If there was a defining attribute that I had to choose to describe Ferran, it was how enigmatic he was. He always seemed so far away. He was there, but never truly there. I took it as it was, choosing to only deal with what he had revealed, despite it being rather frustrating.

Summer was drawing to an end, and despite the time we've spent together, there were still so many things that I didn't know about him. He never told me about where he was going for university, and as my time in Perpignan slowly crept towards an end, I simply accepted that perhaps I will never know. I've tried asking him about it before, but he simply shrugged.

We would spend hours together, often just walking, or eating out. I couldn't tell if he enjoyed my company, but certainly if he hated it he would've stopped seeing me. Ferran wasn't much of a talker, but I paid it no mind. Honestly I just wanted to spend the long summer days with someone that wasn't my family. There was a strange comfort being with him in our long pauses of silence. Especially with someone who could understand my pain. Slowly, but surely I managed to put together a more complete picture of the blond boy with arctic blue eyes.

He went to the cathedral down in Perpignan every Sunday for mass, together with his family. I never saw too much of his father, but he appeared to be close with his stepmother. She was a lovely woman with fair brown hair and a warm smile. Ferran told me when he wasn't spending time with me he would be with her instead. Rafel had been close to her too.

Ferran had never really talked about their real mother, and I didn't want to ask. All I knew was that she ran away with Ferran when he was little, and he was never the same since. All that I could piece together of the whole situation was from what little fragments Rafel had told me.

"I didn't even know she was unhappy," Rafel told me as we sat at the beach.

He was wearing his red linen shirt, his top few buttons undone, and a pair of shorts. The morning sun bathed the entire beach in a reddish glow from the east. The summer was beginning to draw to an end, and to celebrate our entrance to adulthood, Rafel had invited me to hang out. He told me it was going to be a long time before we were ever going to see each other again.

And sadly, he was right. If only I knew what was coming, I would've begged him to stay, I would've begged him to just hang on for a little longer. But all I had now were fragments of a distant memory that got further and further away from me with every passing second, with no way of return.

"She was always so calm, so composed in front of us," he continued. "I guess none of us expected her to just pack up and leave. But I suppose she was at her breaking point."

I only nodded.

"I'm still trying to understand," Rafel sighed. "But I don't think I want to anymore. It's really exhausting and I feel like I'm on my last legs, honestly."

I stayed silent.

"So I'm just going to accept that I'll never truly know," he replied.

"You could ask Ferran now, couldn't you?" I said, trying to be helpful. "He was there."

Rafel shook his head.

"No, I can't do that," he muttered. "I don't want him to put him through those times again. He's already gone through so much."

"Yeah, I don't think that would be a good idea," I replied.

There was a brief moment of silence as the breeze blew in from over the Mediterranean, caressing my face with the faint scent of salt.

"Can I just ask you for a small favour?" he finally said.

I only grunted. Rafel looked at me with eyes full of sadness, something I've rarely seen in him. For that moment, the familiar charismatic and suave athlete I had grown close to had all but disappeared, and he seemed sad, vulnerable and lost.

"Ferran is. . . really precious," he said, a sorrowful smile on his lips. "When I'm gone. . . I'm hoping if you'll keep an eye out for him. You're the only one I trust."

His tone stirred a discomfort deep within me.

"What do you mean when you're gone?" I chuckled nervously. "You're going to Paris, you're not going to die."

"That's what I meant," he said. "I'll be really far away and I won't be able to be with him all the time."

"You sure that's what you really meant?" I teased, raising my eyebrow.

"Yeah."

And I believed him. And I made a promise which I didn't keep.

Honestly I didn't really understand the relationship between Ferran and I. Neither of us talked about it. I was left grappling around in my own confusion.

I came back to Perpignan to search for answers, but all I've gotten were incomplete fragments that only lead to more questions. It was hard trying to process these memories, each one of them bittersweet.

Ferran was never really particularly helpful either.

"Do you ever ask yourself why he did what he did?" I had asked him once as we had lunch at a restaurant in town.

The blond boy seemed much more interested in his fillet than the conversation, so I let it drop. I guess I must've asked it in a way that was too brusque.

"I mean," I muttered under my breath. "I do all the time."

Ferran was silent for a long while. He had placed his cutlery down by his plate.

He just turned to look outside, his profile facing me. The shadow made his jaw seemed more chiselled than ever. Suddenly he didn't really seem like the vulnerable golden angel with cherubic cheeks that I had always seen him as.

His white linen shirt was slightly crumpled, the top two buttons undone. A silver cross hanged from his chest, glistening in the light.

"You already know the answer to that question," he said, his tone rather pointed. "So why ask?"

"Sorry," I muttered.

I had never seen him get that cold. He was distant, sure, but never had he acted that way with me. I suppose my question must have genuinely hurt him.

But a few days later as we were taking a stroll through his garden he paused, and repeated the exact same words.

"Do you ever ask yourself why he did what he did?"

Ferran had stopped by an oleander bush in full bloom, its flowers a pale primrose pink. He reached out and brushed his hand against the broad, evergreen leaves. His eyes, crowned by his long golden eyelashes stared longingly at those pretty flowers.

It took me a while to finally reel in from the suddenness of those words, and the shock from hearing it from him. Over the past few days I had reminded myself not to talk about Rafel, out of fear that I would offend him but now he was the one who had repeated my words verbatim.

But I suppose Ferran wasn't really looking for an answer from me – he was talking to himself. I was just his captive audience, just there for him to make sure he was talking to someone, heck - something. I couldn't help but feel he really just wanted to hear his own words with his own ears.

"I blame myself for everything," he said, turning to face me, but his eyes like always, seemed ever so distant. "I blame myself with the draw of my every breath, and I blame myself with the reach of my every step. Until my blood runs dry and my bones turn to dust – and even then I don't think I will ever forgive myself."

He let out a sigh, plucking one of those pretty pink flowers with his dainty fingers.

"You shouldn't blame yourself," I said.

He turned to look at me with those Arctic blue eyes of his.

"No, I don't think you understand."

And it was true. No matter how hard I tried and no matter how hard I wanted to, I had to admit that I could never understand. How could I, when I myself was struggling to pick up the shattered remains?

He finally told me he was going to attend university in Marseille. He would be studying botany. I asked him if it was because he loved plants. The boy only shrugged.

Summer was drawing to an end, and I still haven't gotten my answers. All I was left with were a jumbled muddle of new questions, more questions that needed answering. I suppose it was still better than nothing. I had offered to help Ferran pack up his things, but he told me he was fine. I spent my last few days mulling about doing nothing.

Not only did I have questions about the past, but being with Ferran brought up more questions about the boy himself too. I never talked about my feelings, and neither did he. Sure, I enjoyed being with him, but I never even thought about how I truly felt. Did we truly like each other or were we just afraid of being alone? The more I pondered about it, the more I buried it deeper and deeper within myself.

It was a mixed bag of emotions really, confusion, infatuation and loneliness all warped into one.

"Are you excited to start university?" I had asked him a few days before I left for Marseille again. He had come to see me at my house in Perpignan.

"I guess," he muttered. "It's a new place, new things to see. A place to start again."

"Have you got your housing settled?"

"My father has an apartment there near the waterfront," he told me. "The tenant won't be renewing their lease, so I can move in once they move out."

"Oh," I muttered. "When's that?"

"Sometime at the end of next month," he said. "Meanwhile I'll just stay with my aunt for a while, she has a house there. But it's more of me housesitting since she's away in Paris for about two months."

"That's nice," I said. "Well won't you come visit me over there?"

A small smile crept onto his lips.

"I'd love to," he muttered, his cheeks turning rosy.

"Yeah it can get quite lonely in a new city all by yourself," I said.

Ferran gave a slight nod. He fidgeted with his fingers in front of him as he sat at the edge of his seat.

"Well I've been lonely my entire life," he said, rather resigned. "It doesn't scare me."

"Oh, really?"

"It's just something that you get used to," he replied. "Once you realise that there's nothing scary about being alone, it won't faze you."

"Well," I said after pondering on his words. "I guess you could say the same for me."

"I'm surprised," he replied. "You always seemed so easy going."

"Not really," I shrugged. "I've never really gone out of my way to make friends, and I'm not too bothered by it."

"What about you and Amélie?" Ferran asked.

"We broke up a long time ago," I replied. "She's moved on."

"Oh," he mumbled. "I see. I'm sorry about that."

"It's fine."

That made me think. The last time we've met before this, he had known the both of us were a couple. And yet he still slept with me. When I returned for the summer, he never asked me about whether I was seeing anyone. It never even crossed my mind at that point if he thought Amélie and I were still together. Yet sleeping with him felt like the most natural thing in the world.

"Have you ever been in love?" he asked.

He had turned to face me, looking at me with those dreamy eyes of his.

I paused to ponder on his words. It was honestly something I never really thought about after we went our separate ways. Sure, there was a sense of loss after she was gone, but was I mourning the loss of Amélie or the loss of the familiarity of being with her? She had been my only connection to the past in Marseille, that fact couldn't be denied. And whether I was in love with her or not that didn't change a thing.

"I don't know honestly," I replied. "With Amélie it all seemed so distant and long ago."

Ferran bit his lip.

"Love is a strange thing," the boy said, heaving a sigh. "It's really scary in a sense that it creeps up on you, and you just don't know when you're in the midst of it all. Because it all seems so familiar, so comforting. And it lulls you into thinking that's what it should be, how it should've been. How everything should've been all along. But when it's gone, then you'll realise it. And that creeping pain that comes by gnawing at you that replaces the hollow that it leaves behind – the most telling sign love had ever been there in the first place."

It took me a while to process what he said. In a sense he was right. You can never truly measure how much you love someone until they were gone.

"Tell me Ferran," I said after a while. "Have you ever been in love?"

The boy was silent, fidgeting with his fingers. Finally, he spoke hesitantly.

"Yes," he muttered. "I suppose. . . I suppose I have."