In a world full of vibrant hues, I had always been blue. I was the blue rose of my mom's love story-a fleeting chapter in her life written in impulsive ink. There was no father in my story, just the whispered memories of a summer romance that left more questions than answers.

As a child, I was the one who cried rivers when I was lonely, which was often. The sky, the ocean, the melancholy of twilight-blue in many ways than one. My earliest years were a blur of quiet nights, the smell of lavender and cigarettes, and the soft sound of my mother's lullabies, songs she seemed to sing more for herself than for me. But that chapter ended quickly, with her struggling to raise me alone. By the time I was five, I found myself in an orphanage, a place meant to fill the gaps left by absent parents.

The orphanage was a world of its own, a microcosm of broken dreams and stitched-together hopes. The building was old, its walls worn by the passage of countless children who had come and gone, their stories leaving imprints that no amount of paint could cover. Life there was... manageable. I made friends, the kind that shared secrets and dreams late into the night, hidden under the covers with flashlights and whispered voices. There was Lisa, who always knew how to make me laugh, and Jamie, who could make up stories about faraway lands where everything was perfect, where no one ever had to be alone.

I was good at ballet. My feet found solace in the rhythm, in the way my body could move freely, untethered by the weight of the world outside the dance studio. Ballet became my escape, a place where I could be something more than just a quiet boy in an orphanage. My first love was in those mirrored walls-a girl with dark hair and a laugh that sounded like music. We were young, barely teenagers, and our affection for each other was innocent, pure. But it was brief, just like everything else in my life then.

The owner of the orphanage was kind, an older woman who had taken care of so many children over the years. But she fell ill, her health deteriorating like the crumbling paint on the orphanage walls. The uncertainty of her condition seeped into the lives of every child under her care, including mine. I was too young to be on my own, yet too old to be adopted easily. The future, once a hazy dream, became a looming shadow.

Eventually, I was sent back to live with my mother. She was not the person I remembered. The woman who sang lullabies and held me close was gone, replaced by someone I barely recognised. She had turned to alcohol, her days a blur of bottles and bitter words. We moved to a different country, a fresh start, she said, though I knew better. It was not a start, but an escape. I had to work part-time jobs to help make ends meet, balancing school with the constant worry of whether there would be food on the table when I got home.

Ballet became a distant memory, something I could no longer afford to indulge in. The studio where I once felt weightless was replaced by the cold reality of late shifts at a local diner, my feet aching not from pirouettes but from hours of standing.

I cried often-alone in our small, dingy apartment, the walls too thin to keep out the noise of the city or the sound of my mother's drunken rants. The nights were long and cold, the weight of the world pressing down on my small shoulders.

I still loved her, despite everything. She was my mother, and I wanted to protect her, to save her from herself. So, I did everything I could, even when it broke me, even when I had nothing left to give.

But she didn't want to be saved. One day, she left, choosing a man over me, abandoning me just as I turned eighteen. The irony wasn't lost on me-an adult in the eyes of the law, yet more lost and broken than I had ever been as a child.

She had left a note, a brief explanation scribbled on the back of a receipt. I read it over and over, trying to understand, to make sense of it, but the words blurred together, just like the tears that fell onto the paper.

***************

"I didn't raise you to be a server."

My mother sat across from me, her polished nails tapping impatiently against the pristine surface of the café table-the same table where I had served countless customers with a smile I never felt. She had finally found me. Despite my best attempt in running away from her.

"What will people say when they find out? What would it make of your dad's status?" She continued, her voice low but laced with a disappointment that cut deeper than any shout could.

My dad? Status? Funny. I wasn't born to him, nor to his status. I was born to your tainted dignity. I wanted to shout those words, to let them crash into her like the waves of resentment I had held back for so long. But instead, I bit my tongue, the familiar taste of bitterness rising in my throat.

She looked out of place here, her designer coat and expensive jewellery clashing with the warmth and simplicity of the space. The café, my sanctuary of sorts, felt smaller with her in it, the walls closing in as her presence suffocated the air.

"Come back home."

"I'm not going back to Paris," I said, trying to keep my voice steady as I felt my resolve waver. Calm down, Ahen. She's still your mother.

"Not Paris. We're settled here in Atlanta now," she corrected, her tone almost casual, as if that made everything right. She had some nerve.

"I'm old enough to take care of myself. You missed that chance to raise me, Mom." This conversation was going nowhere. We were going nowhere. I stood from the table, ready to walk away. "I wish you all the best in your life."

"I did what I had to do. For both of us." She called after me, still so calm even in the midst of a storm.

"No," I said, the word sharper than I intended. "You did what you had to do for yourself."

The silence between us was thick, heavy with the weight of words unsaid, of years lost to unspoken pain. She looked at me, really looked at me for the first time since she had walked back into my life, and I saw a flicker of something in her eyes-regret, maybe, or guilt. But it was fleeting, quickly replaced by the mask she always wore, the one that made her seem untouchable, invulnerable.

"You're throwing your life away," she said softly, as if the gentleness of her tone could somehow soften the blow of her words. "Working here, living in that tiny apartment... This isn't the life I wanted for you."

"It's the life I have," I replied, my voice steady, even though inside I was anything but. "And it's mine. Not yours."

She sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to carry the weight of all her disappointments. "Your father wants to help. He can give you opportunities, connections-"

"Stop calling him that," I interrupted, the words tumbling out before I could stop them. "He's not my father. He's just the man you married."

Her eyes flashed with anger, and for a moment, I thought she might lash out, might finally let all the pent-up frustration spill over. But she didn't. Instead, she took a deep breath, composing herself before speaking again. "I'm not asking you to love him. I'm asking you to think about your future."

"My future?" I laughed, a bitter sound that felt foreign in my mouth. "You mean the future where I do everything you want? Where I follow your plan, live your life?"

I didn't want more. At least, not her version of it. The life she described-polished, controlled, suffocating-was the opposite of what I wanted. I had spent too many years trying to fit into the mould she had cast for me, too many nights crying into pillows, wondering why I wasn't enough, why I couldn't be the son she wanted.

"I know you loved ballet," she said, her voice almost pleading. "Timothy owns the well-known art university in town."

I scoffed, unable to believe my ears. "Is this how you make your way in life? Bribing? What else have you sacrificed in your game?"

"Don't throw your life away just to spite me." She stared at me, her expression unreadable. She reached out, grabbing my wrist. I looked down at her hand, at the perfectly manicured nails that held me in place, and then back up at her face.

"Please," she said, and for the first time, her voice broke.

***************

I knew I lost. Yet again. I lost in her game. But I didn't see that I was losing you, too. You were so far-yet so close.

Just a fortnight and suddenly, I was the son of the owner of the University of Ravenwood, which you worked so hard to get into. We sat in the same class; I danced to your music again and again.
So close, yet so far.

In black and white, I was blue.

Before you, I was like the gentle ache of unspoken desires, like the calm before a storm, like the endless sky that holds secrets in its vastness. I had always loved people who could never love me back. I had spent my life watching the people I cared about leave. 

Even when the world was at its brightest, I could only see it through a filter of sorrow and longing. No matter how hard I had tried to change it, to find another hue to paint my life with, I would always return to blue. 

And, falling in love with you, I was blue in a new way — blue like the clear sky on a crisp morning, like the calm waters that reflect the serenity of the world, like the soft glow of moonlight on a tranquil night.

I went back to my mother's apartment, and everything had changed. Now I slept in an actual bed-not a straw mat or a shabby mattress that seemed to come apart a little more each night I used it. My room was spacious, filled with the scent of lavender and sandalwood.

I bathed in a hot tub with a view of the city lights through a glass window. My mum still hadn't learned how to cook, even after all those years, but we always had food on the table.

Most importantly, I now had a 'father'-a man with money, power, and a name that meant something in this world.

I hated him.

Not because he was cruel, he was actually so mice to me, looking after me like I was his own. But he was everything I had been taught to despise -- arrogant, self-assured, and indifferent to the struggles of those beneath him.

But he offered me something I had never had before: a chance. A chance to reclaim the dreams that had been stripped away, a chance to become the dancer I had always wanted to be.

I wasn't the boy who danced for the love of it anymore. I was living someone else's life, my mother's life, playing a role in a script I hadn't written. Every day, I dressed in the clothes my stepfather bought for me, clothes that were too stiff, too perfect, too unlike me. I walked with a straight back and an air of confidence that wasn't mine, pretending to be someone who belonged in this world of wealth and privilege.

I was too much of a coward, too desperate to chase a dream that had slipped through my fingers too many times. So I chose myself. How selfish of me. How terribly, unforgivably selfish.
It was wrong, and I knew it. It was just a bribe, a dirty exchange for the freedom I had once craved.

I knew it was new to your eyes. New as in absurd. Weird. An absolute joke. But you never word a thing. Maybe you made it to distinguish between me from my hollow shell. You did your best to piece me together, bridge the distance that stretched between us because of my selfishness, to a point we both forgot that it was there. You made it a habit to make me forget that it was very much there. 

Those moments with you were my only solace and you made them into the  sweetest habit—the kind of habit that becomes a cherished routine, a comfort of life.

You had the habit of bringing me flowers, delicate blooms that seemed to echo the tender feelings you'd nurtured within me. The habit of the afternoons we spent riding down to the lake, where the world seemed to slow down, the only sound being the gentle lapping of water against the shore.

Or the habit of you dragging me to the library, your eyes lighting up with excitement as you discovered another book to show me.

You'd insist I should read more often, that the stories hidden within those pages were worth my time. I would nod, half-listening. I was always content to simply watch you lose yourself among the shelves, tracing the spines of old volumes with a reverence that was almost holy. There was something about the way you got lost in those pages that made me want to get lost in you.

Sometimes, I'd catch you watching me instead. You'd study me with that quiet intensity, the kind that made my skin tingle under your gaze.

You'd say my eyes were a lovely shade of hazel, like the warmth of sunlight filtered through amber glass or the speckled colours of autumn leaves. I used to hate them—I hated them before you. They're the only thing I got from my father—the ghost that haunted me in the mirror every time I looked into my own reflection.

But you made me see them differently. You told me they were beautiful, that they held a depth that made you want to dive in and never come up for air.

And my skin, so soft and fragile—I used to bleed easily, the bruises blooming in shades of blue. I was like a ruined canvas back in the day when I used to toil away at hard labour, trying to put food on the table for my mother and me.

I hated how delicate it made me feel, how vulnerable. But you... you taught me it wasn't so bad. You loved every inch of my skin, the warmth of it against yours, the way your fingers would trace patterns on it as if you were crafting a masterpiece.

You used to say I looked like I was sculpted out of soft white marble when the moon shone on me. Your used to whisper how the light kissed my skin in ways you wished you could.

And you'd trace my lips as if they were lines of poetry, something to be read and savoured.You made me feel like being me wasn't so bad after all.

Your eyes spoke louder than any words could, holding a depth of emotion that I found both comforting and exhilarating. You made me feel things I had never even imagined I'd carave for some day. Your touch, your lips, your eyes -- the sweetest devine, my sweetest escape.

You began composing a piece for us to dance together. You made me feel blue in a whole different manner. Like I was beautiful. Like I was precious. Like it was the one truth I should happily embrace. Like nothing mattered.

But I should have known better. I couldn't be that lucky.

I was born to be blue — not the good kind, but the kind that means sad, lost, and broken. Nothing more, nothing better.

"Watching the sunset?" Your voice rang out behind me, the echo of your footsteps soft against the tiled floor. The wind played with the loose fabric of your shirt as you sat beside me on the concrete ledge of the rooftop balcony. My parents were out, and inviting you over was the first and only thing I wanted to do.

A soda can settled between us, the sun casting a warm glow over your honey-coloured hair, your dark eyes shining as you looked at me. Even in my peripheral vision, you looked ethereal.

Ethereal than this final, glorious show of the heavens before nightfall. Ethereal than the soft clouds brushed in shades of gold, pink, and lavender, soft edges dissolving into the horizon, the city below bathed in the same warm, golden hue.

The way the light danced across your features, highlighting the sharp lines of your jaw and the softness in your gaze, made you seem almost otherworldly.

"It's pretty," I murmured, taking a drag off the cigarette in my hand, letting the nicotine work its way through my system, trying to calm my anxious heart.

It had been beating an off rhythm all day. All week. All month. Smoke rings danced in the air as I finally puffed it out, feeling your gaze still on me.

"What?" I turned to you, our eyes locking for the first time since you arrived.

You seemed...a little angry. I could guess why.

"Does that taste good?" you asked, raising an eyebrow.

Your irritation was slowly but surely rising, and it made you look...adorable. I couldn't help but chuckle.

"Not as much as a candy cane," I replied, turning back to the sunset as I took another drag.

"Good. I like it less sweet," you muttered, and before I could react, you snatched the cigarette from my fingers, placing the filter between your lips and taking a drag yourself.

"I thought you didn't smoke."

"If we're going to die of lung cancer, I might as well contribute properly," you hissed, taking another pull as you looked me dead in the eye.

Adorable. Dangerously cute.

I chuckled, taking the cigarette back from your lips. With a flick of my fingers, I tossed it into the air and watched as it fell twenty-three floors before meeting the ground. "Let's not die. Not yet."

"Sounds like a plan." You smiled-that familiar, silly smile. The one you always wore after a successful mischief. "I was planning to watch you dance to my piece before dying, so it's all good."

"You finished it?"

"Yup. Wanna dance?"

"Like, right now?"

"Yes. Like right now."