Chasing After Infinity (34 page)

“Don’t let go.”

My mom is lying in front of me once more for a second time as I witness her death all over again. Her eyes are drained and vacant, and her hand in mine cold and clammy as it slips from my grasp. A choke is in my throat and tears prick my eyes as the doctor holds me back from her as they rush forward.

Don’t let go.

Please don’t let go.

I can’t do this.

I can’t lose him.

Looking all over, I run to the nearest platform, nearly slipping on the wet floor as people surrounding me push past me.

Then I catch a glimpse of green eyes and a turn of his dark head as he boards the train.

“Adrian!” I scream, as I run as fast as I can, my legs pumping under me. “Adrian!”

He doesn’t hear me as the door slides close, swallowing him under.

Pain blinds my world and I sway uneasily on my feet as the train moves, heading out and the next one comes up, rearing up.

“Looking for me?”

And as I turn, my heart jumps into my throat.

Adrian stands in front of me, his green eyes as endless as the ocean, a devilish smile on his lips. I stare at him, so shocked that no words come out. He seems like a hallucination, a beautiful hallucination.

He sets down his luggage and wraps me in his arms, holding me so tight to his chest that I can’t breathe. I start to sputter, running my hands over his back, trying to find out where to best hold him first. Tears well up in my eyes and I push him away roughly.

“What the hell are you doing?” I scream at him, all of the earlier pain, confusion and anger overflowing. “Running away?”

“I’m--” Adrian tries to pull me back to him but I start hitting him, hitting his chest. He doesn’t try to avert my punches and I’m breaking in front of him. He’s broken my dam and stolen my defense as the tears stream down my face, sobs that wrench my insides.

I thought that this kind of crying was over.

He folds me into his arms and this time, I let him, crushing my face into his shoulder to cry.

“
Avena
,” he whispers, lifting my head so that I look into his eyes. “I need to get away from all of this for a while.” His voice turns rough. “Don’t you get it? I need time to figure everything out. What I want and who I am.”

I can hardly feel anything as the numbness of my tears takes over. I let him go and shove him away from me. “Fine, then. Just go! Go--”

He grabs me and captures my lips with his, a red hot trail of slow burning fire winding its way into me. My thoughts swirl and my mind screams at me to pull away but by now, I’m already far gone. I want to kiss him and slap him all at the same time. I fist his hair with one hand and pound the other into his chest, pulling and pushing at the same time. Tears slip into my lips and he kisses me hard and full.

When he gets himself in control, he draws away. We gaze at each other.

The same old tug of war is still raging.

My heart clenches as he grabs both sides of my face, holding it. His eyes are swirling with raw emotions, sweet violence in them as he fights himself.

“Don’t go,” I finally say. I want to be selfish. I need to be.

“Just--” Adrian says, shaking his head. “Don’t.”

I say his name again and it’s like all resolve has
broke
.

We’re both shaking in each other.

“Just don’t say it.” I look up at him.

“Say what?” His fingers trace over my cheek, through my hair. His voice cracked on the last word.

“Don’t say—
“ But
I get cut off.

Without another word, his lips sweep over mine again. But this time, it’s different; the kiss is soft, his lower lip grazing mine with a gentle swift motion as soft as a falling feather. There is none of the fire fuelling our earlier kiss, just sweet and sating. I press my fingers to my lips, feeling the pressure of his kiss linger.

Adrian looks at me, his eyes burning like the flames of green embers. And I know that somehow, we’re on the brink of something indefinite.

We’ve crossed an invisible line and there’s no going back now.

“Good-bye,” I finish quietly, so soft that I can barely hear the word.

Then I let him go.

Adrian releases me, both of us silent. He regains his self-control and with a smirk, he salutes me as he turns, going through the open doors.

In that second, I think about running through that door and going with him. But I know that it’s not the road I’m meant for.

Because we’re both still incapable of love.
We’re both not ready yet.

And I know that I’ll miss him. And some nights, I’ll cry in my sleep.

But for now, I’m okay. And that’s all that matters.

The void in my heart has finally been filled.

And as the train moves farther and farther from me on the platform, I can only smile.

epilogue

AVENA

Looking back, my life has been nothing but an emotional, up and down rollercoaster ride. Perhaps that this is the flavour of life—this sweet, tangy while bitter concoction of sentiment and heavy loss. For one split second, you feel the utter perfection of the moment and the next; it all goes downhill from there. For one instant, you can feel like you’ve got everything and the next flash, you feel like there’s really nothing. It’s like you’re walking a winding road that leads to a dead end.

It's been about four years since the day I've graduated, leaving high school and its dramas behind. It's my second semester at Columbia University and so far, it's been a hard journey towards medical research. During the last few weeks, I had to work tirelessly through the entire night to keep myself still floating.

When I look back on my past, I feel some sort of nostalgia and a tinge of sadness.
The days of lazing on the beach, the piles of homework, the laughs and tears, the partying and heartbreak.
Like wisps of smoke, my high school days were over and now I'm left to meet reality face-on. That also means that I'm forced to meet the truth about my mother's death.

My dad and I both tried to patch things up since the move and so far, it's working. He had finally come out from his cave and we'd regularly spend the weekends watching movies and laughing at the awkward parts. We weren’t past the hurt yet but it’s still progress. Sometimes I'd see that sad, far-away look in his eyes, but it was getting fewer and fewer as the days pass.

I'm still getting used to dorm life but the transition is made easier by my new dorm friends, Melissa and Bethany. Kara and I still have weekly phone calls to check up on things but things just aren't the same anymore. I guess that's how it is: we all drift slowly away from each
other as we enter a new life and new surroundings. From our last phone call a while ago, she told me that she and Hayden were moving into a flat together shortly after graduation. They had a special on and off again relationship and no matter how many times Hayden threatened to break it off with her, they always managed to be back together in less than a week. That's just how love is, I've learned.

As for me, I've started dating a couple of guys since the beginning of my freshman year, including the one that I'm with now, Lucas Gregory. He makes me smile and that's all I need, really.

But I still haven't forgotten him.

After all these years, I can still remember his green eyes, the way his lips curve at the end. Sometimes I regret the day that I let him go and wonder
the what
ifs. What if I had stopped him from leaving? And that I'd never know what will happen if it really did turn out that way. And then sometimes I think that it's for the best.

I haven't heard from him to this day. I wonder how he's doing, if he'd ever found out who he was.
If he ever thinks about me.
If he has ever fallen for someone else and has already forgotten about me.

Adrian was the star in my ever gray sky. Whether he made me angry beyond my mind or made me laugh so hard that I felt high, he had kept my mind off my mother's death and prevented me from falling into that hole that I've dug for myself. Without him, I would've let that hole swallow me long ago. He taught me the true meaning of what it was like to feel in love and it was strangely ironic how we'd found something we'd never expected within each other.

As I look around for my old Nirvana albums in the attic amidst the piles of dusty boxes and antiques, I find myself searching for something else instead.
Something that my soul is tugging at, urging me to discover and unearth.
I sift through memories of long-forgotten letters and
pictures from before, getting more nostalgic by the minute as I find photos of my childhood and pictures I never thought existed.

I cough as I pull out a cardboard box from underneath a pile of rumpled clothes and open the folds. Inside, I find envelopes, elastic bands, and a stack of pictures marked '12 Senior Year. There, I find my heart aching as I see rolls of me, Hayden and Kara posing in photo booths, sticking our tongues out and laughing at our weird expressions. Another picture featured us at Denny's by our usual booth,
clinking
our Coke cans together and smiling foolishly,
carefreely
, at the camera.

Then my hand brushes against something as I reach under a drawer and my heartbeat rising in tempo, I pull out the safe.

I've finally found what I've been subconsciously looking for. It's the time capsule from over four years ago.

My heart lodged in my throat, I place my fingers over the latch, fighting with myself.

I know that if I open it, it will unlock a dam and
unflood
a whole surge of buried emotions.

Should I take the risk of relieving my past all over again?

Then forcing myself to stop thinking, I unlatch the safe and it makes a creaking sound as the wooden top flips over. I fall back as strangled sounds come out of my throat. I sweep my gaze over the picture of me with a hot chocolate mustache that he had taken that night, the jar filled to the brim of
sand,
all of the memories are kept in here, hidden in these seemingly meaningless things. Had all those memories gone to waste after all?

Maybe I'm looking for something that's already gone.

I blink as I pull out a picture from underneath, looking at it as if for the first time.

Me
and Adrian are lying on a pile of fluffy and white snow on the last day of December. He's taking the photo, pointing the camera back at us, kissing my cheek, his green eyes drenched with devilish glow, as I make a face at him. His arm is wrapped around my shoulder, pulling me to him as my face is folded inward towards his jacket. Snowflakes are melting in my hair and my cheeks are flushed as I protest.

I can’t even remember what
was remotely funny back
then.

We both looked so unbelievably happy. How could everything change so much in just four
year’s time
?

I touch the laughing still shot of his face. I can still somewhat hear him chortling, his laugh loud and clear. Now, it's like I'm back there again. One moment I'm sitting in my attic, looking at the spread of pictures, and the next, I'm seventeen again, playing in the snow with Adrian, vowing to remember this moment forever.

"How would you react if I told you that I love you?" Adrian asked me that one time as we lay on the snow together, him grinning. "That I've loved you all along?"

I snorted then. "Just like you 'loved' all of the other girls?" I said. "Don't try to pull that on me. I'm not falling for it."

Back at that time, I knew that we had not even thought about the issue of love, nevertheless knew what it was.

We were both not ready for the idea.

Later on I would realize the
bittersweetness
of this moment, just like I would realize the
bittersweetness
of many others. Even then, at that moment, I had a
feeling,
deep down — like it was a foreshadowing of what was ahead. But that's the thing about looking back to moments that should have told you what was coming — maybe you'd had that feeling, but it was so tiny and inconsequential compared to everything else also happening in that moment, that it was easy to overlook things.
It was impossible to know what was unfolding before your eyes unless you were skimming through the past, looking for signs of what might have been clues that hinted at the end.