The Girl in the Leopard Print Skirt

He quickly shoved his cell phone into his pocket and then chased her. She was so far ahead of him he could only see the dark shadow outline of her body. She moved quicker than he thought. She leaped over uncovered tree roots with her black shoes dangling behind her held only by her hand. He ran struggling to keep up with her in a foreign forest which she seemed to know like the back of her hand. She zipped through the forest not making any other sounds than the natural ones her foot made padding on the wet, mushy ground. Sometimes he could hear her laughter when she made a sharp zigzag around a tree trunk.
His breath grew more haggard the farther the girl ran. His heart was beating at a rapid pace but he kept going. His allure to the girl had taken over all of what was left of his rationalism. That little shred that was not demolished by his rash actions by following Samantha to a town that was unknown to him. It was now diminishing with every step he took just to get closer to a stranger.

His legs had become tired and weak from the run. The way his legs had to maneuver over such rugged undergrowth had made his ankles a little sore. He was slowing down and he realized that he had lost the shadow of the girl a while back. Now he was surrounded by trees and stuck in the darkness alone and had no knowledge of how big the forest was.

He stood there looking around only able to see so far into the forest which was blanketed by the cover of night. He could only hear his breath coming out of his mouth which broke every so often. He heard a twig break behind him followed by that recognizable crunch. He closed his mouth to stop the loudness of his inhalation. He crept closer to the area that emitted the sound of the broken twig. He went closer and closer and his heart rate increased but this was not because of running, this was out of fear. Fear about the creature that could be dwelling behind that large oak tree. When he almost reached the tree he heard more of the sound of dead vegetation. Once he was there his eyes set on a little piece of the creature but it circled around the tree as he followed the figure. The figure then turned the opposite way causing him to be face to face with it.

“Boo.”

Was all the girl said, that was all he needed hrt to say. It was her voice that chased away the fears. It reassured him that he was not alone. He could admit to himself that the fact of being alone scared him even though his pride would never let him admit it to any other person. He was inches away from her face with his hands gripping on the bark holding him in place. He could see her smile, her slightly smudged makeup.

“I thought I was supposed to catch you?” He whispered, his hands gripped the trunk of the tree holding only a little of his weight.

“You took too long.” She said while pulling away from the trunk and him. For a moment he worried that when she pulled away she would take off again, but this was only for a moment.

She walked over to where a little clearing was held encircled with trees. A clearing that looked just big enough for a small camp sight. She walked over to the center of the circle and tossed her shoes seeming not to care where they landed. He joined her on the cold, wet ground laying down right beside her. The Indiana air was warm that night but he could still feel the waves of body heat that radiated off of her.
“We don’t have to stay out here. I have a hotel room.” He said bluntly.

He felt the girl stir beside him and he turned his head to see her getting closer to him. The girl had swiftly positioned herself on top of the boy with her knees beside his hips. She was looking down at him as she straddled him. She had to lift up her skirt because it was a pencil skirt and didn’t allow her legs much room. Her legs were small and warm; he ran his hands up and down them. His fingers wandering up and up, then back down. She then took his hands in hers; she controlled them forcing them up over her skirt. She let go of his hands once they were at the zipper of her skirt.
“Who says we need a room when we have this whole forest to ourselves?”

Her own hands ventured to the buttons of his shirts, her fingers working over them until she stopped at three. Her hands then suddenly pulled away. He looked up at her wondering if he did something to make her pull away. She was still sitting on top of him but her face had changed. He pulled his hands from her skirt as she moved from his body and laid herself back on the ground.

“Do you think I look like a girl who would sleep with a person she hardly knew?” Her voice was not filled with seduction and force like it had with all the other words she had said to him. Instead it was filled with vulnerability and innocence. Something that he had never thought she was, not by the way she moved her body and not by the words she spoke.

“Yes.”

He knew that he should have said no to her question. It wasn’t true but that was the word that she had wanted to him to say. It would have spared her feelings if he had said no. It was just like the old man at the bar, why spare someone’s feeling when you didn’t care about that person.
“Isn’t that why you brought me here?” He asked when she did not speak.

“No, I brought you here because you looked lonely.”

Their eyes never met as the spoke. Their heads were facing up above them; the night sky was the backdrop to his thoughts. He never thought of himself as lonely. He was always surrounded by people who he felt loved him. He was close with his parents, he had a girlfriend to satisfy his needs and he held her when she was upset. He had friends that he drank with and watched sports with. He was always around people how on earth could he be lonely? Even though he wanted to say that her words were untrue he couldn’t. Her words registered within him bringing him to something he had never noticed about himself.

He was lonely. Loneliness is not defined about how many people you have around you it’s defined by how many people really know you. He could share his thoughts and opinions with everyone, but then there were those ones that he hid beneath his rationalism. The ones that he was too scared to say because they went against what he was raised to believe. The ones that slowly smothered him, but his pride had never let him notice it until now. He could not tell anyone what he really felt and what he really thought so it stayed within him. That was his loneliness; no one could ever understand him because he was too afraid to let them know who he was.

“Why were you watching me in the bar?” Her soft words spoken in whispers broke him from his epiphany.

“You looked interesting.”

They lay there like that, completely still. The only movement that had occurred was when the girl’s cold hands wrapped around his. She took a deep breath, more of a sigh to him. They were not bored, they were not anything then.

“Do you believe in god?” He asked, he had gone to church and had been raised to think that god was watching over them. That he was who you owed your life to and therefore you should always honor the rules he had given to his people to live by.

When he got older he learned about evolution. To him this was rationalism with proof of how humans ended up on the earth. Sure the theory had some holes in it but it made more since then god did. So why did people still hold to something that seemed so make believe? Maybe, because it was tradition, or maybe it was because people couldn’t bear to let go of it. He didn’t understand he just knew that without the existence of god that was woven into cultures across the globe that the world would be a bleak place. Religion often gave people hope and sometimes even reason for things that seemed unexplainable. God was more than just a religion to him, it was something that mankind had created and no matter how much reason existed in science it was something that would never leave our souls. Empires fall, accomplishments eventually fade, out of everything the human race had created religion is the one thing that will remain for as long as we do.

“Yes, although I don’t think he is with us, he abandoned us a long time ago.” The girl explained to him, her words so simple. He admired that, she could put something as complex as the workings of god in one sentence. “What are you doing here?”

The second part of her sentence caught him by surprise. No one had even asked him how he was in this town. He thought of this town like a club that he had wandered into. The people had seemed to have an unspoken bond and visitors were welcome, but not really. They didn’t talk to you; they didn’t even look at you. They accepted that you were there but unless you move in you were just a passerby and therefore not worth their time.

“Looking for a girl.”

“Tell me about her.”

The first thing he began to describe was her beauty. It was the first thing he noticed about her. They way her light blue eyes sparkled and the way her dark brown hair always seemed to be somewhat in her face even when she pulled it up. He described how she always spoke in poetic words even when she was just joking around. He described that she never danced in front of anyone unless she was with him. He told her about the long phone conversations they would have that always ended up with her sneaking over into his bedroom late at night. He told her that she would go to parks just to see the vast amounts of people she didn’t know existed. He told her that he loved her and that she left him with nothing, but a shattered dream of a life together.

“You loved her.” She stated softy as a little gust of wind flew past their noses. “That is something that her absence can never take away from you.”

His mouth had gone dry talking about her. This conversation brought up old memories; he would normally push them down deep inside of him but not tonight. Tonight that cover of rationalism had been lifted and he was doing everything wrong. Or maybe he was finally doing everything right?

“What do you think she is looking for?” He asked her hoping that she would have some clue as to why she left him.

“Struggle.”

Her answer confused him. Who would look for struggle? He was under the impression that people led their lives trying to stay away from struggle. That was how people survived in this cold word. Now she was saying that some people went out of their way just to be defeated by something. It seemed impossible to him.

“I don’t understand.”

In the small amount of time he had spent with the girl one of the things he had noticed about her was that she spoke in short simple words. She didn’t like to beat around the bush and when she had thoughts she expressed them as simple as she could. Maybe that’s how people thought when they lived in a small town. In the city there are people around you bustling and moving and everywhere you go people are inspired. People think beyond what they should know, people here don’t. He thought that people were always supposed to push the limits on things, but maybe they weren’t. Life is life; if you spend your life thinking about it life will pass you by.

“It’s the darker times that make us feel things. A person who has lived their whole life surrounded by everything they could ever need is a person who hasn’t experienced every emotion they could ever have. A person who has lived their life with struggle will be just as happy as the other when something minute happens to them. For that reason, a person who has struggled has experienced many different emotions as the other person has not. Maybe Samantha thought she needed struggle.”

“Everyone has their struggles.”

“Maybe she thought she didn’t.”

He sat there thinking if her words made since and in a way they did. Then in a way they did not. Every person had their struggles in life even if they don’t realize it. Like him for example. He went through his entire life thinking he was one of the happiest people in the world, and then his road trip made him realize he was broken hearted and the girl next to him made him realize that he was lonely. What else was there to discover about himself?

“Let me tell you something,” The girl turned on her side resting her head in her hand, “all of our problems could be solved if it wasn’t for our brains.” He began to laugh and she did too. He could tell that she believed what she spoke.

“What do you mean?”

“If humans didn’t over think so much we wouldn’t have so many problems. We wouldn’t have anything, we would roam around the forest just like animals and we would happy. No one would kill themselves and no one would need pills.”

They laughed together, with their giggles in an uneven harmony. They talked like that for hours. They talked about every little thing that had happened in their lives. They talked about nothing. In his entire life he had never felt so comfortable with another person. He could laugh freely, he could talk freely, and he felt as though he could do anything he wanted while he was with this girl. He had told her things he could never even admit to himself. She told him things that she had never wanted anyone to know.

“Why is it so easy to talk to you?” He asked, they had gotten closer as moments had gone on.

“Because it’s easier to talk to a stranger than it is to a friend”, she whispered, her head laying on her arm looking right at him. Her dark red hair was spread around her head like a halo.
The sun was beginning to rise. They both looked at each knowing what they were thinking. It was time for their night to end and their lives to resume to its schedule. He didn’t want to leave; he liked staying with her. This girl that had spilled her soul onto him and when he spilled out his own she was there to listen to it. She was the person in this world who truly knew him. He was no longer as lonely as he was before. Now he had to leave her.

They stood up, his fingers laced around hers. Her hair was a nest and he spotted two pieces of grass and there was some mud on her clothes. Her dark makeup ran down to her cheeks and her red lipstick had faded off her mouth. She leaned closer to him. He caught his breath. This time their lips met, in a long deep kiss that set his lips on fire. It was passionate, not like any of the ones he had experienced before. She pulled away all too quickly.
“Can I at least know your name?”

“No, it would ruin everything”, she said pulling away, the look on her face then was the way he would always remember her. It was content, a look that he had never seen grace anyone’s face before. It made her eyes even lovelier than they already were. She was backing away still holding her shoes in her hand. He didn’t move this time, he had accepted that his time with her had come to an end. The way they had met was like lightning, brief and beautiful. It lit up the sky of his world for just one second.

She was already to the edge of the clearing. She was not that far away, he could stop her. Convince her that they should keep in touch. That is what he desired most, she got rid of his loneliness. When she left would it return? He knew that once as she disappeared through the trees his sky would go back to the darkness she had cured.

“What should I remember you as if I can’t know your name”, he called out to her. She turned to him with a slight smile that lit up her face.

“The girl in the leopard print skirt.”