Four Friends (Quite short: <1700 words)

The first was tall, with dark hair and hazel eyes. The hazel eyes were made hazel with brown and green, and when first looked upon they seemed to be serious. But if there were love in a person, that person saw an immense sadness in the seriousness, and if the love in that person truly loved those hazel eyes she saw a gentleness in the sadness. He had immensely gentle eyes.

The girl with him felt small and delicate beside him, and once in a while they would walk arm in arm and she felt safe. He thought she was small. “You’re so little,” he said. “Everything about you is little.” She loved him and sometimes he loved her. Her eyes were green.

There was a boy with blue eyes and a girl with brown. They were in love. They were in love and believed in the same God and the same Jesus but believed a little differently. She thought his way was beautiful but was not quite sure if she could be that way. But she loved him. They used to walk with held hands but now there was distance between them.

When the boy with hazel eyes and the girl with green first met they became friends. He was tall, but when people met him he didn’t seem tall. She always knew he was tall and that she was little beside him. They walked around stone walkways which rolled up and down like waves. He teased her because she stood at a high part and he stood at a low part and yet their eyes still did not meet at level. No one found her little, before. He looked at her, and she looked at him only a few moments before looking down because she saw that he loved her. That was the gentleness in his eyes. When he loved her he was gentle.

“Despite my convictions,” he said as they walked along the beach, “despite my very firm convictions, I am terrible romantic. I remember being at my sister’s wedding and planning my own.”

She loved God. That was the goodness in him, his love of God. They both loved God and that is what drew them together. “I’m sorry,” she prayed. “I’m sorry I want him. He is for You.”

He always belonged to God. Each minute she had with him was a gift. “He is not mine. I am not giving him up. He belongs to You and will always belong to You, whether he is alone or marries me or marries another.”

The boy with hazel eyes cries at movies because his heart is gentle, she thought. She knew later that she was wrong. Anyone can cry at movies. Even that didn’t mean much. It was the other things. There were things that she knew but didn’t know.

The boy with blue eyes loved the girl with brown for a long time. She didn’t know. Her sweetness made her not understand. Then all at once she knew, but wasn’t sure. She wanted to be with him, but wasn’t sure. One day she made up her mind and took his hand, and though he moved quickly she loved him. First she was shy, but she loved him.

“Give her a year,” the priest had said. That is ridiculous, the friends thought. A year. Give her as long as she needs, and if she comes to us, God bless her. If she stays as she is, God bless her. If something breaks inside her and she runs away, God bless and love and hold tight this beautiful girl with brown eyes. A year. Let love grow, and God will hold her how He will hold her.

The boy with hazel eyes didn’t like to be touched. It made him nervous, but the girl with green eyes loved him and thought she could hold him until he was safe. Sometimes she could. One time she rubbed his neck and he fell asleep on her arm. Only for a minute, but he fell asleep. She snuck up behind him and touched him and he started, but she began to rub his neck and he relaxed. “That’s not fair,” he said. “That’s not fair,” but he relaxed and lay his head on her arm and fell asleep.

They were in an accident and she gave him a hug, but a very little one because she loved him and didn’t want to make him nervous. He didn’t hug back, but lay his head to the top of hers. She had already begun to pull away, though, and wished that she had felt him before she began to pull away. How she would have loved to spend a few moments with his cheek resting against her hair.

The girl with brown eyes had a beautiful voice, and would cradle the head of the boy with blue eyes on her lap and sing to him. When she sang the hazel eyes slept in their chair, and the green eyes slept on the floor near him, and the blue eyes slept in her lap. Her voice was perfect because it was beautiful without affect. She didn’t try to be beautiful, and because of this she was beautiful.

“How would you feel,” the girl asked her parents, “if I became like my friend with blue eyes?”

“We would be sad,” they said. “But only because you will be different from us. We will not be afraid; we know there is no heresy. But it is not how we raised you: we will be a little sad.”

The boy with blue eyes went to speak to her father. The father asked him what his career plans were. “I’ll be honest,” the boy said. “I am not career-minded. I want to raise a family. I will do whatever I have to do to support them. I want a good, steady, well-paying job, but I will never be rich. I want to raise a family, and I mean to raise a darn good one.”

The boy with blue eyes had a great joy inside him, but at other times sadness held him in a claw. But what he must do he always did. One knew he would always protect his own, and there was no falseness in him. When he laughed one had to laugh with him because there was a joy inside him.

The boy with hazel eyes met with his priest. “My plan and my goal is the Church,” he said, “but now there is a girl.”

“That is a beautiful plan,” his priest said. “But do not hold it too tightly. Let God lead you where he will lead you.”

“She likes me. I never thought someone would like me.”

Some days the girl with green eyes could love and not need to be loved back. It was always these days that she was loved back. Other days she felt alone, and walked lonely because she wanted to be loved as she loved. On these days she frightened the boy with hazel eyes, and he pulled away. “But love is a gift,” she prayed. “Let me love with such great love that I do not need to be loved by any other than You. If I am then loved, I will be so overwhelmed with love that I have to give even more away.”

They went to a dance, and the boy with hazel eyes held the hand of the girl with green eyes. He didn’t notice. Her arm lay on his as he properly escorted her, but his long fingers curled around and held her hand.

“I do not know if I love him,” the brown eyed girl wrote to the green. “I love being with him, but I do not know that I love him.” Then it was over.

“I love him,” she said. “I know I love him and I told him I love him, but I do not know if I can believe like him.”

“Everyone has told her it’s a heresy,” the blue eyed boy said.

“I do not know,” the girl said. “It isn’t fair to keep him in love with me when I do not know. I have cried all my tears out. I still love him but it isn’t fair to him and I don’t know.”

“I don’t know,” the boy with hazel eyes said to the boy with blue. “You ask me if I love her, and what I want to do. The answer is that I don’t know.”

“I will not pursue her anymore,” said the blue-eyed boy. “It is up to her, now. Even if she becomes like me I will not pursue her. If she loves me, she will tell me. I told her that it is up to her now.”

“Should I tell him?” thought the girl with green eyes. “It feels wrong not to tell him. He knows a little, but I don’t think he knows how much. But he has to, doesn’t he? If I tell him he may send me away. Please God, don’t let him send me away.”

The girl with green eyes lay sobbing in her mother’s lap. “Someday, her mother said, you’ll be holding your daughter just like this, and you will say, ‘when I met your father he wanted to be in the Church, and it broke my heart,’ or else you will say, ‘you remember your uncle with the hazel eyes, my darling? I loved him and it broke my heart, but now I could not imagine being with someone other than your father.’”

We believe that you love us, O God; help our unbelief.

The girl with green eyes sat beside her tall, gentle friend. “I love him,” she prayed. “Let him know I love him. It doesn’t matter if he loves me back. It doesn’t matter if he grows cold and distant. At this moment he needs to know. My dear friend, please know that I love you.”