Seeing his forlorn face, Vera couldn’t help but extend an hand to pat his shoulder. She had thought this would be an all-out war where she would pour out the bitterness that had been festering within her for the past week, but she had felt it slowly dissipate and get replaced by a feeling of longing. As if she wanted to get this over with as soon as she could so that they could go back to being how they had been all their lives. It wasn’t as if she didn’t feel bad at being ignored that day anymore, but hearing the earnestness in Daniel’s voice made her heart wrench - it was as if she had somehow ended up getting ignored because it was her fault. Her fault for not figuring out sooner that something was wrong. Her fault for not paying enough attention.
As he talked about the night, her eyes threatened to well up with tears but she restrained herself with tremendous willpower. She hadn’t seen him like this since he had lost his mother. If she thought about it carefully, that was the time when things went south. From friends who shared every little thing with each other, they had graduated into a strange limbo - where on the surface they were friends as close as ever, meeting every other day for lunch and partying till the wee hours whenever they felt like, but there was a sense of unease. As if something had gone horribly wrong but they were too scared to talk about it - as if talking about it would make it somehow real and they’d rather live in their Eden of belonging crafted from childhood memories where nothing ever went wrong. If she was honest with herself, the first instance of not being completely honest was her fault. The time when they were 14 and she had called Daniel to pick her up from the last protest she was ever a part of, she hadn’t known how to talk about it. She didn’t know how to explain what had happened to her so she had ignored it, simply stating she had had a fight with some of them. Difference of ideology, she’d said. She didn’t know if Daniel had believed her then, but she knew for a fact that she didn’t believe him now. There was something else, maybe something with his father that he wasn’t telling her about but for the life of her she couldn’t figure out what it was. Sure, Mr. Choi had never been particularly warm, she had noticed that right from their childhood, but it had never mattered, his mum was the nicest person Vera had ever met and she still felt it was her death that Daniel had still not been able to process. It was all conjecture of course. It helped to keep her mind racing so she wouldn’t blame herself completely for their downfall.
She shook her head furiously, “You never have to pretend with us, Daniel. You should’ve just told us and none of us would’ve attended that play. It was trash anyway,” She tried to lighten the mood a little, but it was a half-hearted attempt that fell flat. She clasped his face in her hands and looked at him minutely, “But darling you don’t need to. You don’t need to handle this all on your own, you know that right?” Shaking her curls furiously she said, “No no, stop saying sorry. I am sorry that I didn’t realise this sooner. I should’ve talked to you, I should’ve known something was wrong.” Once again her eyes started stinging but this time she couldn’t bear to hold it back. A single tear fell on her sleeve as she hastily hugged him, hoping he hadn’t seen anything, “Hey, hey,” she said softly, “That was all just talk. You’re never going to lose me. I won’t let you.” She stroked his head gently, feeling his head on her shoulder made her inexplicably happy for some reason. She felt a strange surge of joy she hadn’t felt in weeks she couldn’t help smiling a little as she said, “Still, you do have to make it up to Florian and me, you know. We are not going to let you off easy!” But she quickly snapped back. Pulling back slightly, she looked at him seriously, “You can tell me what’s wrong in your own time Daniel, nothing you could ever say would make me love you less. Ever.”
A small weak laugh fell from Daniel’s lips at Vera’s attempt to lighten the situation, and he felt so overwhelmed with both gratitude and guilt that his vision began to blur as tears welled in his eyes. Leave it to Vera to try and make him feel better after what he did to her. So many times, people had teased him about his closeness to Vera. He always wondered why they never questioned his closeness to Florian when the differences between the two was as noticeable as the blue in the sky, and people always suggested that there was something more between him and Vera-- something other than a lifetime of friendship and unconditional, unwavering love. His grandfather had suggested once when he was about thirteen or fourteen that Vera would make a good match for him. She came from a good family, after all, and he had known Vera’s grandfather for a very long time, too. Daniel thought the comment was ridiculous, never once considering the girl who he always regarded with so much fondness to be someone he would want for a wife-- then again, at thirteen, Daniel didn’t have thoughts about who or what he wanted for a wife. It wasn’t years later until he understood what everyone was saying. When her smiles began to incite a foreign feeling in his chest; when long, phone calls ending made him miss her terribly; when he was always longing to see her whenever they were apart. His feelings for her had grown into something else, but it didn’t take too long for him to realize she didn’t feel the same. He should have been heartbroken, but Daniel was content with loving Vera the way he loved her, and if he could do that for the rest of his life without the fear of losing her, then he didn’t see a need to let her in on how he really felt. Which was why he was so, so terrified of losing her. She was the one constant in his life, and with so very little of that, he always clung to her desperately.
He leaned in to her touch, his right hand gently touching hers on his cheek. It should have comforted him that she was forgiving him now, and as Daniel met her gaze through cloudy vision, he wanted to break down and tell her about the truth about his father, about being an Arsonist-- all of it. And the fact that he couldn’t... “No, it’s not your fault, Vera. It’s mine. You-- You’ve always been the best out of all of us. I’m sorry.” I’m sorry I’m weak, he thought but didn’t have the courage to say; simply embraced her as he swallowed a sob that threatened to escape from his lips. He found it was useless to fight the tears, however, as they spilled anyway, running down his cheeks as he held onto her. After the death of his mother, and what with his father being the way that he was, Daniel began to depend on his two best friends even more than before without him even realizing it. But after the truth that his father dropped on his lap like a bomb, destroying what he thought was his life without him being able to do anything about it, he began to question so many things-- including who he was, and he was so afraid of finding out and losing Florian and Vera in the process. So began his living in constant denial; in pretending that everything was fine. But hiding the truth had its way of messing up Daniel’s life, even if he tried to hold it together. His innate want to belong became even stronger, and his life became an even bigger mess before he knew it. He wanted to tell Vera all of that, but didn’t know how, so he simply held tighter, only pulling back when she did.
Daniel used the sleeve of his sweater to wipe his tear-stained cheek-- never one to be afraid to cry in front of the person who’d seen him break down over the death of his mother-- and chuckled softly once again, nodding his head as he said, “I’ll do what it takes, I promise.” Daniel looked at her, and as he met her gaze, his chest felt heavy at the sight of her glistening eyes. He touched her cheek gently, thumb moving over the stain her tear had left. “I’ll do better by you,” he said, his voice quiet. “Things will be better, I promise. We’ll have that grand time in college that we always talk about.” She shouldn’t be crying for him, or because of him. She deserved better than that-- than him. And yet, Daniel would be damned before he would ever think of giving Vera up.
