Like a Citrus

Noel

Every autumn the citrus trees along the road surrounding the town hall would bear magnificent fruits and fill the whole neighbourhood with a refreshing scent. This year was no exception.

The orchestra practice was over and I stood in the lobby of the city hall, clutching my viola. I was ready to leave, but the cold wind would start stabbing me in my gut once I go out, so I embraced the sunshine that beamed its way through the windows for this minute.

Then my sight scanned through him.

I shook my head and closed my eyes, continuing my walk to the exit in hope to take him out of my mind.

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Ian

I stepped into the lobby of the town hall and almost yelled. Out of instinct I lowered my head.

He was there.

I shrugged I carried the basketball into the gymnasium, but a loud 'bang' coming from the lobby froze me on my track. I turned, to watch in horror, him slumping onto the ground with his viola.

I hurried forwards and realized that his eyebrows knitted to from wrinkles, his pale hue blanched. He attempted to sit, but without enough momentum he fell backwards again.

"Stop." I called, and immediately I regretted. Did I sound too harsh? Too insensitive?

He did not seem to mind, possibly since he was in no shape to notice anything. Sweat beaded on his forehead.

I produced my phone from my pocket and dialed the emergency number.

I wanted to say something reassuring, but no matter how I phrased a sentence it seemed awkward to appear in a conversation between two strangers.

I smiled bitterly. I wished we were not only strangers, but given how mum and dad had wanted a grandchild...

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Noel

I imagined my family doctor, a small lady in her sixties, chiding me," I told you to rest more. Now you are making such a huge mess of yourself in front of him!"

Well, she wouldn't have known about that last part. She wouldn't have known the reason I didn't rest.

I couldn't rest at all.

Because every time I closed my eyes his face surfaced, and then tears would flow out once I remembered the Bible sitting next to my head. The way his face shattered when different voices invaded my mind always twisted my heart into knots.

That pain seemed to support me with a kind of energy derived from sadness, and I was conscious of the temperature, the environment again.

I tried to see whose face was hovering over mine, yet I didn't need to. I was so familiar with how he combed his hair to his left and how several little strands refused to obey and swayed around his right ear.

"Err... are you... Noel?" I heard him saying.

Still feeling dizzy I nodded, but surely I looked like someone in a coma.

"I know a little bit of first aid. Would you mind me... erhm... help you get up or something? That's gonna help," he pointed at the phone and shrugged, "and they suggested that as well."

"Al...alright." I managed. Of course I knew him being a first-aider when all of this started.

And he closed in, his hands supporting my back. His body was so awfully close to me that his arm touched mine. I was aware of the warmth and the heat radiating from him when I attempted to sit.

God. He was so close.

Then everything went black.

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Ian

I steadied my breath. He was leaning on me to remain in a sitting position.

And to paraphrase, that would become he leaned on me, and that sounded...

So appealing, but so... impossible. I shook my head. That was never going to happen. To him I was just a stranger who knew a little bit of first aid and happened to exist there at that very moment.

But simply not being strangers was not the exact type of relationship status I had wished. Not even close.

The siren of an ambulance went louder and louder, so I glanced at the entrance, only to realize my own teammates from the court and his friends from the orchestra all gathering around, all confused, embarrassed. From their faces I could detect a tinge of...

Disgust.

The ambulance should park at the entrance anytime soon, but their stares were like icicles, cold and hard, ready to impale.

I needed to escape. To anywhere I couldn't have cared less as long as I could leave.

One of Noel's friends coughed and woke me from my daze. "Who are you... erhm... and why...?"

I had tried so hard to conceal my true self. In front of everyone else I pretended to be normal. I chimed in whenever my mates chatted about girls. I avoided discussing related social issues.

And now all was lost. The mask I had spent so long craft broke into shards of useless clay.

I felt my face becoming increasingly red and hot. The siren still sounded distant, leaving me with only two choices: either to run, or to explain.

And to admit.

Why not? I thought. We are moving anyway. Precisely tomorrow noon, our whole family would be moving to another town in a completely different part of the country.

I exhaled, "Nice to meet you."

Then my throat felt vocally locked. I could feel my eyes slowly filled with boiling liquid. A sharp twinge scorched my nostrils. Telling the truth should be easy if the suitable time had came, I had thought, because it would always be the truth, but in reality it was so hard. It was exceptionally and spectacularly hard when I was not ready at all.

"I am Ian," I smiled at them, trying my best to not bit my lips, "and I like Noel."

My friends dropping their jaws. The musicians mouthed something like 'Seriously?' and 'That is not good.'

Honestly I expected all of these, but listening to people giving these actual responses broke my heart. I lowered my head. Noel was still lying, motionless, and possibly not knowing any of this.

The ambulance rescued me. The crew took Noel, still unconscious, onto the ambulance. Before that, though, I rushed out of the town hall and raced through those citruses. The stinging winds pierced my skin as I refused to think anymore, but I managed to catch a taxi.

"Follow that ambulance, please," I pointed at the one Noel was on.

The driver obliged and sped.

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Noel

Bit by bit I opened my eyes and a white clean ceiling appeared. Then I realized I was lying on a bed in a hospital. I struggled to sit, and realized that my mother, who was dozing off on a chair held my hand tightly.

"Mum."

Instantly she woke. "Thank God!" She closed in for a hug. "You were in a coma for like- 20 hours."

I wasn't exactly startled. This was not the first time, since I had been an anaemia patient for these six years.

"The doctor told us that you had quite an irregular heartbeat yesterday. And I thought..." She exhaled, "At least you are safe now."

I smiled weakly, but something nagged at the back of my head.

Yesterday...

"Ian." I blurted out.

My mum eyed me suspiciously. "Who's Ian?"

I swallowed as I recognized a cross pendant on her necklace today. Rather seldom I would be so careless in front of my mum. She deciphered messages related to my social life seriously, and I did want to keep my secret. She wouldn't be pleased if she grasped the whole truth.

A doctor carrying a stack of notes just walked by, and I assumed he was the one responsible for my case.

"You mean your friend?" He stopped in front of my bed and asked.

My friend?

"He was here yesterday?"

"Uh...yeah. He sat there," he pointed at the chair my mother was on, "until six." He paused and scribbled something on his notepad. "Then your mother came."

All in a sudden I wanted to cry. Perhaps my nightmares of his image shattering could be rewritten into a better dream which I had never had the luxury to own one. A friend as a start. That would be nice.

But why?

My heart cooled down immediately. Being a responsible first-aider he was obliged to make sure the patient is in safe hands. I recalled him telling the junior in his first aid team that day. That was probably why I noticed him.

"Thank you." I told the doctor, who hurried away to take care of another patient.

My mother frowned and asked again. "Who's Ian?"

"Another friend of mine."

"You do have a lot of male friends. Get yourself some female ones." She laughed, but seeing me shaky and unstable, she stopped and handed me a wedge of orange.

"Bought from that usual store in the market. Some of the earliest to ripe this year."

I munched. The fact that I could see him again next week reenergized me, and I smiled.

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Ian

The car rocked on the road. Plains surrounded us, and there were nothing worth paying attention to, so I scrolled my phone's photo album instead.

November 5th, October 5th... June 5th.

June 5th, when I first met him.

Panic rose from my heart. I was just scrolling unconsciously, and on this day I ended up with. Yet an hour before that I vowed to forget him forever, just like how I left my basketball in that court, and how I left my whole old life behind. I had pulled out the sim card from my phone, waiting for a new one from the town we were moving to. I deleted all my accounts of facebook, instagram, snapchat... everything.

It all hurt so much.

I put down my phone and tried my luck for better views outside the window. No such luck, obviously.

"What's the matter? Your eyes are red. Missing your mates already?" My dad glanced backwards from the shotgun seat.

"That's not weird. My buddy grew up there." My nephew, who volunteered to take turns driving with my dad, spoke as he stared at the plains outside the car.

"I guess you're right." My dad shrugged.

My mum was sleeping, and she wouldn't be letting the matter dissolve this soon.

"Hey, buddy," my nephew called again. "There's a citrus plantation nearby. Wanna stop there?"

"Yeah." The mention of citruses made my mouth dry. That smell in front of the town hall...

Soon we arrived and parked. I hopped from the car onto the soft earth. The smell reminded me so much of the days I spent to grasp a chance to see Noel.

"Who's Noel?" My dad asked.

I slapped myself mentally. I should not have muttered his name so often.

"A friend of mine."

"You really could use some girl," He paused and winked, "friends." Then he got off the car and walked to the plantation's store for a drink.

I followed him, and the storekeeper in her seventies who seemed to be the farmer's wife, greeted me as I watched intently the oranges in display.

"Are they for sale?" I thought they would be excellent memoirs of my life phase that would pass soon because these looked just like those planted outside the town hall.

"I am sorry, but these are just models for display. The real ones aren't going to ripen yet."

Honestly models would be better because they were not going to rot.

"That's okay. I am not eating them anyway. How much do they cost?"

"Well... they are not for sale..." she look puzzled. "Why would you want them in the first place?"

"We are moving out of the town, and..." I stopped, because I sensed some hot liquid swirling in my eyes.

The real ones aren't going to ripen yet. Just like what I imagined between us.

"I see then. Must not be a good experience moving, eh? Half a dollar for each, but you could have it cheaper if you wish."

"I will have two, please." I handed a dollar to her.

"Thank you." She smiled, but I hurried back on to the car, because I didn't want to her to see me crying. I just couldn't hold it anymore.

Remembering that I could never meet him again, hot tears dropped onto my T-shirt.

Note: Check out Two Spectrums, the first story of the whole arch in the same file if you have time. :)