Love - a short story

Love.
Untouchable, yet has the force to smack you in the chest like a misfired rugby ball; lodging inside your ribcage, with a permanent indent on your organs. The stomach is elevated; an awakened puppet, frolicking around its cavity, as the heart mimics crescendos and tenors: a whole orchestra from the waist up.

Fred always had kind eyes: two full moons, swirling with teal and fleck of sea-blue, like a Van Gogh print. They would study your face, stature, the way your hands were clasped, before his elfish cupids bow would rise. His smile had to be reciprocated, much like his laugh, as it candied the air.
I was present when the agent approached him on our first adventure to Paris: the trip where he adorned a sailor's cap until we clambered back onto the EuroStar. He had suggested a snug restaurant for dinner: an incline from the Sacré-Cœur, where the Plat Du Jour cost the same as a first course back home.
A waiter, with an irregular shave around his cheeks and a birthmark on his neck, chuckled as we ordered identical meals. While the French onion soup was preparing, a man with a face no older than Fred's sidled next to our table, which balanced on the cobbles.
   "Would you be interested in modelling?"
That was the sort of face Fred had: one to be plastered on oversized, oversaturated billboards in the Underground. One to cause the hubbub to slow, gazing into those soulful eyes: mottled earthy tones, speculated to surely the digitally enhanced. And yet, there they were, laughing earlier than his voice, as we scraped crème brûlées out from their shallow dishes.
From then onwards, Fred would always optimise that very moment, overlooking the tourist rush of summer, spying the Eiffel Tower in the distance, as the best of his life.

He used to call me 'Ma', smirking in his childish nature, believing he had escaped in calling me Matilda instead of Mum. He would protest that he had done nothing wrong innocently, but Fred was like that: funny, kind, cheeky.

But that was four years ago.

Fred was my son. He did not agree to the French's man's preposition of modelling, and sometimes, I am sad that he does not have a public legacy.
Other times, I am relieved that I do not stumble upon his eyes peering over me, as I stroll down Regent Street, only to realise that they are stuck on the side of a grand building.
Never to reach him.
Never to brush his cheeks, still unfazed by puberty.

Yet still feeling the imprint of his love on me.