Red and Dying Evening
1.
"I can feel the chill of December now," she says, staring wistfully up at the patch of stars. "It feels like Winter." She does a twirl in the softly falling snow. She almost falls, but laughs at herself and catches herself before she can hit the ground. "But it's not. Funny how what we think of as Winter, like, all of December, isn't actually Winter and it doesn't even begin until the end of the month." She looks at me and smiles, blushes, then goes back to twirling under the snowy clouds and night sky. "I just think it's silly, you know?"
I nod; I'm smiling widely, watching her amuse herself in the glow of the moon in my backyard. She's so precious and wonderful and inquisitive. "I think Winter is the only season like that. It's always kind of annoyed me."
She stops and steals my gaze again, then skips over and pulls me up from my bench. "Dance with me!"
So I do. We don't say much for a while, just laugh at our mishaps and smile at each other. But she pulls me close and whispers in my ear, "I love you, my dear." And then she kisses me.
"I love you too." I taste her on my lips.
We're sitting on my living room floor, she curled up on my side and a fire crackling in front of us to overheat our faces. I look down to find her looking up at me, the fire reflected in her eyes. She smiles slightly and rips her eyes away, as if we were school kids and I'd just caught her staring at me from across the room. We're far from that awkward cute stage.
I kiss the top of her head and she sighs contentedly, sinking deeper onto me.
She falls asleep on the couch in front of the fire, and soon after, I reduce it to glowing embers and place a quilt over her. As I begin to walk away, she sits up groggily. "Now I'm cold." She's pouting. I can't resist but to join her under the quilt and kiss her.
She kisses me back, seemingly not as asleep as she had been the second before. We kiss more, and more, and more, and more.
We make love for the first time that night.
In the morning, I drive her home even though I’ve yet to get my permit. Her favorite album is blasting through the speakers of my parents' car. It's still snowing around us.
At her door, she twirls around in the sticking snow again and pulls me into a kiss.
"Oh my god, I love you," I say in a breath.
"I love you too, my dear."
A smile caught my lip as I stared out the window, watching the tiny white crystals twirl to the ground. I remembered that day, every time it snowed. It had been what, two years now? Three? I couldn't recall. But it didn't matter; the memory was just as fresh in my head as if it happened just last week.
Taking a deep breath, I turned from the frost-bitten glass. My room was still the same as it had always been: a beaten guitar case sat in the corner, several posters just barely clung to the walls by small scraps of Scotch tape, and Polaroid pictures of better days covered the cork board above my bed.
My phone, resting on the far end of my bed, lit up a second after I turned to face it. A text message from the one and only girl of my dreams. What the hell was she doing texting me? It’d been almost a year.
“Hey.” The message read. Just an apathetic little greeting, after all that time and heartbreak.
“Hi, for once,” I text back, gritting my teeth and trying to seem nonchalant about the fact she was even attempting to talk to me.
“Can... we be friends?”
Friends. What? My heart jumped out of my chest. She was asking me to be friends, after so long of non-communication, after so long of our hidden resentments, after so long that I'd grown used to her being a distant force. I sighed, frustrated, contemplating my options. It was all I’d really wanted, honestly, to reconnect with her, in some way, shape, or form. Wasn’t it?
I decided it was. “Uh...sure.”
“Great! :)”
A smiley face. A fucking smiley face. It made it all okay, didn’t it? Everything she put me through, all the apologies she was going to owe? To her, it did. That’s just the way she was. The way she always was.
I gritted my teeth and sent a reply. “Yeah, really great.”
“Would you like to hang out sometime then?” There she went again, either oblivious as she could be, or ignoring my dark sarcasm, or just really evil. I honestly wasn’t sure which of the three.
“Um, I’ll think about it, okay?”
She took some time to reply, but when she finally did, it was a simple, chipper, “alrighty!”. But at least there was no smiley face that time.
“Want to hang out?” she asks for the millionth time that week.
“You know it,” I can’t help but grin when her name lights up on my phone. Any time.
“Awesome :) are you free tonight?”
“As always. Any movies you have in mind?” Every weekend, we resort to watching crappy movies in her parents’ basement, due to our lack of anything else to do. We usually don’t end up watching most of the movies anyway, ending up in tickle fights or wrestling or prank calling people or eating everything in her fridge.
“Not in particular. Let’s just see what I’ve got. Like usual. :P”
“:)” I don’t use emoticons very often, but something about talking to her makes me want to show my happiness with more than just the necessary punctuation.
“Be here at seven.” I glance at the clock. I have an hour.
I’m there at seven, right on the dot, knocking on her front door in my familiar pattern. The door is painted red with gold accents in the creases; I know it well. Immediately, she answers, smiling at me. Her scruffy little dog is wagging its tail, pressing between her legs and scratching at mine. He likes me just about as much as she does.
And thus begins our evening. We wind up watching Sweeney Todd and singing along to every song at the top of our lungs. We order pizza around eight, and it arrives a half-hour later. The pizza man that almost always delivers it for us is someone we know, a classmate of ours. We’re singing “A Little Priest” when she opens the door, and he rolls his eyes as he hands us our signature order: cheese pizza with stuffed crust and extra cheese. Cheese, cheese, cheese, for two cheesy people.
The movie ends sooner than we want it to, so we’re stuck under a pile of blankets with half a pizza on our laps with menu screen playing over and over in front of us. We look at each other, then laugh, knocking the box onto the floor. I make sure the pizza’s still all in the box, then, throwing caution to the wind, I curl up next to her.
Eventually, I steal a glance at the girl sitting beside me. Her eyes are trained forward intensely and her face is pink, as if she had been caught doing something wrong.
“Staring at me, are you?” A smile spreads across my face as she turns towards me.
“Now why would I do that?” She’s smiling brightly back at me. It steals my breath, at least momentarily. She’s gotten good at doing that.
“I don’t know, why wouldn’t you?” I flip my hair sarcastically. “I’m hot, don’t you know?”
She rolls her eyes. “Totally.” Her voice doesn’t sound completely sarcastic. I smile again, looking into her eyes.
We’re close now, closer than any moment before, our noses almost touching. And in a second, we’re even closer. I’m not sure who moves first, but our lips meet in the middle and my heart explodes with emotion. Her lips are sweet, if not tasting slightly like pizza.
Her kiss is sweet as well, entirely composed of the feelings we had been so terribly hiding from each other.
That was so fucking long ago. It felt like another lifetime, one where innocence still existed and broken hearts were a thing left to the imagination. It didn’t feel like it was a memory with the same girl who had just text messaged me. Not even close. Things had changed so drastically, in her life, in mine, and in her heart. What used to be so innocent and wonderful had been corrupted, turned into a beast that tore the heart from my chest.
And yet, I was still letting her back in to reawaken that beast. I couldn’t help it. She owned me, somewhere deep in my heart. There was still a part of me that ached, positively ached, for the innocence and wonder from the beginning, and even the good times past that I had had with her.
"Okay, when are you free?” I hated having to ask. Back then, I knew her schedule and she knew mine, to the exact second it seemed.
"Whenever, really.” She sounded like me. Still.
"Does Friday work, after school?” I almost expected her to say something like “you should know that already,” but after a moment of rational thought and a stabbing pain in my chest, I dismissed it.
"Yeah, let’s do it. :)”
I nearly threw my phone at the wall at the sight of that fucking smiley face.
I nod; I'm smiling widely, watching her amuse herself in the glow of the moon in my backyard. She's so precious and wonderful and inquisitive. "I think Winter is the only season like that. It's always kind of annoyed me."
She stops and steals my gaze again, then skips over and pulls me up from my bench. "Dance with me!"
So I do. We don't say much for a while, just laugh at our mishaps and smile at each other. But she pulls me close and whispers in my ear, "I love you, my dear." And then she kisses me.
"I love you too." I taste her on my lips.
We're sitting on my living room floor, she curled up on my side and a fire crackling in front of us to overheat our faces. I look down to find her looking up at me, the fire reflected in her eyes. She smiles slightly and rips her eyes away, as if we were school kids and I'd just caught her staring at me from across the room. We're far from that awkward cute stage.
I kiss the top of her head and she sighs contentedly, sinking deeper onto me.
She falls asleep on the couch in front of the fire, and soon after, I reduce it to glowing embers and place a quilt over her. As I begin to walk away, she sits up groggily. "Now I'm cold." She's pouting. I can't resist but to join her under the quilt and kiss her.
She kisses me back, seemingly not as asleep as she had been the second before. We kiss more, and more, and more, and more.
We make love for the first time that night.
In the morning, I drive her home even though I’ve yet to get my permit. Her favorite album is blasting through the speakers of my parents' car. It's still snowing around us.
At her door, she twirls around in the sticking snow again and pulls me into a kiss.
"Oh my god, I love you," I say in a breath.
"I love you too, my dear."
A smile caught my lip as I stared out the window, watching the tiny white crystals twirl to the ground. I remembered that day, every time it snowed. It had been what, two years now? Three? I couldn't recall. But it didn't matter; the memory was just as fresh in my head as if it happened just last week.
Taking a deep breath, I turned from the frost-bitten glass. My room was still the same as it had always been: a beaten guitar case sat in the corner, several posters just barely clung to the walls by small scraps of Scotch tape, and Polaroid pictures of better days covered the cork board above my bed.
My phone, resting on the far end of my bed, lit up a second after I turned to face it. A text message from the one and only girl of my dreams. What the hell was she doing texting me? It’d been almost a year.
“Hey.” The message read. Just an apathetic little greeting, after all that time and heartbreak.
“Hi, for once,” I text back, gritting my teeth and trying to seem nonchalant about the fact she was even attempting to talk to me.
“Can... we be friends?”
Friends. What? My heart jumped out of my chest. She was asking me to be friends, after so long of non-communication, after so long of our hidden resentments, after so long that I'd grown used to her being a distant force. I sighed, frustrated, contemplating my options. It was all I’d really wanted, honestly, to reconnect with her, in some way, shape, or form. Wasn’t it?
I decided it was. “Uh...sure.”
“Great! :)”
A smiley face. A fucking smiley face. It made it all okay, didn’t it? Everything she put me through, all the apologies she was going to owe? To her, it did. That’s just the way she was. The way she always was.
I gritted my teeth and sent a reply. “Yeah, really great.”
“Would you like to hang out sometime then?” There she went again, either oblivious as she could be, or ignoring my dark sarcasm, or just really evil. I honestly wasn’t sure which of the three.
“Um, I’ll think about it, okay?”
She took some time to reply, but when she finally did, it was a simple, chipper, “alrighty!”. But at least there was no smiley face that time.
“Want to hang out?” she asks for the millionth time that week.
“You know it,” I can’t help but grin when her name lights up on my phone. Any time.
“Awesome :) are you free tonight?”
“As always. Any movies you have in mind?” Every weekend, we resort to watching crappy movies in her parents’ basement, due to our lack of anything else to do. We usually don’t end up watching most of the movies anyway, ending up in tickle fights or wrestling or prank calling people or eating everything in her fridge.
“Not in particular. Let’s just see what I’ve got. Like usual. :P”
“:)” I don’t use emoticons very often, but something about talking to her makes me want to show my happiness with more than just the necessary punctuation.
“Be here at seven.” I glance at the clock. I have an hour.
I’m there at seven, right on the dot, knocking on her front door in my familiar pattern. The door is painted red with gold accents in the creases; I know it well. Immediately, she answers, smiling at me. Her scruffy little dog is wagging its tail, pressing between her legs and scratching at mine. He likes me just about as much as she does.
And thus begins our evening. We wind up watching Sweeney Todd and singing along to every song at the top of our lungs. We order pizza around eight, and it arrives a half-hour later. The pizza man that almost always delivers it for us is someone we know, a classmate of ours. We’re singing “A Little Priest” when she opens the door, and he rolls his eyes as he hands us our signature order: cheese pizza with stuffed crust and extra cheese. Cheese, cheese, cheese, for two cheesy people.
The movie ends sooner than we want it to, so we’re stuck under a pile of blankets with half a pizza on our laps with menu screen playing over and over in front of us. We look at each other, then laugh, knocking the box onto the floor. I make sure the pizza’s still all in the box, then, throwing caution to the wind, I curl up next to her.
Eventually, I steal a glance at the girl sitting beside me. Her eyes are trained forward intensely and her face is pink, as if she had been caught doing something wrong.
“Staring at me, are you?” A smile spreads across my face as she turns towards me.
“Now why would I do that?” She’s smiling brightly back at me. It steals my breath, at least momentarily. She’s gotten good at doing that.
“I don’t know, why wouldn’t you?” I flip my hair sarcastically. “I’m hot, don’t you know?”
She rolls her eyes. “Totally.” Her voice doesn’t sound completely sarcastic. I smile again, looking into her eyes.
We’re close now, closer than any moment before, our noses almost touching. And in a second, we’re even closer. I’m not sure who moves first, but our lips meet in the middle and my heart explodes with emotion. Her lips are sweet, if not tasting slightly like pizza.
Her kiss is sweet as well, entirely composed of the feelings we had been so terribly hiding from each other.
That was so fucking long ago. It felt like another lifetime, one where innocence still existed and broken hearts were a thing left to the imagination. It didn’t feel like it was a memory with the same girl who had just text messaged me. Not even close. Things had changed so drastically, in her life, in mine, and in her heart. What used to be so innocent and wonderful had been corrupted, turned into a beast that tore the heart from my chest.
And yet, I was still letting her back in to reawaken that beast. I couldn’t help it. She owned me, somewhere deep in my heart. There was still a part of me that ached, positively ached, for the innocence and wonder from the beginning, and even the good times past that I had had with her.
"Okay, when are you free?” I hated having to ask. Back then, I knew her schedule and she knew mine, to the exact second it seemed.
"Whenever, really.” She sounded like me. Still.
"Does Friday work, after school?” I almost expected her to say something like “you should know that already,” but after a moment of rational thought and a stabbing pain in my chest, I dismissed it.
"Yeah, let’s do it. :)”
I nearly threw my phone at the wall at the sight of that fucking smiley face.