Everything I Never Say ✓

[ fifteen ]

Fifteen

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Maverick really loved photography, you know.

He was like a mad artist—like that painter from Agatha Christie's Murder In Retrospect —except, Maverick's passion lied in capturing photographs, and not painting portraits of people.

There was something that kind of scared me, though—that feverish look in his eyes when he found someone who he wanted to model for him, and then spent an eternity clicking away at his camera while hissing out different poses.

It made sense, why he'd appreciate beauty and anything that was visually aesthetic.

It made sense, why he had his eyes on me the entire night when we first met. Made sense why he eventually approached me. Made sense why he wanted to take me out on a date.

He thought I was pretty; visually pleasing.

We were dating for about three weeks when he first took me to the apartment he shared with two other boys. He was older than me, of course— but also younger than a boy with overgrown dark hair and ordinary eyes that I knew of.

There was an extra room in the apartment that was turned into somewhat of a studio, each wall decorated with a different setting, a different backdrop.

"This is nice," I commented with a smile, taking in the splashes of colours, fancy furniture and ornaments. And then my eyes landed on framed photographs leaning against the far corner of one of the walls, left to collect a thin layer of dust.

There was a closeup of a blonde, her sunshine-like hair framing the perfect heart-shaped structure of her face, her blue eyes so clear and translucent. She was, in every sense of the word, picture-perfect.

My eyes travelled along the other frames, finding certain photographs of a slightly more... questionable nature.

A raven-haired beauty with large Bambi eyes, who wore nothing to cover her torso, those long velvety tendrils spilling down both sides of her chest to conceal the intimate areas of her body. The photograph ended where her waist began, not before capturing the silver piercing on her navel.

And the rest of the frames went on like that, each one showing off a different woman, each one growing more discomforting than the last — until even I had to avert my eyes because my cheeks began to burn a little too much.

But that was that.

That was as far as my feelings ran, and it was probably then that I realised how little I really cared. Because had I truly loved Maverick—had I truly loved this boy—I would have felt a fire engulf me as my eyes landed on a collection of sensual photographs of other women. I would've thrown a tantrum, kicked up a fuss, thrown daggers his way in the form of words and poisonous darts in the form of glares. I would've. I would've.

It wouldn't have mattered to me that clicking away at a camera was his passion, was his hobby. If I had truly loved him, and craved every inch of him, I would've not left room for him to be enclosed with a barely-clothed woman in his studio, especially when it was a different one every two weeks. I would've not left room for suspicion and doubt about what else was going on behind those camera lenses, within that studio that I never stepped foot in unless he allowed it.

I didn't want to know if it was only Maverick's camera that travelled down their bodies, didn't want to know if his fingers did the same. Didn't want to know if his lips followed.

I. Didn't. Care.

I didn't care I didn't care I didn't care I didn't care—

And perhaps that's how I slowly began slipping away from myself, giving away the parts of me that I once believed mattered on some scale. Like my first kiss, or first date, or even my first time stargazing from the roof a car.

That, Daniel, that was how I began losing myself.

Because I was too afraid to let myself love you that I was willing to go so far as to allow people to take away pieces of me—that I was willing to go as far as to throwing myself into relationships that didn't matter, that gave me no growth and brought me no joy. I went as far as losing myself in passing clouds—ones that gave birth to butterflies in my stomach, and took away the aching hollow from my chest. That made my heart skip a few beats, and erased the cracks all over it instead. Entangled myself in infatuations, knowing they could never be love. Safe in the knowledge that those boys could never be you.

I was too afraid to let me love you, so I chose to lose myself instead.

And I blamed you for it.

Cursed you for it.

Loathed you for it.

And all that love that I refused to acknowledge — all that love left to grow old and stale — it began to grow tainted with my anger and bitterness instead.

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