To Break

IX

“Favourite colour?”

“Still dark blue.”

This back and forth has been going for a little while. After a little convincing and a lot of apologising, Reece talked me into playing QNA. We always played this when we were kids, mostly if one of us wasn’t telling the other something. Reece suggested it was a good way to get to know each other again, so here we are.

“What about yours?” I ask, leaning my head against the wall of the shack. We ended up sitting down again, side by side, with our backs against the walls. The wind isn’t as strong here and the rain doesn’t seep through the cracks either. It’s essentially the best place to get set up for the night.

“Same. Always.” A wide grin stretches his face with his response, taking me back to when we were twelve, playing QNA in my house after we confessed our crushes.

“Dark blue,” Reece responded, in answer to my question of his favourite colour. I smiled at that; we had the same favourite.

“Why did you pick this room?” He continued, eyeing off my shoebox room with a hidden meaning behind his words. What he really meant was ‘out of all the rooms in this mansion-sized house, why would you pick the one that is the size of some of the walk in robes?’

I shrugged my tiny shoulders, falling back on my bed. My eyes roamed the pale ceiling. “I’m not quite sure,” I lied.

The mattress dipped to my left where Reece had just lay down beside me. “Yes you are,” he told me.

“I know,” I said, fiddling with my plaits again.

“Then why aren’t you telling me?” He turned on his side to face me, and I could feel his dark eyes bearing a hole in the side of my head. He wasn’t mad that I wasn’t telling him, just confused.

“Well,” I paused, biting my lip. “You’ll think I’m stupid.”

Out my peripheral vision I saw him roll his eyes. “You could never be stupid to anyone, especially not to me.”

I was conflicted. My reasoning for this was so snobby and I was afraid he wouldn’t like me anymore. Then again, he was my best friend; it would take something more than a snobby comment to lose him.

Sighing, I turned on my side to match him, keeping my eyes on his light grey t-shirt instead of his face. “It’s just that this house is huge. It makes me feel so… unimportant. Insignificant. Don’t get me wrong I like that we can afford a house like this, but I wish it wasn’t as big. So when I got to choose my room I picked the smallest one.”

He gave me a doubtful look, eyebrows raised, mouth turned into an upturned line. "You think that makes you stupid?"

"W-well," I stuttered, looking down at our hands, now interlaced. "Yeah. I-I did. Everyone who comes here thinks that I have the best house and wish they lived in such a place. They look at me as if I'm from another planet when I say I don't like it."

Reece shook his head, his black tufts of hair falling across his forehead. He brushed them out of the way of his chestnut eyes before speaking. "And you thought I'd be the same as everyone else?"

I didn't respond, not knowing how to. Did I think he was going to have the same reaction? I suppose I did, despite knowing he was unlike anyone else I'd ever met. He wasn't full of judgement. He was accepting. He was calm. He didn't have strong opinions about much until it came to something he was passionate about. He was utterly unique, so I should have expected he wouldn't have the same reaction.