Pack yourself a toothbrush, dear

chapter fifteen

Harry looked at the world through a child's eye, with keen positivity brimming up in his eyes, threatening to spill all over, all the fucking time. He saw good in everything, in everyone everywhere. Hope smeared eyes that always convinced others that things were always under our control, even if they didn't make sense sometimes. 

Being with Harry, the infectious optimism begin to rub off on me too. It was good for once, to be assured that the world won't come down crumbling at our feet at the slightest wrong footing. It was calming, it was pleasant. Being with Harry, seeing through his eyes, it didn't even feel like I was me. It felt like we met much before this, like we were two teenagers at a suburban school, catching each other's eyes in the lunch room and falling in love behind the lockers.  

It was like life through rosy shades. Like teens basking in the summer sun, falling in love head first and tumbling through thin air to land up on each other. To see nothing wrong in the world, to just view each other as eternity, as purity. 

Everyday words seem to turn into love songs. 

But, maybe the world wasn't that rosy at all. I had just begin to mask its dullness with a facade of young love and deceitfulness. People say life though rosy shades is dangerous, because you miss the red flags; maybe that's why it hurt so much, because it felt like I viewed the world with some sort of a filter and someone just barged in and yanked the filter away from my eyes and now, they just couldn't understand why everything was so pale and colourless. 

Janet allowed me to sit in her office for hours, which seemed to fade away numbly. My body was crumbled and my mind was absolutely racing. It made me kind of nauseous, the mismatch of their velocities. Janet studied my face intricately for the first few minutes, not really deciding on a reaction. Eventually, she  gave up and started typing away in her Mac Book and made a few calls. I remained in my seat, praying profusely to just shrivel up and die within that seat. 

Here, listen to me once. 

"Louis" Janet finally gave up with her indifference facade "Look, don't think of me as some sort of a evil monstrosity. I know you're hurt. What you did back there was extremely brave. He's young-what's his age, like twenty two?-he'll get over it. And you-" She stood up gently, walked upto me and leaned on the table slightly, placing her palm on my cheek. It didn't comfort me at all. 

For a fleeting second, it throws me back to the day I first met Janet Mary Calder. It was the first day of spring, I remember because the flowers in my mum's garden are always planted on that day and Janet had walked up to my mum and I after a soccer match, a warm and toasty smile carved on her perfectly preserved, youthful face  with stylish bob cut. Eleanor had hidden behind her with a shy smile. She was dressed in a plaid skirt that barely reached her lower thighs and her hair was tied up in two neat pony tails. I found her cute, innocent in an endearing manner. 

"You must be in Eleanor's English class, Louis, is it ?" She had spoken in a northern dialect, pumped with sophistication. and I had nodded nervously. "Is this your mum ?" she had glanced across to my mum. 

"I'm Jay, Louis' mum." mum had offered her hand, which Janet had taken, every so kindly. Even their hands were a stark contrast, my mum's were weary and sun burnt after longs hours spent at the flower bed and  washing huge piles of dishes every single night, and hers, soft and youthful. Long fingers, manicured nails and gold bangles, one on each hand. 

"I'm Janet, Eleanor's mother. My daughter keeps talking about Louis all the time, they're really are  good friends, I presume." She had smiled "which would in turn make us friends too, wouldn't it, Jay?"

"Definitely, Janet. It's lovely meeting you and Eleanor too." 

"The pleasure is all mine, darling. Now, as friends, would you like to have dinner with our family next Friday ?" and mum had agreed and one dinner turned to another, and another and our families had inevitably become interwoven into each other. I had taken Eleanor to the spring dance the following year, after which we hanged out all the time and it was just assumed that we were dating.