Can't I Touch Your Heart?

Chapter 31 I Shouldn't Have Let You Go

"India?" Maple wondered what that was "I have never heard of it before,"
"What is that? A dish?" Loraine asked with a smile.
"No, it's a country in the southern ocean towards the east" Ember smiled back.
"You are going there?" Loraine asked.
"Would you come with me?" Ember proposed.
"I would-if Maple does!" Loraine held Maple's hand. Maple replied in negation "I want to go to Antarctica and pet a polar bear. I don't like snakes,"

"If Maple isn't going, then I won't go either" Loraine pouted.
"Then I'll be lonely there," Ember said.
"Ember can make new friends there. They will love you," Loraine smiled as he held his hand.
"I hope so," Ember looked down at his feet.

Ember enrolled at a new school in India, but he was always secluded from the rest of the group of children. But seclusion was an art he had learnt from childhood, it was the hope for something different that let him down.

"Wow! You got blue eyes!"
Until he met her. He looked at her with his eyes wide open and she grabbed his red cheeks. He looked into her brown eyes. Blue eyes, he wondered, were they rare? He touched his eyelashes, trying to feel the colour on his fingertips.

"Ember! Come!" She yelled as they ran through the tall grass. He ran after her, she had grabbed his hand, he looking at her hands, and suddenly fell on his knees.
"You fell again?"
He looked up at her, "Don't worry. I-I bandaids, yes?" She smiled.

Every wound she gave him held an adventure of its own which piled tattoos of scars on his pale skin. Her sun-kissed skin was like a bronze gem in his black woods of death and despair. Yet, he could see how they were growing apart, their memories, crumbling; like dried flower petals, melting into the soil churned by time, they are fading away like the colour on an old piece of paper. And as he began chasing shadows in dreams, he begged

To save him the last seat of her love.

. . .

"Hey..." Arorhea patted Ember's warm cheeks. His wet eyelashes looked at her blurry face. He quickly wiped off his face and rubbed his eyes, "Are you crying?"
"No," He looked away, "It's just water," He laughed.
"Is it normal to wake up with watery eyes?"
"For me, yes," He sat up straight, his back balancing his posture by standing against the wall.

"The class is over by the way. You never showed up," Rhea passed a notebook to him.
"What is this?" He giggled apologetically as he looked at the notebook.
"The notes. You might need them for your exams,"
"Ah yes, exams," He took the notebook from her.

"Oh yeah, I forgot," He mumbled and looked at her, "Could you drop me home?"
"I won't,"
"What?" He laughed as he got up, "Why?"
"Because you are fat!"

"So?" Ember took the notebook from her and picked up his bag.
"How dare you expect me to carry you on my bicycle? You are so fat you make holes when you walk on the road,"
"Not only the road, but I'm also good at making and dealing with all sorts of holes," Ember smirked.

"What does that mean?" Rhea asked and Ember pressed his index finger on her lips. He was staring at her lips. She blushed, "What?"
He smiled, "What a prepossessing red,"
She pulled her neck away. He continued smiling as he looked at her. She scrunched her toes and held her fists together.

"Come, I'll drop you home,"
"Why, thank you,"

After coming back home, he walked into his room and kept his bag aside. He walked towards a table in a dark corner of the room. He tore open the white paper packet kept on it and took out something on his palms. He picked a glass tumbler and went to the bathroom to fill it with water. He filled it half and brought it near his mouth.

"This is only for you, Rhea,"
And he drank down the glass of water. He kept it aside and looked into the mirror. He touched his reflection, his eyes,