For Your Eyes Only

34

You know when your mind sees something that is so utterly beautiful, so unworldly that it distinctively focuses on the pinnacle of its interest, zeroing in on that magnificent sight, having everything else blur in the background?

That's what Nate's eyes did to me. The golden, caramel orbs locked on mine and it was all I could see. His eyes are red rimmed as if the surgery was still taken its toll but his face is bare and so responsive.

The butterflies, the ones that have become paralyzed a few weeks back, twitch and flutter when Nate's pupils dilate and his clear, breathtaking eyes roam around my face before dropping down my body. 

I hold my breath as he does so, wanting so badly to see what he is seeing.

One of his family members behind me says something but it is muffled in my ears and Nate either ignores it or doesn't hear them either because he remains unmoving in the doorway while I stay crouched in my position of the floor, my letter forgotten about. It is held limply in my hands, slightly swaying from the breeze traveling through the opened door.

I don't know what did it, but I snap out of the golden hue caressing me and time speeds up to its natural clock world. With all of my willpower, I slowly stand, straightening up and keeping eye contact with Nate. His eyes slide down my body once again before they snap back to my face.

I am breathing heavy. I'm sure the whole room can hear me but I hear nothing because my brain can only focus on one thing. Nate.

It feels like an eternity since I have laid my eyes on him. He is still tall, towering over me even when I stand. The few little freckles peeking above the collar of his dark green shirt dot his smooth skin and call for me to lean over and graze my lips over them. The only thing that is different is his hair, buzzed back down, showing off a long scar an inch above his left ear where they achieved his brain surgery.

And of course his eyes, always vibrant and fascinating, but never this alive. Never this all knowing.

Movement on the other side of the door snaps my focus away from the boy I love and my face heats more at the sight of Mr and Mrs Haynes walking up the breezeway. Nate remains stoic, eyes trained on my face as if his memory is jotting down every blemish, every feature that he has not seen in a little over a year.

"Oh look Nathaniel, Kelly is here," Lucy announces, shuffling through the door with a few grocery bags in hand. She smiles overbearingly at me and right away I know that she knows something is up between me and her son.

Has he been moping around for two weeks like me?

"Yes Mom, I can see that." Nate's eyes don't move from my face and, not being used to this kind of attention from him, my cheeks heat more.

Nate slowly moves to the side to let his parents through the door but never once does he look away from me. And never once did I think I would be the first one in doing so.

My eyes fall to the floor. With Nate's newfound sight has come newfound emotion that swims too luminous in his eyes that it takes my breath away. I can now read Nate like an open book. Though he may like what he sees with his newly working eyes, it hurts him to see me. He looks away.

"Kelly, sweetie, it is so nice to see you," Lucy announces and steps forward to place a motherly kiss on my cheek. My reaction in delayed because my brain has not caught up with the rest of my limbs yet, but I steady myself with a hand on her shoulder.

"You too," I manage to say and my eyes goes back to Nate now cowering in the corner by the staircase.

"Would you like to stay for lunch?" Nate's father asks as he takes out meat from the sacks of groceries at his feet. "We're barbecuing."