I could never forget that day – the sky bright and clear; with not even a streak of cotton white to mar the canvas of blue. The Mediterranean breeze was blowing in from the sea, spraying the faint scent of salt in my face. The warmth of the summer sun lapped against my bare chest. A warmth that even until this day still would never leave me, thinking about those times. 

It's funny how I associated that memory with Ferran, when I had a multitude of other memories to pick and choose from. We were there on the beach, relaxing – just the two of us. Slowly the entire scene would come back - the long dry grasses swaying in the gentle wind, the faint hum of the waves crashing into the beach, the occasional gawks of the seagulls circling above. 

It was an empty beach. Just like it always had been.

Ferran lay down, totally at ease, with his leatherback journal in his hands. I remembered how wavy his blond hair was, how smooth his sun kissed skin looked under the thin veneer of sweat. But most importantly, I remembered the faint scratching of his pencil. Of graphite against paper.

"You promised to not look until I'm done," he said, a sharp edge in his voice when I tried to sneak myself a peek. I relented and let him finish. There was no use prodding him.

To be truthful, my mind was mostly somewhere else. But for the life of me I couldn't recall what I was thinking about as I stared out into the sea, lost in my own thoughts. The troubles that had seemed so monumental in that moment had all just vanished through the slow passage of time.

But other fragments remain crystal clear, just like the sketch of my profile that Ferran showed me. He had captured the image of me so well, from the way my jaw curved to how my curls went wild in the wind. There was a very raw quality to the sketch, though the strokes of the pencil felt ephemeral and soft. Like everything Ferran did, there was a faint tinge of sadness.

"Wow, you're really good."

He smiled, a rosy glow creeping to his cheeks.

"It means a lot coming from you," he replied.

"You just underestimate yourself," I said. "You're really bright."

There was a moment of silence as I watched the smile disappeared from his thin lips. He put his journal down and turned to face the sea. In that moment I could only hear the waves crashing against the shore, as his eyes stared into the horizon.

"I can never be him," Ferran said, his voice soft and mellow.

He had folded his knees in front of him, bringing them close to his chest. His blue eyes were filled with sadness, revealing the frail boy that he was inside. The boy that tried to hide himself from the world.

"And you never will be," I replied.

As soon as the words left my lips I felt a pang of regret. I didn't mean it to make it sound like the way it did. Rafel was irreplaceable, and nobody could take his place. Even if it was his own little brother. Rafel was Rafel. He was special, and would forever have a place in my heart.

He was my best friend.

I was just afraid that Ferran would've taken it the wrong way. I was not the best at articulating my feelings, according to most people. And Ferran was rather volatile – unpredictably so. But perhaps God was smiling on me that day, manifesting itself through the flash of Ferran's pearly teeth.

"Yeah," he said. "He was special."

"He really was."

There was another pause from him before he finally spoke again, tilting his chin up to the sky. There were clouds now, slowly floating by, casting their heavenly shadows.

"It should've been me," Ferran said as he turned to face me. "It should've been."

"Would dying make you feel any better?" I asked.

He went silent, gazing out to the sea. A gust of wind blew his wavy hair across his face as he stared into the far horizon. The Mediterranean seemed so vast from the shore. Rafel had once told me he could see Corsica from where we were, and I believed him. It seemed silly now that I thought about it, but Rafel could be very convincing. Especially to a naïve young boy like I used to be. He had laughed when I believed his bluff.

He had the most charming laugh, and I would never be able hear it again.

"Do you think he's lonely, all alone down there?" Ferran mumbled, pushing a strand of his golden hair away from his face. "Sometimes when I go to sleep I dream about him, his beautiful face and his kind eyes all wasting away - his skin pulling back revealing his skull, worms burrowing into the bits of flesh that's left-" 

"You loved him." I cut him off before he could ramble on any further.

Ferran looked at me with those cold, blue eyes of his. I have always been fascinated by those eyes - arctic blue, crowned with golden, curly lashes. Those eyes that always felt so distant and faraway in that moment felt so dear and close.

"I loved him," he muttered, his voice almost whisper-like. "I loved him more than you'll ever know."

"You know, everyday I wake up and I ask myself why," I confessed. "I try to think of why he would leave but I can never find the answers. That's why I came back here."

Ferran let out a sigh. A quivering sigh. Something that he would do whenever he was worked up and emotional.

"He told me that he'll always be there for me, that he'd never leave me," he cut in, disregarding what I said. "But he did so anyway."

The boy had a habit of doing that. You could never be sure if he didn't hear you, or simply chose to ignore what you had said.

I only kept quiet. Ferran moved closer, inching towards me.

"Thanks for agreeing to meet me today," he said, his cheeks turning rosy as a smile formed on his lips. "You don't know how much this means to me."

"Don't worry about it," I replied, running a hand through my hair, trying my best to remain nonchalant. "The weather is nice and I have nothing to do anyway."

"Well you don't have to force yourself to go out especially for me ," he muttered. "I know it was somewhat of an impulse. I just really wanted to see the sea, I wanted to hear the waves coming in."

Ferran was silent for a moment, his eyes wandering back to the horizon in the distance.

"And I guess a part of me was just afraid of being alone. I'm sorry if I was an inconvenience."

"Like I said, it's nothing," I reassured him. "I wanted to go out with you."

His face lit up.

"It makes me really happy to hear that," he said, brushing his hair away from his face with his dainty fingers. "Especially coming from you."

"Sure."

He picked up his journal and dusted the few grains of sand that were on the leather cover. Flipping it open, he returned to the sketch of my profile.

He tore it away, handing me the page.

"I want you to have this."

I thanked him as I held the drawing in my hands. I looked so different - melancholy, distant and faraway. Or perhaps that was what I looked like when I was brooding. Whatever it was, I put it in my bag, afraid that the wind might blow the fragile piece of paper out of my hands.

I came across the very same sketch a few years later as I was moving out into my new apartment. I had placed it in a little box underneath my bed, together with the letter that he had written and a few photographs of Rafel and I. It was a very precious box to me - a treasure trove of antiques from a time that can never return. 

And just like everything that Ferran had touched - there seemed to be a lingering tinge of sadness that never seems to go away. Even after all these years.

"Can you promise me something, Mateu?" Ferran's frail voice cut through the afternoon breeze.

I only grunted in agreement.

Ferran hesitated, as if he was about to ask me for the world on a platter. He was silent for a long while, refusing to meet my gaze. He finally turned around and stared at me with those sad, blue eyes of his.

"Can you promise me that you'll never leave me?" he pleaded, his soft voice trailing off. "That you'll stay. . . That you'll never forget me?  You're all I have left in this world, Mateu."

My eyes immediately widened and I jolted aback. I didn't mean it on purpose of course, and I regretted it instantaneously. It wasn't because I didn't like him or I was uncomfortable with it - but the suddenness of it all just instinctively made me jump.

Ferran's cheeks turned beetroot red as he shook his head, almost as if it were a vain attempt to negate the words that had just slipped out of his lips. The guilt slowly started to creep into my chest, my reaction must've given away how I truly felt.

"O-of course," I blurted out, trying to make up for it. "Who could ever forget someone like you?"

But it was too late, the poor boy had already buried his pretty face in his palms.