completely off and was now in a grown out pixie. My bangs hung out a bit, overgrown and shaggy. My hair was very whitish off base colour, but since it had grown out, my dark brown roots could be seen. 

Green/Grey eyes, freckled nose, a button nose and clothes that were way too big for me, which hid so much, and Jesus Christ no I did not wear makeup. Makeup wanted me to vomit so much, it caused so many insecurities and made people hate themselves.

I was bored at this rate, even with my favourite book in hand. I pushed myself up to a sitting position and closed my book, looking around in the park. There wasn't much to see until my eyes landed on a brown-eyed boy who had a very shitty hair job going on there. I stared at him for awhile. It looked like he had been playing with a salamander. He finally turned and locked eyes with me. I couldn't help but smile at him. 

I don't know why I got up and approach him, I had no reason too. I didn't like people. Kinda like I was drawn to him. I walked over the mulch and took a seat beside him just as he let the salamander he was holding, go. 

"Nice shirt," I said, looking over his clothing. He wasn't poor, you could tell. but he wasn't rich. Middle class? But I also didn't see many who had a shirt comparing sloth faces to croissants. 

When he looked up at me, I swallowed, I couldn't help but too. His face was already flushed.

"Thanks..." The boy responded, his face only seemed to radiate his bashfulness.

"Not much of a talker are you?" I asked, watching him closely.

He seemed to have shrugged it off and rustled his hair over his face

"For all, I know you could be some killer," He replied, glancing up at me with a smile. 

I could feel myself melt inside. Literally, downright melt. All I could do was grin at him. I couldn't help it, his voice made me happy. When he didn't speak, I tilted my head to the side.

"Evan... My name is Evan. I am not a killer and nor would I kill anyone with eyes like yours. I don't have the heart for it," I introduced myself; It seemed to only make him flush ten shades harder then what he was originally, but, he did give me the widest smile ever.

I couldn't help to stare into his eyes. They were kinda, well, adorable. Unfortunately, he looked down at his shoes, turning his face from me.

"Jasper," He mumbled eventually and looked up at me.

I was hooked from that moment on.

I gave him my number before heading out. I didn't text him first or go to see him, even when I was tearing out hair thinking about how I needed to, but my anxiety murdered me, and I was having a lot of medical issues. I lived in a lockup, some may think I'm talking about a prison, but no. I was talking about a hospital. I was having a lot of issues. 

I won't say I thought about him every second like some lovesick tale because I didn't. Did I think of him occasionally? Well of course.

And I slowly forgot about him as my struggle to breathe that month became greater and greater.