Pretty Follies

I listened intently as my feet hit the pavement. It was a decently quiet morning, therefore, my scuffed up converse were the only thing that echoed through the air. As I padded over the black tar on my driveway, I stumbled a few times being too lazy to bend down and tie my laces.

The chilly spring air blew through my hair, causing the soft strands of strawberry blonde to dance in front of my face, my eyes still watching my purple converse. I almost convinced myself to turn around and change from shorts to jeans, but decided that the late-May-day was bound to warm up a more in a couple hours.

My brown eyes looked up and gazed around the neighborhood, peering through the wisps of my long hair that were constantly blowing. All the kids were at school, finishing up the last couple weeks before summer, most parents were at work and if they weren’t employed, they had yet to finish their cup of coffee and turn off the morning news. The streets were barren, saved for a runner that would jog by occasionally and the man five houses down mowing his lawn.

I continued to amble down the driveway leisurely, admiring my mother’s flowers that lined our front lawn. I took in the soft purples of the lilac bushes, the whites and yellows of the daisies and then stopped at the colorful assortment of geraniums. I studied all the different plants and decided to I liked the scarlet ones because they matched my shirt. Taking a quick glance around, like I was a little girl who was afraid to get caught wrecking the garden, I checked if anyone was looking before bending down and swiftly snapping the moist stem of the vibrate flower.

As I held the soft pedals to my nose, I breathed in the dull, calming smell. My appreciation was cut short though, from a violent vibrating in my pocket and the lyrics of All The Small Things disrupting the tranquil morning. I didn’t even have to look at the caller I.D.; I know who the impatient boy was on the other end of the call.

“Yesss?” I answered with a smile tugging at my lips, tucking the flower I just picked behind my ear.

“Are you coming?”

“Yes! I told you five minutes and it hasn’t even been three!”

“It’s actually been four minutes and twenty-three seconds. Twenty-four… twenty-five… twenty-six… twenty-seven—”

“I’m walking down my driveway now—”

“Yeah, I know; I can see you.”

“I’ll see you in 78 steps.” Yeah, that’s right, we counted. Call it lame, I think it’s endearing.

I tucked my phone away in my front pocket and continued to walk down the driveway, not so sluggish this time. I stepped off the curb and could see him making his way towards me, skinny jeans and a T-shirt. Stopping quickly to shut the mailbox that was left open, I continued walking the short distance it took to get to Alex’s house, but he was already meeting me halfway.

As we got closer, I was able to start making out his eager features. His happy brown eyes, his shaggy highlighted hair, his solid cheekbones; all things I had missed so dearly when he was away. I began to pick up the pace the closer we got and soon, I was running at him. He saw me and I could tell by his face that he was bracing himself for my barreling body.

I was sprinting now and when I was only a few feet away, I launched my body. It was all one swift action and it happened so quickly that I almost missed his euphoric smile and soft chuckle that always happened when we saw each other. I flew through the air and finally landed in his arms. Instantaneously, his hands secured around my waist and my legs tightened around his torso at the very same time our lips collided.

It was a sought kiss of passion that we shared. Our mouths moved together tenderly and my hands unclasped from around his neck to burry themselves in his long hair. He didn’t move his from around my waist, not wanting to drop me but tightened the slack in his arms so I was pressed flush against his firm, beating chest.

So occupied by each other, we forgot to stay steady and I could feel myself slipping a little down his front. Right away, his hands moved from my hips to under my butt, giving it a little squeeze before he cupped it to push me up again, his ragged breath on my face.

I smiled at his action and pulled away, my breathing heavy as well. “You’re a pervert.” He only reconnected his lips with mine and smiled against my kisses and then nibbled at my lips earnestly.

“That’s enough,” he teased me as he licked his lips, knowing he was just as well as at fault for his aggressiveness and PDA as I was. “There are probably kids watching, Laney.”

I smiled at the name that only he called me. It was something that I used to despise; Alex used to drive me up the wall with it. Now I liked that he had a name just for me and no one else called me that.

Laughing, I pecked his lips quickly and as Alex lowered me down from him, he kissed me back on the nose, leaving it all slobbery.

“Icky!” I whined, shoving his chest lightly.

“Oh whatever, you love it,” he whispered in my face. I didn’t say anything back, but let him come closer to me. I felt his hands grab either side of my skinny torso and he pulled me closer. “Hi cutie,” he finally greeted, a tiny smirk in his eyes but a full-fledged smile on his face.

His touch didn’t feel weird anymore. I loved when Alex caressed my face and complimented my looks and held me lovingly. It was something that I couldn’t believe I went so long not wanting or even knowing about for that matter.

The whole relationship had taken some time to get use to at first. After we had been rescued from the woods, were able to leave the hospital, finished healing and could finally get out of bed, I had expected everything to go back to normal, like it had been for the past eight years. But nothing went back, it only went forward.

Those eight years of fighting were a touchy subject that neither of us liked to talk about. We didn’t like to dwell on it; it just upset both of us and sometimes got us arguing about it. It was a long period of time to avoid discussing, we realized that, but it was just too hard to explain and discuss without offending the other person. That’s why we avoided that subject altogether now.

Now, instead of insulting each other with nasty vocabulary, we used cute, nice words. Unscrupulous Dolt turned to Apotheosis Gem and Rank Idiot transformed to Angelic Charmer. Now, Alex didn’t have a grip on my sides to shake me or throw me into a garbage can. Firing retorts were replaced with smiles and giggles.

At first, I was a little skeptical and I had built a defense wall against Alex. When he started to become nicer, I thought I would be stabbed in the back or it was one of his mean tricks and that all of his nice gestures and fixed friendship pleas that had happened in the forest was all a joke. So I was cynical, and for a while disbelieving.

After our parents reported us missing and were finally found by the search team the police sent out, we were brought to the hospital. By then, Alex had been unconscious which we later found out was due to the concussion he received after falling and hitting his head. On top of that, Alex woke up in the hospital to find out that his bad cough had been pneumonia and he had a bruised arm bone. I was confined to a bed longer than him with my broken ankle that had become infected from ill-care, a suffocated brain and bad dehydration.

Although through all of that, we survived and got out of there with a hell of a lot less injuries and infections than we should have had, or so the doctors said. They claimed we were very lucky we were even still alive considering some of the conditions we could recall and tell them about. I didn’t consider that my luckiest moment though, I didn’t consider seeing the firefighter’s flashlight through the trees to be the luckiest part either. I would have to say that Alex was the best accident that I had made it through. To confirm it, when Alex woke up, he came to my bedside to see me. It was even without either of our mothers prodding him to do so.

And that was why everything was so hard to get used to in the beginning. We now did things out of admiration, not spite. I never would have thought in a million years that any of this would have happened. It was funny how contagious his laugh was. We could say some of the stupidest things but could laugh about them and turn them into an inside joke that went on for weeks, always leaving us doubled over, on top of each other laughing. Even just being by him, I never thought I could simply enjoy sitting next to him for hours; it used to be one of the hardest things for me. I liked that Alex waited on me. I liked to cradle his head in my lap when we watched T.V. I liked to wake up in the morning in his arms. I loved when he would sing me songs as we lay in my backyard. I loved that he called me, even though he knew I was in class, and left a voicemail message for me to look forward to after class. I never thought I’d say it, but I enjoyed the presence of Alex Gaskarth.

“So what are we doing today?” Alex asked casually, swinging our hands back and forth powerfully as we walked around the neighborhood, not really wanting to go inside. His fingertips tickled my palms and I felt the slight hair from his knuckles against my fingers as our hands played lightly with each other.

I shrugged jadedly and looked off to my right at the park we were approaching. The bright red slides and blue handled monkey bars reflected the sun’s rays, making me squint as I looked around. The memories of daycare, where Chris, Daniel, Alex, Alyssa, Kate and me all played while our parents were at work, made me smile. I could still see us all running around through the wood chips, the daycare ladies yelling at Alex and Daniel to stop running up the slides, and the swing jumping contests us the girls would have, or creating the three person spiders on the swings.

“Let’s lie here,” I suggested, lying down on the park grass and pulling Alex down with me. We both lay on our back, gazing up at the sky and the birds flying over us. I watched as one bird continued to fly back and forth from its nest to other trees and then back to its nest again. “So, I was watching Discovery Channel this morning, and did you know that when Toucans like each other, they throw berries at each other?”

Alex turned his head to look at me and he was smirking. “Oh so that’s why you always threw your strawberries and raspberries at me when we were younger. It wasn’t because you didn’t want to eat them.” I rolled my eyes. “It all makes sense now,” he smirked again.

“No, silly. They toss them back and forth. Like, play catch, smart one.” Alex laughed and looked skyward and it was my turn to turn my head and look at him. His mouth was slightly ajar as his eyes darted around and I could only assume he was watching the same bird I had been watching. He seemed so focused; his eyebrows were crunched together a little, his eyes hard and face still, like he was deep in thought.

After a while of traveling the same path the bird made with his eyes, Alex spoke up. “If I was a Toucan,” he tore his eyes from the busy bird and turned his head to me, who was still looking at him. “I would toss berries with you.”

I took in the sincerity on his face and how serious he was about what he had just said. He was looking at me keenly, his eyes darting back and forth between my own. I studied him just the same as he was studying me and slowly a smile rose to my face. I grabbed his hand in mine again and he squeezed it firmly.

We went back to gazing at the sky, finding patterns in the clouds and pointing out cute animals we found. Of course after a while, just like I expected, Alex became bored and to keep himself entertained, he rolled on top of me.

He placed a knee on either side of my legs, moving his feet inward so they could entwine with mine, and planted his hands on either side of my head, trapping me beneath him. His sparkling eyes looked down at me, his hair falling out of place when his head hung. Moving his head down further, he gave me affectionate kisses.

“Mmmm. Fuck, I love your lips,” he mumbled against them after kissing me again. “I just want to kiss them all day.” He continued to give me peck after peck on the lips, not getting enough. He then buried his face in my cheek. “I love your skin,” he groaned again, kissing every inch of my cheeks, up past my temple, across my forehead and then back down until the entire area of my face had been run over by his lips. His eyes traveled up to the top of my head. “I love your hair.” He grabbed two big chunks of it and brought the ends up to his nose, breathing in my peach-mango shampoo. Then he ran his hands through the long locks, brushing it with his fingers and massaging my scalp with his nonexistent nails.

“And I love your tiny nose,” he murmured, widening his whole mouth and tightening his lips so my nose was encased by them. I let out a little giggle and closed both of my eyelids when I saw his lips approaching them. “And I love your beautiful, gorgeous, gorgeous eyes.” Pressing his lips to my eyelids and blew air onto them causing the littlest sound of a fart noise to hum when he did so.

“And I love you neck,” He trailed kisses down my tender neck, sucking lightly at random places. “Mmmmm…” he groaned against my skin as he traveled his butterfly kisses up to my defined jaw line, and then tugged on my earlobes, causing me to go a little lightheaded. “And I love your arms,” he said as he ran his hands up and down my tanned, skinny arms, leaving a kiss on each of my shoulder caps when he was done. “And I fucking love your boobs,” he commented happily, nuzzling his nose in the crevice of them.

I was smiling the entire time he did this. Every so often his lips would tickle my skin a funny way, making my nose crinkle. I tried so hard to hold in my laughter and most of the time he made me all squirmy inside. My skin was on fire and the surface of it was all tingly.

He then shifted his body down a little and scooted up my shirt by nudging it with his nose. “And your stomach,” he moaned. His lips traced over it and I could feel his tongue wet against my skin when he moved his tongue in circles. This was getting a lot more intimate now, and I could tell Alex was becoming more serious. “Your legs, god, I love your sexy legs,” he breathed with a growl from the back of his throat and roughly running his hands up and down them, feeling up the inner thigh and down on the outer.

He eyes shifted up a little more, very slowly, to my hips. I watched as he studied them dangerously, clenching his jaw, his frustration growing a little more. “Fuck, Lorraine.” His lips were barely hovering above my hip bones. They taunted him, just slightly hanging over the top of my hip-hugging shorts. He lowered his mouth and I jumped when I felt his teeth bite my hip bones.

He hovered there a little longer. My breath was caught in my throat as I waited and wondered about what he was going to do next. Promptly, with no warning at all, Alex’s face whisked up to mine again and he grabbed me as hard as he could, letting his hands travel all over me. His desperate, violent hands tried to claw me closer to him. He could fit his hands around my rib cage and he tried to press me closer to him still.

He then encircled his hands around and under my back, frantically grabbing at me. They ran up my back, up my neck and he roughly tangled them in my hair and forced my face closer still to him. Our eyes were mere millimeters apart. We were so close that I couldn’t even focus on them at all. Our noses were pressed together and our lips were just as close as our eyes were to each other. He panted his hot, sticky breath against me, our lips sometimes grazing from his deep breathing.

His eyes had changed. They had darkened. They had filled with desire. He looked hungrily over my body. I could tell he was frustrated. There was so much passion within him and I felt the fervor radiating off of him. I could feel it in the roughness of his touch and how he wanted to be closer to me than physically possible. It wasn’t just lust, the feeling of wanting someone. No, it was the need to be with them, and how it was unbearable to know it was impossible to stay away, to stop touching, to stop thinking about them, to stop wanting more of them. I knew how he felt; you can only get so close to a person before you can’t press into them anymore, or hold them any tighter. It wasn’t possible unless you were literally in their body, as one. It was an excruciating and agonizing feeling that filled your gut and it was almost painful how much you wanted it, wanted squeeze them as hard as you could but you couldn’t because it would break them, wanted to hold onto them with the tightest grip that it might break your hand, wanted to be in them, wanted to be one.

I looked back up at him intensely, my breath held, and wondered what he was going to do. I was almost scared. That look in his eyes was something I had never seen before. He looked so frustrated, overwhelmed, like he was struggling internally.

After a few moments of us staring at each other so powerfully, Alex leaned down and captured my lips with his. He gave me one of the tenderest kisses, opposite of everything he had just done. It was so soft and gentle, no forcefulness and no feeling of aggressive want. His lips moved slowly so we could savor it all.

With his elbows on either side of my head, he cupped my cheeks and backed his head away the littlest bit. His burning brown eyes studied the lips he had just got done kissing before gazing upward to meet my same brown eyes.

“Lorraine,” he voice murmured, so soft I could only hear it because he was so close to me. I continued to look at him, wanting him to keep going. I begged him with my eyes to finish his sentence. He looked nervous and there was a flash of indecisiveness and worry on his face. I had seen it before; he was wondering if he was going to cross a boundary. I stared at him with pleading eyes, becoming scared of what he might say. Finally, in the softest voice, softer than his murmur before, he whispered, “Lorraine, I love you.” My blood froze. “I love every part of you.” I stayed still. I studied his eyes with mine, the feeling of happiness building up inside of me as I did. His intense eyes stared deeply into mine as he spoke, “I love you so much.” The feeling started to bubble in the pit of my stomach, rising up to my chest where Alex’s hearts was pressed and beating against mine, and then to my lips, where the biggest smile I had ever given appeared.

I situated myself, shifting my arms out from under him so I was in a better position. Alex’s eyes followed my every single motion, still looking at me apprehensively. Delicately, I cupped either side of his face. “I love you, Alex. I love you too.”

In one swift motion, he stooped down and captured my lips with his in the most passionate kiss. When he pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine and we lay like that for a while. His sweet breath hitting my face and every so often Alex brushed our noses together.

Relief washed over his face, not only because I had said it back, but just for the fact that he hadn’t scared me off or say something too soon. It definitely hadn’t been too soon. We had been dating for almost ten months, but we had known each other our entire lives.

Alex had a strand of my hair was wrapped around his finger, lazily curling it and uncurling by spinning his wrist. He still hovered over me, but eventually became tired of supporting himself, so he let his arms go slack and settled with sprawling out on top of me. I was lying with eyes closed the entire time, enjoying the relaxation his actions brought me and the warm sun rays against my face.

“Your phone is ringing, Laney,” Alex told me absentmindedly when he felt it vibrating against his leg, continuing to play with my hair. With the sun in my eyes, I peeked one open and held the other shut as to not be blinded and looked down at where my phone was. “I’ll get it.”

Alex pushed his body off of me and reached in the front of my jeans pocket, digging around to try and get it. “Come on, Alex!” I smacked his shoulder lightly when I realized he was taking extra time and just wiggling his fingers around. He smirked and eventually pulled out my phone, handed it to me and then resumed his position of on top of me and crushing me.

Pressing the cell phone to my ear, I stopped the singing ringtone and answered. “Hello?” Alex didn’t go back to playing with my hair; instead he rested his head in the hollow of my neck. He started to plant small kisses, tracing my jaw bone all the way over to my ear and then down to my clavicle. “Oh, hi Mom,” I tried to emphasize, but Alex thought it would be funny to tease me even more.

To stop him, I grabbed the top of his head with my long fingers like a claw to try to hold him still and push him off of my neck, but it only held his lips against the soft spot under my jaw. Not being able to move his head, Alex resorted to tracing tiny patterns with his tongue on my skin. Immediately goose bumps arose on my skin as I tried to listen to what my mom was telling me.

Luckily I kept my focus, hearing pretty much the gist of what my mom needed, and made it through the phone call. Hanging it up, I tossed it to the side and Alex raised his head to smirk at me.

“You’re bad,” I scolded.

“I know,” Alex shrugged with a teasing smile and hiding his face in my neck again. “Mmmm…” He nibbled on my ear and gave me a couple more of his butterfly kisses and then detached his lips. Slowly, he rolled his body off of me, but stayed on his side and grabbed me and rolled me on my side too so we were facing each other. “You smell delicious.”

“Really?”

“Mmhmm. I could eat you.”

“Hmm…” I propped my head up with my hand and looked at him. “You can’t eat me, Lex.”

“I could if I wanted to,” he teased, inching closer.

“Nuh-uh. I wouldn’t let you. Plus, I’m pretty sure my boyfriend would beat you up.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Most definitely. He’s super strong and attractive. He could probably just look at you and you would back down from just gazing into his smoldering eyes.”

“So he has nice eyes?”

I stared at him deeply and blushed. “Only the most beautiful eyes for the handsomest face.”

Alex couldn’t help it and smiled at that.. “Well, he better keep you safe, sweetums,” he said, going back to our joking conversation. “You’re too good for him to be taken away from him.” I grinned elatedly at him and he sent me a wink back. “But I am still hungry for something yummy you know,” he threatened, grabbing my waist.

I flinched after feeling him tickle my middle a little. “Well, my mom is making cookies?”

“Oh really? I could definitely go for some of Cheryl’s home-baked goods.”

“But she called to say we should pick up some eggs because she only had one left,” I informed him, tracing patterns on his forearm with my finger.

“Oh god!” Alex exclaimed. “I don’t think she should trust us getting eggs again. You know what happened the last time!” I laughed along with him. “But then again,” he said after thinking about it more, “I wouldn’t mind getting lost with you again.”

Flashbacks of us stumbling around the forest filled my mind. From crossing the street and not ever again looking back at our broken down car, to climbing over giant rocks and falling flat on my face. The angry looks Alex had given me, the horrible things I had done to him and said to him. Our weak bodies trudging around aimlessly and the bad arguments we had. I could still see myself crying on the log and Alex giving me a hug and I still could feel the pain of my throbbing ankle that I had to live with for the six days we were in there. I saw the tears that I shed, the sweat and dirt on our bodies, the clothes that hung off of us and the pain we went through. But for some reason, whenever I thought back to that “adventure,” the kiss that Alex and I shared is what stuck out most among all of the pretty follies.

“Gosh, I wonder what would end up happening this time if we did.”

Alex looked thoughtfully, “I’m thinking…a little kinkier this time. Like, let’s step it up a notch: sex on the forest floor.”

“See? Why. Why do you always ruin it?”

Alex just laughed and laced our fingers together. “I have to Gaskarth-ify everything. It’s kind of part of the package deal, Laney.” I laughed this time too. He planted a sweet kiss on my lips and then I gave him one in return. After that, he gave me another kiss, so I of course, returned the gift. That caused us to begin an extreme kiss war and we started bombing each other with our affection, distracting us for a couple of minutes.

“Your mom is probably waiting for us,” Alex said, bitter to have to stop and untangling himself from me, standing up and brushing himself off. “Ready to go?”

“Mmhmm.” He reached down and grabbed my hands to pull me up with him. Once I was up, I picked off the tiny pieces of grass that were stuck to my skin and when I was ready, Alex took my hand in his. I instinctively laced our fingers together tightly and we began to stroll back to his house instead of the grocery store. We decided that stealing a couple eggs from the Gaskarth’s refrigerator was a better idea than traveling all the way to the store; we just couldn’t risk it.

When I had gone back to Michigan for school that last fall, I think all my friends had thought that I was crazy, that maybe I had hit my head too hard or the ankle infection somehow messed with the chemicals in my brain, causing me to not think right. They claimed my mind was hazy and that had been the reason Alex and I hooked up in the forest. But the truth was it had been the clearest both of us had ever thought in our entire lives.

The truth was I, Lorraine Johnson, was pretty much in love with Alex Gaskarth.