Safe Haven

The first date John and I ever went on was nerve wracking to say the least. I’d forced my mother to help me despite all protests from my father. Even with it being John, the boy who’d basically been an addition to the family, he hadn’t been happy about the fact that his only daughter was officially dating.

For hours I’d fussed over my outfit, declaring nearly everything unsuitable as my mother patiently went through my closet with me. The woman was a saint, I swore. I’d almost called him four times to announce that I wouldn’t be able to go, that I was grounded or sick or on my period… anything to get out of my misery, but my mother had assured me that I would be fine.

Our actual date hadn’t been all that great. Anything and everything that could have gone wrong had. Eventually we just gave up and ended up crashing Ravenrot to watch a scary movie on his portable DVD player at the time.

Approaching his car as he sat on the hood in the parking lot near the lake, I felt nearly as nervous as I had getting ready.

He smiled softly as I walked up and cautiously sat beside him.

“How are you?” he asked from behind his ray bans.

“Pretty good,” I said, brushing my hair away from my face as I stared out over the water.

“You realize where we are, right?” he asked. “This is where we first kissed.”

“No we didn’t… Our first kiss was a block away from my house because we were afraid my father would go nuts…”

“Nope. Remember… We were like eight and Kennedy dared me to kiss you, and I did it.”

I smiled, remembering.

Us. Sun-kissed skin and the scent of coconut sunscreen our mothers had loaded us up with. Me and my friends drinking from cutesy, curled straws from our juice boxes as I sat in my red and white bathing suit. John in his white swim trunks, all bones and lean muscle that had yet to bulk. His friends laughing, and my friends chattering away about nail polish. Then his cherry Kool-Aid lips on mine without warning, without even seeing him approach and me kind of liking the sweetness of it all, but mostly grossed out at the thought of his mouth being on mine.

“That’s right. I was completely grossed out, and all of my friends made fun of you for the rest of the year behind your back.”

He shook his head, grinning. “He was such a bastard. I couldn’t just not do it…”

I laughed, finding myself leaning onto his shoulder without realizing it.

Without thinking, without even noticing, he wrapped his arm around me, holding me in place.

When we realized what we were doing we both pulled away from each other awkwardly and stared at the lake. “So… What did you exactly want to talk about?”

He shrugged. “Everything and nothing…” he admitted. John glanced over to me, studying my face before he ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know Marlow… I don’t even know where to start.”

“At the beginning would be a good place,” I offered meekly.

He smiled, shaking his head at my stupid joke. “You always were a woman of wisdom…” he said before turning serious. “I don’t know. I guess I just want to know where we stand, Marlow. Are we friends, are we more than that? Or is this it for us?”

I didn’t know.

There was no way to know.

Never in my life had I been so unsure of where we stood relationship wise. John and I always just worked – no questions, no complications: we just were friends and then we were each other’s girlfriend and boyfriend. There were no gray areas, no in-betweens. We either were or we weren’t.

Things weren’t that simple anymore.

I didn’t know how I felt, or how he even felt about me anymore. Time had changed the both of us – for better or worse. But whether or not we were on the same page anymore was a whole other topic.

And I wasn’t sure what I really wanted either.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I stared out at the water, letting everything soak in.

“I don’t know, John,” I sighed, running my hands down my face. “I really don’t.” It was the truth at its basic, rawest form.

We both had a lot of thinking to do.

And so we stared out at the lake holding back tears of uncertainty – tears of anger for having to be in this situation, tears of sadness for the time we’d lost, the time we would never be able to get back or even undo.