Before the Sun

Chapter Twenty One- Lucas

At the beginning of this story, I told you about my best friend Lucas. I didn't tell you about his dusky brown hair, filled with slight, soft curls. I didn't tell you he could only fall asleep when my hand was weaved within his locks and his head was on my chest. I didn't tell you when the arguments at home became all too much, when the bitter words, violent fists and threats began to swallow him whole, I was the one he came to. I never mentioned his eyes, such a warm shade of brown circled by the thickest eyelashes I have ever seen. His smile, dimples popping his cheeks. I didn't tell you about his laugh. I didn't tell you because I swore I would never forget the sweet sound- how could I possibly forget my favourite sound? But I did. His laugh is gone, I can no longer hear it when I wish. I can no longer recall the sound when I become low. I've forgotten it.

At the beginning of this story, I lied.

I told you Lucas was my best friend- and that he was. However, I believe that is the biggest understatement I have ever spoken. It is an insult to what we were to call that a friendship. Lucas was something different. He couldn't bring himself to trust love and I suppose that is what happens when the people that created you cannot furnish their love beyond themselves. Lucas' mind was the product of a boy who had not yet been properly cared for. It never surprised me that he couldn't make himself believe in happiness, that there was someone who loved him entirely for him. I often wondered if he knew I loved him more than a friend should. I like to believe he did- and that somewhere in his heart, he shared the same feeling I locked away in my own- even if he did not know what that feeling was.

Lucas loved in his own way. He would say lines that could only be described as complete adoration. The things he'd whisper when it was just him and I. The words he'd say whilst on the brink of sleep. They were the sweetest thing I had ever heard. They were like mini poems and I didn't know what to do with them. I found myself wondering if all friendships were like ours, and as time went on, I realised what we had was far from a friendship.

I remember the months leading up to his death. A hot summers day, fiery belts of setting sun and soft ripples of water floating around us. It felt like I was lost within a cloud, just him, I and the water. The sea was warm as Lucas and I drifted through it. We had escaped the sand bank, floating much too far out from the shore. I remember the sound of the birds and the water around us, sweet little droplets of saltiness dropping off our faces and back into the ocean. I remember feeling his eyes on me, laughing as I scolded him for staring. However, he didn't laugh with me. My smile dropped as I looked back to him, hand instinctively reaching for his face. His eyes were in a daze, glossed over and almost empty. He moved so slowly, with such trepidation, inching forward until he found my lips. His hand was in my hair, the other on the small of my back. I remember that night- sweaty bodies and tangled limbs, feverish kisses and lost clothes. I remember the look on Lucas' face as he laid beside me. It was a shared knowingness that whatever we had was enough. If Lucas didn't want to call it love, he didn't have to. But we knew we weren't friends, and we knew we weren't a couple. We were just Sofia and Lucas- and that we stayed until the day I lost him.

So I lied again. I told you we never kissed, we never touched, we never looked at each other like that. But we did, and for a long while he was the only person I believed I could ever see in that light.

In the time after his death, I pictured my future without Lucas. I realised that up until the moment I found his lifeless body, all I saw in my future was him. I hadn't imagined a life without Lucas by my side. There wasn't a single aspect of my life that I had pictured without him. And so the most painful part of losing my Lucas wasn't finding him on the shore. It wasn't the speculations of whether maybe his death wasn't an accident, maybe he had the intention of never coming back that night he walked into the sea. The most painful part was realising I loved him once it was too late.