If Sarah hadn't told me that day that she was no longer in love with you, I probably would never have dared to love you
She sat next to me in math class, so I remember all our conversations very well. Back then, I wasn't very popular with the girls; I was kind of like a soulless object, so they treated me as if I only had one ear and couldn't repeat things. Bop Bop the goldfish was my nickname because I was born with orange hair. I thought goldfish were cute, but I only learned later that it was derogatory when people told you you had a goldfish brain. Sarah always had her eyes fixed on the front row, even though we'd moved to the back left, right next to the dusty windows of the second-to-last row. I was looking at him too, and eventually I understood why she was always watching him. He was really adorable.
Then... one day, she came to see me at recess and said, "I don't like Elias anymore,"
I didn't understand why she told me that, especially at recess when she never spoke to me outside of math class... what I understood was that she had loved Elias all this time because she liked watching him, and I had caught her infatuation with Elias.
I was 14 years old, old enough to understand what I was feeling. Already isolated, I had no one to catch on to my secret and make fun of me, so I fully embraced my feelings. I just couldn't tell her.
I didn't have any friends. They had all run away because of what I did at the end of seventh grade. I had always been emotional, and the history teacher had shown a film about World War II where a son loses his father on the battlefield. I cried in the background for the entire second half of the film, and ever since, everyone thought I was super weird.
I resented my mother for raising me like that. If she had taught me that men don't cry, I wouldn't have lost my friends in such a stupid way
It had been over a year and a half since I'd been all alone. I had a few friends here and there who realized I wasn't so strange after all, but I didn't have any real friends waiting for me when the school bell rang or walking home with me... I didn't have anyone to eat with in the cafeteria. In fact, it had become so difficult to find a seat at a table that I ended up walking there every lunchtime so I wouldn't have to stand there with my tray in the middle of nowhere like an idiot.
I had so few friends... that nobody wanted me on their sports team.
I was clumsy, they said kindly... I couldn't catch a ball and I fell a lot on the field... but they never passed it to me. I stood out, but they apologized, saying they hadn't seen me...? I always knew they were lying, but I smiled because I was an idiot, I was a goldfish...
I hated sports, recess... but especially math. It was the only subject I hated for its content because the numbers got all jumbled up in my head like puree.
To be more precise, I hated math until I started to like Elias... maybe a little after, when one day... he felt my gaze and turned around
I held his gaze, I wasn't embarrassed, I was so happy I smiled, but he just stared at me without moving. He seemed not to know who I was, and that hurt a little...
When he looked away, I turned my face toward the window, opaque with grime, and prayed he would forget that moment because it was stupidly the first memory he had of me.
I cursed that memory, but in the end, I didn't hate it for very long. A few days later, Elias teamed up with me for badminton. I had always been the one who went in girls' groups and rotated through a group of three improvised by the teacher. I had a partner for the first time... He was taller than me, his hair was shorter and better styled. He had thicker, darker skin, and a more piercing gaze. Above all, he had greater talent in sports because I was so bad that when we played doubles, I was always at the net catching the opponent's tricky passes.
He became my gym partner, and thanks to that, I loved sports as much as math. We didn't really talk outside of that class because he was always with his friends, and I avoided closed groups like the plague. Spending so much time with him, my love was no longer superficial; it became more and more deeply rooted, to the point that I even started to like what others found annoying. He was always serious, he didn't smile often, but he was caring.
I understood that in learning I existed, he had also learned I was all alone and had sacrificed himself so I wouldn't end up alone and traumatized during gym class. He had devoted himself to me and helped me improve. When I made a mistake, he didn't scold me, and sometimes he even corrected it. He didn't put any pressure on me, even though I must have looked quite distracted, stuttering and looking at my feet whenever he spoke to me face to face. "It's shyness. My little brother is like that." That's what he would say with his cold face
This sentence kept running through my head for a good month until he suddenly started turning around in math class... then in French class, where I didn't think he'd find me because I was hidden in the back row, sitting all alone. I used to wave to him with a smile at the beginning of class... and I'll remember that class as the moment I decided he would be my one true love. He had turned around for a long time, staring at his paper. He seemed a little... less cold than usual. He turned around a lot in the space of a few minutes while the teacher was taking her time arriving. He started talking to his neighbor, then called out to the teacher as she came through the doorway, turning her face towards me.
The teacher watched me for a long time while I was all alone drawing on my paper with a small smile.
A few minutes later... I had a neighbor for the first time.
A neighbor who looked at me with a guilty face. I wanted to tell him it wasn't his fault I was alone, but I was so happy I forgot how to think.
Unfortunately for him, he wasn't done worrying about me. I was left out of all the classes, and he didn't dare disrupt the seating arrangements. I was just happy that he was thinking of me, even if he wasn't always next to me. That was enough for me... I wasn't asking for much.
-Johan, let's share a room for the trip
-The trip...
I folded the sheet of paper in my hands after he'd fixed the option I'd checked...
I never went on trips because
I was always alone... and now
I was embarrassed to say no because I wasn't planning on going.
I turned bright red when I answered yes...
-I have to get my mom to sign the sheet...
-They're rooms for four... is it okay if my friends come too?
-I don't want to bother anyone...! You should ask your friends...
-They're okay with it, don't worry.
I looked him in the eyes for a moment, holding back my embarrassment. Well... I was in trouble. This trip might not be such a good idea after all.
I looked at him, turned my head, then looked at him again. As soon as I was next to him, I trembled like a leaf. I'd been terrified ever since I'd asked him to sit next to me on the bus. I stared at the floor so much because the atmosphere was so heavy that I threw up... I threw up on my clothes, and a little on his favorite sneakers. Well, that's what I meant because he always wore the same ones. They were his only pair for two weeks, orange Converse. My vomit had left a brown stain on the top; it was disgusting and it stank.
He could have been mad at me, insulted me, or even avoided me...
Instead, he just stared at me for a long time without reacting, then he threw up too.
I had no idea he was emetophobic
The bus smelled so strongly of vomit that the whole class cursed us... I apologized profusely, but he said it happens to everyone; the proof was that he'd thrown up too. I recognized his impassive nature.
-I'm sorry about your sneakers.
-...I don't like them that much.
I looked at him in surprise... and for the first time he turned bright red and didn't know where to look,
-Well, they... are my favorite color...but I can find others that are orange.
-Ah...that's good...
I turned back to the tap to scrub my t-shirt, my gaze lost in the water, still filled with shame from having thrown up everything in my stomach,
-What I'm trying to say is that I really like the color of your hair. Orange is so pretty.
I looked at him in the mirror. I didn't want to accept what he'd just said, but more than anything, I didn't want to embarrass him even more than he already was. I ended up giggling a little, holding back a big smile between my closed lips. If he only knew everything I loved about him... I really wanted to tell him that he was everything I adored in this world, but I didn't have his courage. I was too pathetic to express myself without embarrassing him.
It was an honor to know that he thought my hair was pretty, but if I told him that, he'd mostly think: Oh, I shouldn't have told him that. He won't leave me alone now
I got attached to people too quickly, I loved them too fast... but if you only knew, Elias, that you were my first love because no one had ever been kind to me before.
I kept his words engraved in my mind like a mantra to give me willpower, "I am Elias's favorite color."
-Do you only have water?
-Yes...
-I have Coke, shall we share to get rid of the taste?
-Don't worry...
He took a sip then handed me the bottle after wiping the neck with a tissue,
Actually... I wasn't disgusted by what was in his mouth. I felt dirty, but everything about him was clean.
He seemed mostly disappointed about his shoes, so once we got to the room, I took the opportunity to discreetly bring him over to me.