CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE PHILOSOPHY CORRIDOR OF THE residence hall was thick with gossip and hushed voices.
Meanwhile, Elliott watched James stare up at the luxuriant oil paintings of ancient Icarus on the ceiling of James’s dormitory.
One of the art scholars had painted it for him in his first year. The Descent of íkaros.
James’s room was torpedoed with hundreds of ethics essays, photographs of dead philosophers, published Malcolm X.
speeches, John F. Kennedy notes, and Robert F.
Kennedy tapes. There were tangles of his abandoned clothes everywhere–dark briefs, loose ties, woven short-sleeved shirts cast to the richly carpeted floor.
Right then, James slid his captivating eyes towards Elliott.
“Would you still love me, if I were expelled? We would be apart.”
Would you still love me?
Elliott’s cheeks flushed with heat as if the groundskeeper had thrust hot coal from the hearth onto his face. James loved endlessly to tease him for his sentimentality.
Elliott was être fleur bleue by nature; in the end, James was pale sang bleu by nature.
Elliott didn’t even need to think about it, of course he’d love his best friend.
Yet Elliott didn’t want to sound pathetic and breathless, therefore he forced himself to wait exactly eleven seconds before responding.
The seconds dripped by in anguish. On the surface, Elliott pretended as if he needed to think about it even a second longer.
“You’re my best friend. I would love you, yes. ”
“You would love me if I were a fleeting bird that fluttered away?”
“I think I would love you even as a bird itself, yes.” Elliott kept the end of his dark tie in his mouth, an old habit. He bit the fabric within his teeth, ruminative.
“What kind of bird?”
“Any bird.” Kingfisher. Harrier. Fox sparrow. It didn’t matter.
Elliott knew, in the depths of his soul, he would love James Wilde if he was the silt of a mudslide, or nothing but air itself.
If James was Sirius above their heads at night, impossibly out of his reach, yet immeasurable in its importance to him, Elliott would love his dearest friend still.
He’d never had a best friend before James.
A sound caught Elliott’s ears. His foolish, loose mouth had slipped out words without his permission. Elliott asked in return, “Would you love me if we were apart?”
Elliott swallowed involuntarily. He cursed himself, and his mouth fought itself to retrieve the question, the question too deeply meaningful to him to air out recklessly. His stomach plummeted, already knowing the answer.
James tried to spare him of pain for a few seconds, behaving as if he didn’t hear him at first. Then, he blew a breath and delivered the blow.
Elliott wasn’t the only one who often lost control of his mouth. James responded with hardly any pause, “I would not love you, Elliott. I wouldn’t love you if you were a bird, either.”
James sounded regretful. However, he needed Elliott to hear him. James could not love Elliott, or anyone, except his late mother. Elliott understood his agony.
His mother had raised him on her own while his father ascended in his diplomatic career.
On the night James met the recruiters, the pharmaceutical assistants recalled her high-dosage prescriptions for her seizures due to a clerical error.
James had gotten the call, and he’d planned to pick up the epilepsy medications early.
Except, his hand went through the windshield.
He was found with alcohol in his system.
Therefore, he was detained. He’d forgotten to call his father, bleary with glass and injuries from the incident.
That night, his father found her unconscious from a severe seizure after an intracerebral hemorrhage, and it was too late. James felt like he’d killed her.
His elderly grandfather suffered a myocardial infarction at the heartbreaking news of his daughter’s sudden death. He was buried soon after.
His own father treated him as though he’d murdered his mother and grandfather.
If James dared to allow himself to love anything or anyone ever that immensely again, he would not survive the loss of them. The grief would kill him.
He didn’t deserve their love either. It would only be wasted on a heathen.
Elliott could encounter death at any time, not to mention he turned twenty-one next year. Therefore, James never said he loved him back. He couldn’t bear to lose Elliott. It was better for both of them.
James Wilde was a young man used to everyone loving him, yet he was cursed to never love in return. Elliott pitied him for that. James’s capacity for love and friendship would always be limited.
For himself, Elliott always told all the people closest to him that he loved them.
It was something his mother taught him and instilled within him.
If you love someone, you must let them know often and without restraint.
One day, they may not live to hear your words any longer. Your souls may cease to exist.
The agony of hearing James didn’t love him was easier to endure than the unbearable weight of Elliott never letting his best friend know how loved he was by him. That kept Elliott’s sanity within him.
Yet, Elliott’s eyes betrayed him and prickled with tears against his will.
Somehow, it still hurt to hear James could not love him in return, as if a boar spear had lanced through his heart cavity. Leaking his blood down his chest.
Elliott removed his tie as if that was the culprit choking him, suffocating him, instead of the constricting emotion in his throat. He knew he might cry at any moment.
It arrested James’s attention.
James never could let Elliott anguish alone, that was James’s worst trait, Elliott thought in the moment. He was fiercely loyal by nature.
“I envy your soul. It feels everything. I care deeply for it,” James told him softly in comfort, and it was so close to hearing the words ‘I love you’ that Elliott’s tears willed themselves back.
“I care deeply for that soul of yours, Elliott. Anima tua anima est mea. Your soul is my soul. It is mine. You understand that I will protect it?”
“I understand.” Elliott nodded in a wind of relief, as if the words allowed air back into his lungs. Elliott knew James meant the words, every single one, with every inch of himself. “At all costs, I will protect your soul, Elliott.”
James always protected him. However, it was time Elliott protected him back.
He only needed to think of a plan.
Except, he could’ve never anticipated that the plan he would soon concoct would be the catalyst that would cause everyone’s devastation.