text: “Nomi, wait!” I remember calling, stumbling on tree roots and panting to catch up. “Shh!” She hissed, slowing down to take my hand and running only slightly ahead. The sun would set over the branches which seemed to lurch above us, as through reaching their spindly hands to grab us and drag us back. My eyes would blur from the pollen, but I’d pretend to be unfazed for Naomi. I stumbled again on a rock, and landed heavily on my knees, cutting open the one on the right. I can remember her widening eyes, the look of pity as she dabbed at the blood with a tissue as I caught sight of the bruises on her wrists as she did. The feel of the cold chill as the light settled into dusk, and the uncomfortable pinpricks of the branch we rest on that jabbed through my cargo shorts. I would stay rigidly still and let her put her head on my shoulder, even though my back would begin to ache and I’d long to go home, worried that my mother would wake and find me gone from my bed, which was lined with my brother’s old donkey bedsheets, so old that the eyes and teeth of the donkey were grey, but always washed and smelling of home. “Can Naomi stay for tea?” I’d plead with my mother, who would lean over the counter, peeling carrots to make the mince in the bolognaise go further. She couldn’t hide the fact that she adored Naomi, and let her stay often. I’d often catch her combing through her hair when my brother and I fought over leftovers, and wonder if she would have preferred a daughter. “What happened?” I asked, child-like inquisitiveness gripping me as I pressed my thumb onto her split lip, feeling its warmth and her body flinch from mine as I pulled it away. She’d push me aside and pretend as though she didn’t hear, snapping branches from trees for the roof of our den. The lightsaber duels made with those left over, with false ‘ whooshing ’ noises and splinters left in our palms. We’d hear a booming voice coming from Naomi’s side of the woods, slurred and angry, as it screamed her name. She froze in her place, rooted like the trees which surrounded us, obscuring the danger from the outside world. From a powerful Jedi to a terrified little girl. When we entered high school she stopped answering questions in lessons, and she’d sit so close beside me that I could smell the sweet strawberry scent of her hair conditioner. I found my eyes often fixated on the careful loops of her handwriting and the way her freckled hand would jolt when a teacher would raise their voice, or the bell rang at the end of lessons. At lunch we would hide away between shelves in the library and listen to music on my brother’s old mobile phone. She liked listening to the quieter songs, gentle piano music with strings in the background, and would listen with the volume all the way down, with just one earphone in the ear, which would always be on the same side that I would sit on. I preferred louder, rebellious songs that I’d listen to on full blast on the way home when she wasn’t with me. She liked being aware and alert at all times, and I liked being oblivious to the way that my brother spoke to my mum as he got older, the way he mistreated the girls he would bring back home, and the deep sighs that came from my mother each month as she read through the bills and had to resort to calling my dad to make ends meet. “One day,” she’d say half to me, half to herself, “we won’t need to ask him for anything ever again.” It all changed years later when we started growing. I knew I wanted Naomi in ways that I shouldn’t, couldn’t, ever tell her. When she spoke to me I would be transfixed on her mouth; the way it curved downwards when she’d struggle in lessons. The way she’d bite it worriedly when she needed to ask me for a pad, which my mother insisted I kept in my school bag for her, which I never understood why she didn’t just ask her dad for them. The way it would flicker up at one end when I touched her hand. Her eyes. The way she’d look at books with a concentration so careful that I’d started to believe that anything she focused on was direly important, and so fragile. I wanted her eyes on me, I wanted to press my lips, undeserving and chapped, against her perfectly sculpted ones. The way she looked at me drove me crazy, the way that she avoided the eyes of everyone’s but mine made me feel superior, like a king, like I had been given the greatest gift without having done anything to earn it. But of course, we were both growing. Other guys started noticing her too, and I’d feel sickened and angry when they’d corner her after lessons and ask to be kissed. I’d feel more sickened that she would let it happen, that she would stand there silently and let them put their disgusting mouths on her beautiful skin, not objecting or speaking, just closing her eyes tightly and letting it happen. Then one day a guy took it too far. Lucas Fletcher. He caught her in the lab after science, and made her wait until the class had emptied. I stayed outside the door for her to come out, gritting my teeth and wanting nothing more but to strangle Fletcher. Then I heard her scream. I pushed the door open with such a force that it chipped the paint on the wall, a protective fury which seemed to make my blood set. She cowered against the wall, knees up to her chest and arms curled protectively around her head, breathing heavily and unsteadily through the sobs that shook her entire body. I looked accusingly at Fletcher who seemed just as dazed as me. “You.” The growl had come from a place of anger and jealousy which I didn’t think I was capable of, and I had lost control over everything. I can remember Mr Riley, a chubby dad-like physics teacher, prising my hands from Fletcher’s throat, pulling my arms behind my back, leaving dark purple marks around Fletcher’s skin that looked like vile hickeys left by a sociopath. “Stop. That’s enough. That’s enough now.” Fletcher never went near me, or Naomi, again. I remember walking through the school hallways, and hearing jeering comments of ‘freak’. But in all honesty, I felt triumphant that people were beginning to recognise me. I felt Nomi jolting at the accusations, and soon realised that these comments were not aimed at me. I was just another violent boy, fighting over his feelings for a girl that everyone knew I was in love with. Boys get in fights on the daily, there was nothing special or unusual about my outburst. But girls don’t scream and cower on the floor after being kissed. As it stood, Fletcher was adamant that all he had done was kiss her, she didn’t stop him, as usual, so he thought she liked it. He had pushed her to a wall and put his hand around her left thigh, and then was pushed back by a manic, screaming girl, who sank onto the floor and struggled to catch her breath, and was then startled again by some guy he didn’t know lunging for his neck. Naomi refused to talk about what had happened. Unsure of what to do, the school had contacted the authorities, who had been calm and patient with Naomi, and had advised her to speak to the school councillor. She didn’t come to school for 3 weeks after that. She had stayed at our house later that year when her dad was finally arrested. We spent days playing video games, her head resting on my lap facing the screen, the blue lights whirling around the room and illuminating the dark shadows beneath her eyes. I crept upstairs one night from the couch, wide awake, knowing that she would be too. I opened the door softly, wondering if I would be able to get away with resting beside her, just for tonight. I craved the scent of her strawberry conditioner, and I wanted desperately to have her fall asleep with her head rested on my shoulder, the way that she did when we were younger. But to my surprise, I found that my bed was empty. The duvet was still tucked neatly, as though untouched. I found her asleep in my mother’s room, tucked under my mum’s protective arm, their foreheads resting against one another. I walked in uncertainly, and moved the duvet upwards to cover their shoulders. Never before had I seen Naomi wear just a t-shirt, and never had I seen so many deep bruises and scars on the skin of just two people. She asked me months ago now, if I could be the one to give her away at her wedding. She could think of no one else as perfect for the job as me. I tried to think of reasons not to, but none of them fit the same way that the truth did. What could I say? ‘ I can’t do that, Nomi. I love you. I’ve been in love with you since the first time you put your head on my shoulder and told me that I was your best friend. I can’t do this, Naomi, I can’t. This is going to break me .’ I told her that I would do it, of course I would, I’d do anything for her. It took me a while to compose myself at the sight of her in her wedding dress. The way the lace sleeves wrapped delicately around her freckled arms, and the neckline which drew attention to her sharp collar and the beautiful necklace my mother had given her before the wedding, which had once been hers. Naomi tried to gently prise my hands from my face as I wept into them. I looked up at her soft smile and stared at her hazel eyes desperately, and reached for her hand, feeling the room freeze momentarily. We said nothing, but I felt that I had been stripped bare, all secrets left out in the open. I moved my hand towards her face, and she leaned in trustingly without a second thought to let me adjust the veil as the music started. I watched as people stood while we walked in, taking each step more reluctantly than the last, holding on to the feel of her arm looped perfectly around mine. I couldn’t focus on anything but the way she smiled uncertainly, and the way it felt like there would be nothing left once we reached the end of the aisle. She unlooped her arm from mine, and I wanted to hold on to it, to ask her to stay a little longer, stay mine for just a moment more, but I couldn’t, and she was not mine. She never was. I let her go and stepped backwards, holding on to the sight of her holding her bouquet too tightly, and stepping into another man’s arms. I knew that I had to let her go, but still found my heart breaking in the most brutal and cliché way possible as she looked at his inexpressive face and dry eyes, and flinched at his hand which shifted towards her when he moved her veil.