Your Every Color

Logan was a boy built from prisms.

He was a million shades of brown. Tufts of espresso locks gelled upwards with expertise, but Kandi preferred the way they looked first thing in the morning, when they weren’t so stiff, when they scattered into a thousand different directions. Some stuck straight up, some flayed out to the sides of his head, but most of them ended up being flattened against his forehead.

It was a cute look on him, even if he didn’t think so himself.

His eyes held every emotion in chocolate-colored irises: lust, love, devotion, frustration, and boredom were the ones she witnessed most frequently. Pupils like cups of straight black coffee that seemed to always try to soak her in her moods washed in and out like the tide, her expressions set and rose with the sun. Kandi couldn’t exactly blame him for trying to keep up.

Constellations of fawn freckles left faint trails across his shoulders, souvenirs from a summer spent beneath the California sun. She sported a similar summer skin, but the sun left more of a mark on her, golden, fawn, and chestnut freckles across her arms and across the bridge of her nose, but she loved them, preferred them to her dull milky winter complexion.

Logan was stretches of fair skin, tangled up in fresh white sheets: kicking, laughing, kissing. Kandi loved the way his skin seemed to blend into hers, and under the glow of the streetlights, they were the same person. Photonegatives of each other laid out across one another to form something they both wanted to be.

He was purple bruises trailed along her stomach from nights when they were both at their best.

His cheeks flushed rose at her touch, and his lips were a constant shade of bubblegum pink that softened his features. Even when they got frustrated with one another and were yelling obscenities in his car or across her kitchen, his lips still held that soft pink shade. Their soft plushness reminded her of who they were, of what they were together, and that even though those lips were spitting out swears in that instant, she knew that they’d be murmuring sweeter syllables later.

Because they loved each other too much. So much that both of them were a little scared, and that fear manifested itself in frustration over trivial things.

Sometimes she wasn’t just scared of falling too fast or too hard, sometimes Kandi was just overwhelmed by the seconds ticking away on the clock and the way that she felt like she wasn’t making the most of them. She lived in constant fear of failure, of mediocrity, of living a life that she felt was wasted but she didn’t know how to change it, to steal time from a life that seemed to be flying by at full speed. She envied Logan because he was already where he wanted to be.

One night, she felt like her world was crashing down around her, and though she’d never let him see her cry before, she let the soft cotton of his maroon v-neck soak up her tears and the warmth of his arms surround her.

Logan didn’t question her or try to console her, he just accepted her, and at the time, that was all she really needed.

Then there were those times when he needed rescuing, those nights when those chocolate syrup eyes were bloodshot red from lack of sleep and the stress of traveling across the country cramped in a tiny bunk bed. He’d stay up for hours just so that he could be in her time zone, so that he could see her smile on a screen from a thousand miles away. It scared him that he needed her that much, that he didn’t feel whole without her, just a broken jigsaw puzzle piece scattered across a thousand American towns.

But Kandi was there for him, and she told him the things he needed to hear to make it through the night.

But the best nights were the ones when they were together, curled up on the couch, her head resting on his shoulder and their legs intertwined, watching some pointless movie or mindless reality show on television, just killing time. She’d take his wrist in her hand and trace the greenish-blue freeways of his veins and compare them to her own, finding reassurance that the same river of blood that flowed through him flowed through her too.

When the technicolor screen grew too bright for their tired eyes, Logan would pull himself off the couch, the familiar brush of his favorite basketball shorts against her bare legs. They were golden, a gift from a trip to her college, and she couldn’t help but stare at the way they hung from his hips, the elastic waistband stretched and worn from frequent use. He’d smile down at her and wait for her to follow him, then they’d fall into bed and he’d snake his arms around her, pulling her close and breathing into her hair.

It was then that she’d realize than he was brighter than any rainbow that ever streaked across the sky.