What Follows

`how shall i hold back my soul from touching yours?`

“You killed your brother,” I state/ask, my head somewhere else that’s not on my neck.

Tobias let’s go of Benji’s leash and clasps my wrists, teary eyes on my disbelieving ones. “My only brother-”

“Oh my God,” I say and suddenly the French air I’ve been breathing makes no sense. “Tobias, let me go-”

“I regret it every day of my every cycle, Roseline,” he tells me, his shell completely falling off. And I realise, what killed him wasn’t nice words and big hearts, it was his brother.

“You killed your brother,” I repeat like a broken tape.

“That’s why I was scared to tell you,” he blathers, his eyes disappearing under a year’s worth of tears.

"Oh my God,” I shake my head, my lips parted.

Tobias blinks at me and shakes his head. “Listen, please,” he begs. “It was an accident.”

“An accident? How old was he?”

“Five.”

My eyes sting. “What did you do?”

“I swear I didn’t mean it,” he says, choking on his tears. “I swear.”

“What happened?” I ask his bright hazels that quickly well up.

“It hurts me to say.”

“To this day?” I ask in shock.

“To this day.”

“What happened? Tell me. Please.”

Tobias shakes his head. ”Please,” he pleads. “It was just an accident. I was sick. I didn’t mean it. Please-”

“I believe you,” I tell him. “Just explain.”

Tobias blinks away his tears, clears his throat and inhales deeply. “Let’s find somewhere to sit.”

I shake my head at his offer. I mean what does it matter to sit or stand when we’re bloody dead? Why are we still carrying on with our human decencies? Or is it just because they’re the last string we have left, tying us to humanity?

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I remove myself from his weak grasp and start walking. “You just lied to me about it. Just like that.”

Tobias walks by my side and says nothing as I threaten myself not to cry over this too. I mean, why am I disappointed? How is it possible for a disappointed person to get disappointed? You can’t be more of something you are, or can you?

And it hits me that a person killing himself for his ‘passion’ is a tad too farfetched. He lied to me, and it’s either that I was too gullible or too engrossed in my problems to think about whether his claim made sense or not. Probably the latter.

“Tobias, why didn’t you tell me?” I repeat.

“I was going to-”

"Then?”

“Then I lived your life.” I narrow my eyes at him and he continues. “I realized that hiding it would be better than losing you.”

“Losing me? " I scoff. “You think I expected bloody saints down here?”

“I was scared you’d never need me again.”

I stop at that and sigh at his sad eyes. “Why are you ashamed of it if it were an accident?”

“Let’s sit there,” he says, pointing at a café at the end of the street, with mostly-empty, outdoor tables.

I nod distractedly as Tobias whistles to draw Benji to us. Benji jumps from behind a parked car, barks at Tobias and wags his tail excitedly.

When we reach the café, I sit in a chair at a table, messy with half-eaten Cinnamon rolls and an abandoned sunflower as Tobias sits in front of me, holds his hands on the tabletop and stretches his legs.

He then searches my face worriedly and I sigh heavily.

“I’m not going to desert you,” I tell him slowly. “I’m just disappointed. I mean, there must’ve been a catch, yeah? Like you being a murderer. This is hell. I wasn’t gonna meet doctors. And it isn’t like I have the right to have any say in whatever you did in your life.”

“Well, some things are just better left unsaid because they’re just too difficult to explain, too difficult to excuse, too difficult to...believe,” he trails off, and I say nothing, making a face.

Tobias unclasps his hands and nervously runs his fingers through his hair, undoing his bun. “You know, that’s the thing with you-” he tells me frustratedly. “You’re hot and cold. I don’t understand how you feel about me half of the time.”

My lips slightly part as Tobias leans across the table. “I’m always scared,” he locks my eyes. “-to upset you.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not that fragile-”

“I am!” Tobias declares. “I can’t handle the thought of your absence.”

“You could’ve told me and let me choose for myself!”

Tobias leans back, his firey hair doing little to soften his suddenly fierce features. “No.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’ve been always clear with you from the start,” he says. “I’ve always,” he shakes his head, leans closer. “I’ve always, somehow, had a thing for you, wanted you.”

I fall silent.

“Don’t act surprised,” he shakes his head, his eyes suddenly watering. “I was there for you, but I never understood you,” he says accusingly. “You treat me like you’ve just met me. I can’t do that. I can’t treat you like that. You were starting to mean things to me. You’ve revived my poetic sense. I valued you too much to lose you over this.” He blinks away as I gulp down what he said.

“I don’t understand, I didn’t mean it-”

Tobias smirks, shrugs a shoulder. “I get it. It isn’t only me, is it? It’s Jacob, Aiden, William-” I frown. “We all are victims of your misexpressed emotions,” he tells me vehemently. “You’ve left them all confused. No-one knows why you’ve killed yourself. No-one knows how much they meant to you! You left them, incapable of deciding how to feel about you. Whether to mourn you with love or guilt.”

“Tobias-” I start uselessly.

“That’s exactly what’s happening with me. I don’t know if you care enough that you’d hate me if I tell you,” he says. “Or if you don’t give a shit about me and wouldn’t mind it. I don’t know and I’m not about to risk it.”

“Why do think I will judge you by your past? But you know, the more you hide it the more worried I get that you did something horrible,” I tell him and for a second, he stares at me unmoving. “I care about you.”

“I did something horrible,” he whispers, eyes watering into two ponds with dark secrets for floors. “Do you still care about me?”

I look at him and know that we’re at the exact place where the world ends, I know that we’re floating somewhere in a parallel universe where there’s no sun and no hope, I know we’re so wrong, right just loses its meaning.

“I care about you.”

“Well, I more than care about you. Do you more than care about me?” He tells me and I blink at him. At his disappointed hazels.

“Wait, just,” I shake my head. ”Wait.”

“I can’t tell you about me when I don’t understand you.”

“What’s there to understand?” I argue. “All my cards are on the table.”

“Your feelings aren’t.”

I narrow my eyes at him and suddenly understand what it is that’s bothering him. “I don’t know how I’m feeling about you,” I tell him. “I never did with anyone. I just care about people,” I shrug. “I care about you and it seems not enough for you to trust me.”

“Do you like me?”

I blink at him. “Of course I do!” I scoff. “This is ridiculous. This is supposed to be about you. Why are you going against me?”

Tobias catches my eyes. “Do you love me?”

My heart remembers to do a doubletake before beating itself back to life.

I thought he knew better. And I’m suddenly sweating tears of the dead and exhaling out all the counted breaths I breathed when I was alive, because I know...I know that just like all the previous actions, it’s impossible.

“How do you want to be loved?” I ask him instead as his eyes brighten with more unshed tears.

Tobias leans back into his chair, crosses his legs and looks up at the vast, black French sky. “He died of a concussion. It was severe. And mostly, it was my fault.” He exhales and I remain very still. “I had anger issues. I was an angry kid.” He stops, his lips quivering. “Everything. Was red. And my savior was poetry. I’d write like my life depended on it. It did. My brother’s did.

“It must’ve been a Saturday- when all kind of bad things happen- when Dad decided I wasn’t doing well enough to get to Havard via a scholarship.” He shuts his eyes. “He was yelling. He wanted me to withdraw from all extracurricular activities. He wanted me to stop writing. He yelled about how he couldn’t care less about my passion. He yelled my ears to bleeding.

And there was just so much yelling, you know? My mom was yelling. The actors on the TV were yelling. Every fibre of my being shook in unjustified anger.” He opens his eyes and tears hit the tabletop in succession. “My brother, Tom, oh Tom-" He lifts his hand, pauses, and looks away, overcome by a wave of emotion.

“He was- he-” He sniffs loudly, looks at me with shame all over his face. “He was running to me, holding up his toy, begging me, he was begging me, Roseline. He went like, Tobias, Tobias, Tobby- uh- it’s too difficult-" He presses his hand’s heel to his forehead. “He wanted me to put in its batteries because I always do it for him, you know?” He drops his hand, bares his eyes to me. He then lifts his right hand, turns its back to me. “I smacked him so hard, he forgot how to breathe.”

I blink at him, forgetting how to talk.

“He hit his head on the coffee table. He died hours later,” he shakes his head. ”Severe, fatal concussion, were among the words the doctors used to justify my act of crime. And I get it, you know? He was so young, so little, his head was so tiny, it just couldn’t handle it, you know? I could barely handle the sound of my breaths rushing into and out of my body. I couldn’t think of a thing I hated more.” He closes his eyes. “My words didn’t kill me. My love didn’t kill me-” He shakes his head in a way you’d think his neck is broken. “My anger did.”

“I cannot be loved,” he tells me, curving his mouth someway. “An angry thing cannot be loved. In life or death. But if you ask me how I wish to be loved,” Tobias trails off, his voice raspy. “I’d tell you about how I’d love to forget my pain. I’d love to forget how selfish I was for taking my life too soon when my parents were just mourning Tom whom I killed. All I thought of was how I couldn’t handle my reality. I couldn’t care less about theirs. Their reality in which they’ve lost two sons in one go.”

And it all makes sense. How Tobias would be so worked up about how I decided to kill myself when my siblings care about me. I didn’t know what it meant to him.

We both keep to ourselves as Tobias blinks at the hopelessly starless sky and I count the number of petals the sunflower has.

Seventeen, almost-dead ones.

“I don’t know what to say,” I speak to the flower quietly.

“Nothing. I’m awful.”

I shut my eyes. “You were sick.”

“I had a fully functioning brain. There’s no excuse.”

“You didn’t mean it-”

Tobias lifts his brows, pouts. ”Or did I?”

I blink at him.

“Exactly,” he tells me. “I will never know. I was so angry, I could hardly decipher a thing. I just wanted to shut everyone up. Maybe I thought of killing them-”

“Okay, stop-” I say and he shakes his head.

“Not anything can excuse the atrocity of my action.”

“We all get intrusive thoughts like those sometimes,” I tell him. “I don’t think you’d mourn him almost thirty years later if you really meant it-”

“What if I did?”

“It’s just not you, Tobias-” I try to reason with him.

“My anger pushed me in a corner-”

“Your parents did-”

“It was me. It is me. It’ll always be me.”

I look up at him. He has his fingers in his hair and his eyes on the flower I was talking to. “I don’t think it matters,” I whisper. “We’re here and we’re sick. We did what we did and I’m sorry for all those who’ve suffered the consequences of our actions. But it’s too late. I don’t think me hating you now, because of a past that I played no part in matters. Now. Now, nothing matters.”

Tobias’ throat bobs up and down as he nods away.

“It won’t as much as change the way I look at you,” I tell him and he looks back at me with an absent frown of absolute distress.

"It won’t?”

“It won’t,” I tell his eyes solidly and he looks down. “It’s too late. Also-” I quickly tear up. “Also, I’m sorry I can’t love you in that way.”

He slowly looks up and it’s almost poetic how his eyes look like two moons pinned to his starkly pale countenance, floating about his dark clouds for eye circles. How they’re lost in this land of the dead, my eyes.

“I understand,” he lies.

“I would love you,” I sniff. “I would love you if things were different.”

“I understand.” He then goes for a smile that does little to ease the pain-soaked tears filling his eyes.

“It’s not you,” I say, knowing that I must look a mess. “I’d hate to love you when I can’t have you-”

“It’s okay,” he says softly and takes my hands in his, holds my eyes. ”It’s okay. Just don’t go away. Don’t go away now.”

I look at our hands. ”Sorry.”

“No, Roseline. Don’t be,” he tries to smile again. “Just don’t leave me, okay? Don’t think I’m a murderer, okay?”

I tilt my head a little. “Aren’t we all?”

“What?”

"Murderers?”

Tobias looks away.

I sigh heavily. “Don’t worry, Tobias.” I look at him, remove my hands from his and whisper, “I think you should get a haircut. There are lots of hairdressers here.”

Tobias looks at me distractedly, his hand absently touching his hair. “I should?”

I nod, holding onto the sunflower’s stalk. I roll it between my thumb and index finger, trying not to think about things I should think about, inventing new things to think about. “What do you reckon was this flower’s story?” I ask him irrelevantly.

Tobias glances at it, shrugs. “It’s wilted,” he clicks his tongue, trying to appear nonchalant. “Maybe it tells a couple’s story?” He holds my eyes. “A girl, Avril-”

“Avril?”

“Yes, with a french ′r′ Av-r-il.” I lift my brows and smile. “And a boy, Sebastien. Anyway,” Tobias waves a dismissing hand. “Sebastien asks Avril out for their thirteenth date and brings along a sunflower. He then orders Avril’s favourite desert-”

“Cinnamon rolls.”

"Yes,” Tobias’ eyes burn bright. “Poor thing doesn’t know that Avril has been planning to ditch his arse.”

“Ouch.”

“Yes, Rosey, ouch,” Tobias says. “Avril comes in a yellow dress, matching the sunflower’s petals, only to break his heart.”

“Why can’t it be the opposite?” I ask and Tobias shakes his head.

“No interruption, please,” he points out and I bite down a smile. “She breaks his heart and gets an audience. Sebastian gets really embarrassed when she leaves him heartbroken with the sunflower he solely picked for her-”

“From his grandma’s garden?”

“No, grandpa’s,” he says and I chuckle. “And with a plate of untouched Cinnamon rolls.”

“How come there’s only one plate?”

“Sebastian gets too nervous, he can’t eat.”

“How cute.”

“Yeah, but not to Avril. So, to act like whatever happened didn’t break him, he tries eating some of them. He fails anyway and leaves after two bites.” Tobias then smirks smugly. “I love my story.”

“I’m taking that sunflower,” I say. “In honour of Sebastian’s undeserved heartbreak.”

Tobias swiftly catches my eyes and smiles softly. My heart sighs. I look away, reach for the sunflower and bring it to my mouth.

“You’re beautiful tonight.”

I look at Tobias, softly clear my throat and lower the flower. “Are you talking to the flower?” I shake it a little and Tobias rests his cheek on his hand.

He looks at me like a poet looks at the moon, like an artist looks at sunset, like a man looks at his lover.

“Technically, yes. Rose.”

And maybe my cheeks are the size of the moon or the colour of the sunset or the tomatoes of a lover.

I blink at him and know I’m tearing up at the sheer effort of it all. The effort it takes not to fall for him.

“A haircut is in order,” I say instead and he continues to stare at me.

I almost panic when Benji jumps onto his laps, distracting him. He smiles, rubs Benji’s fur, plants a kiss atop his head, then says, “Yes. I just passed a salon. We should break in and steal a pair of scissors.”

But it seems like we’ve already run out of time to do such things.