Colorblind

by Siera Maley

It was the first time I could remember looking at someone’s eyes before their forehead.

There was something about her that made me comfortable in a way I wasn’t used to feeling. I’d heard before that sometimes two people could meet and instantly click: instantly know they’re going to get along. It was like that with her.

But everything had made me insecure back then. For a while, I’d been obsessed with being perfect. I’d thought that maybe if I was flawless, I’d live forever.

Loss is… it’s hard. But that’s no reason to cut yourself off from the rest of the world just because you’re scared to lose someone again.”

“Harper, people are not milk cartons,” Dad sighed out. “You don’t pick and choose the ones you think will last the longest without going sour. If it feels right, you just go with it until it doesn’t feel right anymore. And sometimes when something goes wrong, it hurts. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth it in the first place.”

but she was still a cute girl, and cute girls made me self-conscious.

so real

And I’ve never tried laser tag, but I bet I could be into it. I just wanna see everything.

aaah to be like chloe

“I watched a lot of Spongebob Squarepants as a kid. Must be why I have this strange urge to live in a pineapple under the sea.”

lmao

“So my options are death or inhumanely expensive ice cream?” She frowned. “Alright. Ice cream it is. But only ‘cause I brought money and you’re pretty.”

“San Fran’s not that exciting if you don’t let it be,”

My gut told me the way she was looking at me was a good thing, even if my head disagreed.

“Well, you could get a job you like,” she suggested. “It’s not that simple.” “It could be. You won’t know unless you try.”

Love was Robert Walker as soldier Joe Allen running after Judy Garland’s bus, calling out to her to meet him under a clock tower, or it was Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer swaying together in the moonlight, or Claudette Colbert tearfully telling Clark Gable that she couldn’t live without him. It was foreign: unattainable.

When I watched romances or read stories, I inserted myself into the main character’s dilemma. I was the piner: the one loving someone and waiting for them to love me back. But this was real life. And in real life, I was the love interest.

A dream honestly

“And my little dog, too,” she croaked. “Not really though. I was just quoting your movie. Sorry. I’m dumb. Okay, bye.”

This girl really is her own love languge and I'm so here for it

This is the present for us, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a present in the future. And in that future present, this is the past. The past can’t change, so everything’s already set in stone. Fate knows the future, so Fate knows its past, which is our present.”

“Is it a gay bar? I hope it’s not. I don’t want to meet other girls.”

“I have this theory,” Chloe began. “You have a lot of theories.” She ignored me and continued, “-that if I hit on you relentlessly enough, you’ll crack eventually. See, when guys do it, it’s creepy and gross, but I’m female and adorable and you actually like hanging out with me, so it’s okay.”

“Don’t get popcorn all over my bed, loser.” “Don’t stare at me when your favorite movie’s on, Romeo,” she bit back, unfazed. “So desperate. God.”

“No. I used to get nervous. Then one day I decided that was stupid. So now, whenever I start to hesitate, I just tell myself to not worry about the consequences, push past the nerves, and do whatever it was I almost didn’t.”

“Life’s all about mistakes. And it’s way too short to just wait around instead of cutting through the bullshit.”

I marveled at the fact that a girl like her could ever be interested in a girl like me. She lit up rooms when she walked into them, and I was the epitome of the shy, antisocial kid that sat alone in corners at parties.

“But it feels like… everything’s grey to you.” “Grey?” I echoed, confused. “Like the whole idea of going through life as we know it is just… ‘meh’.”

Have you ever considered the fact that maybe the goal of life isn’t to get through it as painlessly as possible?”

Life isn’t about the pain. It’s about the good parts. Think about it like… laser tag!” She brightened even as I forced a laugh. I could see the cheesy metaphor coming before she even began. “Like, I bet it’d be super easy to go a whole round without getting shot. You’d just have to hide in some corner where no one ever goes and sit there and do nothing. But that makes for a boring game of laser tag, and so no one does that, right? We all run around and put ourselves at risk so that maybe we’ll have some fun! See, life is like laser tag.”

“The thing is, I know what it’s like to get shot, and I’ve learned from it. I’m not letting it happen again. You’ve never been shot, so you don’t know how bad it feels.” “I don’t,” she admitted, but she was smiling now. “But I do know how fun it is to not hide in a corner all game.”

There are people you know and then people that know you, you know?”

“Chloe-” “Okay, sorry, no jokes. I’ll text you all day and call you a hundred times until the weekend comes, alright?” “Promise?” “Promise.”

like instead of being a fleeting streak of color in my black and white world, Chloe’d started a new era where I could see more than just a few different shades. I considered giving up old movies. I considered kissing her the next time I saw her.

“God, you’re beautiful,” she sighed out. “If I wasn’t so busy wanting you, I’d so want to be you.”

“Who’s worse: the crazy person or the person who likes the crazy person?”

“Me too,” I said simply and reached out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. I hoped she couldn’t see my hand trembling. I felt way too nervous for someone with a crush I knew was mutual.

“We should make sleeping side by side our thing,” she told me, her voice muffled by her sleeping bag. “Like, forever.” “I think they call that marriage,” I laughed, my voice a whisper. “I’m okay with that,” she mumbled sleepily. Her eyes fluttered shut, and I brushed my thumb back and forth along her cheek, just watching her.

“Throwing yourself into the past to avoid the present and future. That sounds healthy.” She shot me a sardonic smile. “Yeah, yeah,” I mumbled. “We all have our issues. I just want to be happy. Ignoring things makes me happy. Ignorance is bliss, right?”

If you want to be happy, it’s pretty simple: you do things that make you happy. If you don’t want to be unhappy, you’re cool with that safe, neutral, boring zone where nothing good or bad happens.”

“I think I turn off a lot of people. I say what I mean, I do what I like. I try not to waste my own time or anyone else’s.

Did you know that one of the biggest regrets dying people have is that they let other people dictate how they lived their lives?”

But being a conquest is only a bad thing if the person chasing is only chasing just to chase, right? I’m chasing you, so you’re a conquest. But I’m not chasing you just to chase.” She sighed. “I’m confusing myself. I think I said that correctly, though. Like… I want you. I’m not hiding that. But I’m not wanting you just to want something. As soon as we hung out and got ice cream that first day I knew you were someone I wanted to get to know.

“I, like, am really into you,” she told me. I nodded along, processing her words more slowly than usual. “Like, not even just in a kissing and sex kind of way… I mean, totally that way, but sometimes it’s like… if I could just, like, press up super close to you and just kind of merge and be this hybrid person I still don’t think I’d be as close as I wanna be.

“Chloe Stephens, I am so glad I met you.”

She’d owned all of my heart, and I’d let her have it.

But I think a big part of healing is coming to terms with the fact that it’s a part of life, and that while it does hurt, it doesn’t outweigh the good times we got to share with that person before their death.”

“It’s not so bad, is it? Hoping?” she asked me. “What’s life without something to hope for?”

There are people who love and care about you. There are experiences you’re going to have that you’re going to be glad you were around for. And yes, there are going to be things that’ll tear you up on the inside and make you wish you’d never been born. That’s a part of life.

Some people make themselves okay with it by believing that there’s a God with a plan, and that good people die because there’s something better waiting on the other side. For those of us who don’t believe that… We just have to learn to be okay.”

Bad things were inevitable. Death was inevitable. But maybe the reverse was true: that good things were equally inevitable. And maybe sometimes inevitability liked to take a back seat to second chances.