Do You Know Indigo?

Chapter Six

Edited 6th June 2020 

Kieran hailed us a taxi, refusing to entertain the idea of taking the bus. When he asked me for my address to direct the driver, I gave it reluctantly, knowing that Indigo Boy had means and ways of finding out where I lived so it was pointless to withhold it from him. Besides, what was important right now was getting home and scrubbing the notion of Devon from my skin.

"I'm sorry," Kieran said after we'd settled in the cab. He'd interrupted my intense focus on the whir of the windscreen wipers and made me realise I'd pressed myself as far into my corner of the cab and as far from Kieran as possible. If Kieran minded my lapse he didn't show it.

"For what?" I asked, running through the many possible explanations.

"That this happened to you," he answered. It was a fair apology but not one high on my priority list of receiving from the indigo eyed boy. I became engrossed by my trembling hands, laced together in my lap. I pressed my aching lips firmly together to stop myself from breaking down and exposed my vulnerability further. "How long has Devon been like this with you?"

I frowned, searching my memories and the lines of my hands for the day or the moment I first recalled Devon marking me as his prize. I considered it lost in the fog of a hundred other missing memories.

"A while," I said simply with a shrug. "He has always exercised his sense of entitlement around me but I would never have expected he would take things this far." I had been kissed before but not like Devon had kissed me. Devon's kiss felt like an insult to the precious meaning of the act. "I guess he had been waiting for an opportunity and I gave it to him today." I did not blame myself for Devon's actions but I did reprimand myself for forgetting there was safety in numbers and straying from them. Knowing that, I glanced at Kieran and the taxi driver, palpably feeling the truth of those words now.

"No one should have to worry about being alone," Kieran said, completely unaware of the irony. "What were you doing there anyway? If you don't mind me asking." His long fingers were also clasped in his lap, his striking indigo-eyes only ever stealing glances at me. Even rationed, there was something overwhelming about his indigo gaze. I fixed him with a watery but accusatory glare.

"Avoiding having to talk about you," I said. He blinked as if the floor of the taxi had presented him with a conundrum that was beyond him.

"Ah," he replied, breaking apart his fingers to drum them together. His expression became distorted by disorderly curls of his hair. I tried to work out his expression through them, understand the clench of his jaw and the twitch in his eye. I wondered if I was making him feel uncomfortable.

"As I said before, I'm not looking for my life to get any more interesting than it clearly already is. I also have no expectation that you are going to leave just because I want you to." Despite the innumerable aches and pains racking my body, I leaned against the tension of my seatbelt and my better judgement. "So here's my question, how much worse are things going to get with you around?"

I did not blame Kieran for Devon seizing a rare opportunity, there were coincidences but I did not believe Devon's actions could have possibly had anything to do with Kieran. But my indigo-eyed rescuer had now waged war on Devon by defending my honour and I refused to believe that wouldn't have consequences.

And then it occurred to me that if anything my friends had had to say about Tom's feelings about me were true, I was grieved to find out what he might think of an indigo-eyed boy escorting me to class.

The taxi trundled through Newington, drawing closer to Oxford Street and our parting of ways. I couldn't decide why this time might be different, why the indigo-eyed boy might choose to answer my questions after denying me twice already. Yet it was clear that Kieran was ruminating a response, framed by a tinted window patterned by rain.