“Is that your question?” I stammered, lost in all his words.
“Yes.” He exhaled. “That’s my final question.”
Turning to face him, his eyes filled with hope and wonder, but his absent smile expected the inescapable truth. We both knew there wasn’t anything inside me to open up, an empty shell. So, what exactly did I have to lose?
And, so, it was there, in the middle of the romance section of the maze-like library at Dolor University outside of Guildford in the United Kingdom where I decided I was willing to show him I was nothing more than a hollow soul. “I will only disappoint you.”
“I doubt it.”
“And I’m difficult,” I warned.
“Good.” Ollie grinned. “I wasn’t expecting anything less, Mia. I’m only asking you to knock down a wall. Not even a wall—fuck, carve me out a door. I only want to know you.” He grabbed my hand, and a calmness washed over me.
I didn’t have the tools to destroy a wall, let alone carve out a door. The barriers had endured ten years. Tough and sturdy and placed for a reason. Each one had a purpose, and even though I’d forgotten why they stood there in the first place, I was scared what would happen if I started carving out holes. The walls became my friends—they were safe. But I nodded, anyway, because the small glimmer of hope in his eyes spread like an infection.
“And to clarify, no, I’ve never seen The Notebook, and I don’t plan on it, either.”
Ollie threw his head back and a raspy laugh echoed in our maze.
A laugh I had quickly grown to adore.
We lost track of time as we lay across the floor with our heads side by side and our feet in opposite directions, staring up at the tower of books as if they were stars. The multi-colored binders scattered in no particular pattern.
If I concentrated hard enough, I could make out different shapes. If I stared long enough without blinking, it looked as if the colors slowly moved. All I had to do was close my eyes for three seconds, and when I opened them again, my palette refreshed under a new set of eyes.
“What is on your mind this very moment?” Ollie asked as he pulled a hand behind his head.
I smiled. “All the words floating around in this room. It’s crazy to think we’re lying here in a library, surrounded by stories that have gone through people’s heads first. This aisle alone is completely made up of characters and worlds that have been thought of first, and now exist.” I lifted my hand above our heads and gestured around us in amazement. “All around us are moments of death, tragedy, first kisses, last kisses, moments of weaknesses, intimacy, and tears cried … and I can’t help but think I will never be able to know or possibly understand any of those feelings.”
“You’ve never cried?”
“I’m sure I cried when I was a little girl, but I don’t remember what it felt like.” I turned on my side to face him as he stared up at the ceiling. “What about you?”
“You’re asking if I have cried? What kind of question is that?” he asked with hilarity in his tone. His eyes slid to mine, and I nodded in all seriousness. “I’m known to shed tears, but only on Mondays and Wednesdays.”
I shoved him playfully in the shoulder. “Ollie, be real. Tell me about it. How does it feel?”
“Alright, alright. No need to get physical.” Ollie turned on his side to face me and held up his head in the palm of his hand. “There are two types of crying,” he said, then paused. He pressed out a laugh as he brought his fingers to his eyes. “Wow, shit’s about to get real right now, yeah?”
He regained composure and looked back at me. “Okay, so there’s the kind from pain, not necessarily physical pain because there’s that, too, and as much as everyone says they’re the same, it’s not. So, I’ll go over the worst, which is emotional pain. It starts right here”—he pointed to my lungs—”and suddenly you can’t breathe, like a blow to the stomach, and whatever source brought this on stole all the air around you. Panic sets in …”
His fingers inched from my lungs to my chest, and I wondered if he felt the beating beneath his fingers. “An ache forms in your heart so intense, you’d rather suffer a hundred deaths than to last one more second of agony. Your heart pumps and you feel the burn as it struggles because pieces that once belonged are now missing.”
Ollie’s moved my hair behind my ear before gentle pressing his fingers over my temple. “And when you think it couldn’t get any worse, your head is pounding now, deprived of oxygen and the appropriate amount of blood flow. Nothing and everything is flooding through your mind all at once. And right as the thunder rolls in your head, the lightning crashes behind your eyes. Electricity, stinging and begging to be released, and the best thing to do is stop fighting it. If you hold back tears, Mia, the pain builds up in your heart, and your heart is only so forgiving for so long.”
Ollie rested his palm over the side of my face. I opened my mouth to say something, but no words formed. I wanted to ask him if he’d ever felt like that before, but he had if he remembered it all so vividly. So vividly, it couldn’t have been once he’d experienced that kind of emotional pain. How many times had his tall and strong man been broken down to only be pieced back together to go through the same torment all over again? Did I care enough to find out?
“The beautiful kind is when you don’t even realize it’s happening,” he continued to say. “You’re not fighting it because your soul is finally at peace with what is happening, and that’s when you know …”
“Know what?” I blurted as I hung on to his every beautiful word.
Ollie grinned. “You felt something so powerful, you can no longer be without it.”
We spent the rest of the morning talking and playing in the library, stuck in the fever of us. We ran through the history section, each stride crossing decades of battles, wars, and freedom fought for. Ollie tackled me in the children’s section and carried me over his shoulder through crime and thriller. I escaped his grasp in mystery, but he caught up in romance as our smiles gradually faded. The mood between us changed along with the genre, as he took a step closer—our feet walking through traitorous waters, and our hearts playing with fire. I pushed off him and ran, and when I looked behind me, Ollie smiled before chasing after me once again.
And up until the lunch, I had forgotten we were here at all.
“Will you come by tonight?” Ollie asked before we reached the mess hall.
I lifted my cast in the air. “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t make it up the vent with a broken hand.”
“That’s right. And tell me … why did you punch the wall?”
“Because you kissed me,” I said with a single shrug.