Inferno

twenty nine | the boy next door

"I feel sixteeen again. Sneaking boys in my room, staying up late while we lay in bed... except this room is more yours than mine, so that's new," I chortle, brushing strands of his hair back while his head rests on my lap. Eyes shut and such peaceful look on his face I could easily stay the same way for hours to come.

He stayed behind or rather climbed in through the window once it was lights off and Elise had taken off to her room for the night with a tub of strawberry cheesecake ice cream. I worry at times, but she says it's all sugar free and she's not an inch more than a size four, so it might as well be. "I never did sneak into girls' apartment back in high school. It sounds nerdy, but I stayed up in front of the pc, working on a scrap book of sorts."

"What kind?"

"Well... it might be here, you know," elbows straightening, he lifts himself off of me and lazily crawls up to the shelve space beside the bed, scouring amongst the drawers until coming back with a navy blue binder with laminated pages inside. "This was my dream project, my life goal back then." He's shaking his head, laughing, so I presume it's something juvenile, until I switch on the lamp set on the cabinet, and the pages inside illuminate, the text and pictures bathing in a glow of orange.

"Wow, what even is this?" I cautiously run fingers over the slightly dainty pages, reading through the bullet points, notes and taking in the polaroids stuck on every page. "London, Paris, Shanghai, New York... is there a single destination missing in this book?"

"Not that I know of," he sees it for himself, an amused look on his face that I've grown fond of, acquired so I missed it the most when we were apart. "I wanted to go through the globe after watching the 180 days movie. It was the only thing on my mind for so long my parents were worried I'd become a hobo with a bag pack, spending my life running through trains," he sighs, something short of regret in his voice.

"So what happened? I mean, to the dream?"

"Reality hit. I did go through some of these, but it wasn't exactly how I wanted and after some time i realised this quest was pure foolish and something that better suited to Jackie Chan."

"Was it him in that movie?"

"The legend himself," he shuts the binder, tossing it back to the shelves and rather recklessly.

"Okay, so it didn't work out... doesn't mean you simply quit on the entire thing. This took you so many hours and days to gather and you just shoved it in like it's a macy's end season sale pamphlet."

"Really, you're the one speaking? Didn't you set out to be a novelist and now you're also working for some corporate chain with minimal health care benefits." He challenges, and I'm left with no better answer to justify my choices.

"Fine, you win. I did the same exact thing and now I'm a one hit wonder with a second manuscript that'll always remain that."

"What's it about?" He asks; the question simple to him, but a complex myriad of emotions to me.

"It's... it's based on my ex boyfriend. It's basically a diary passed as fiction with a few beautiful adjectives," I chuckle, never losing hope that there'd be a day when talking about it won't leave me nursing the feeling of repeated stabs bruising my chest.

"Is that the book you came to Barcelona for?"

"I did, but my plans didn't work out as I'd thought and now I've completely given up. I mean, I've got publishers, but this isn't a book I'll hand over to anyone."

He nods, and after everything we went through today, for the first time ever since we met, I really know he understands some of my pain if not in entirety. Sharing our woes and teenage naïveté, I don't realise when we're asleep, snuggled together with my head buried beneath his chin, and his arm round me. So when the morning comes and I'm all alone under the quilt, it's not the best thing to wake up to, except for his scent that's caught up in the sheets, soothing me.