The rose and I were supposed to fetch the wind from Outram Park but we were late, having spent the day at the abandoned tracks and the bridge overlooking everything that usually swallowed us. We rushed to Dhoby Ghaut instead, where he was waiting and already starting to sulk. We were running late but he was thirsty, so he stopped me for a Boost.
Remember how the smallest things stick and the most insignificant mean a lot to me? Somehow I knocked over my smoothie and it flipped on the counter. The way he reacted still burns in my mind, and it almost reminded me of when he caught me whenever I fell.
He asked if he could try mine, and took a sip right out my straw. In front of his best friend, he wouldn't dare, pretending to be grossed out at the thought of sharing something with me. It's funny, the way he kept trying to hide.
I remember the conversations we had walking to Cathay, where his best friend was waiting. She says you're pretty and you deserve better, he casually said.
I picked the movie adaptation of a book I was just telling him about: The Girl With All The Gifts. Thinking about it now, it wasn't really his kind of movie and it was his birthday but he let me pick. Sometimes he degrades me with mean words but once in a while I catch a glimpse of his own willing kindness.
His twentieth birthday will somehow always be my favourite memory of him. Not anything from before, when feelings were none; not anything from after, when feelings were peaked. It was the underlying compassion and all that we'd gone through with or without each other.
Where he hid his face by my shoulder when somebody on the screen was about to get killed. Where I hooked my arm through his as we walked; where I slid around on my sneakers and he asked how old are you already. Where I went on about what really happened in the book that the film didn't include and he had all his attention on me.
We separated at the station, where he went home on his red line. His best friend was going back to his aunt's place at Eunos, so the two of us went on the Circle Line together.
Dhoby Ghaut, the only station with three lines. Where I realised that I was the girl with all the gifts she could ask for: an other half and a best friend who meant everything.
Next station: NS23
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