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Belief
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to believe (verb): to have confidence in the truth, the existence, or the reliability
of something, although without absolute proof that one is right in doing so.
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Maybe it's the whole "end of life as one knows it" syndrome catching up with him in time of absolute weakness. Maybe it's the fact his ragtag army of "a few" has suddenly shrunk to "a couple" as one of his best friends walks out of his life for what he believes to be forever. He even thinks it might have something to do with the way he's been sleeping these last few nights, waking in a cold sweat from dreams he can barely recall as dawn sprawls into his tent.
He remembers waking up this morning to the sound of some unknown bird chirping sadly outside the doors of his humble abode. He's had trouble getting out of bed the past few days, his heart heavy and his feet unwilling to move from the little warmth that his blanket provides. The perfunctory tasks of living are driving him slowly to madness. He can't remember the last time he's smiled, and somehow, this thought frightens him more than anything that lies in the future.
His eyes flicker over the girl perhaps more often than they really should. The black-haired boy can't help himself; for what feels like the first time in a very long time, he is sure that she is in a more precarious situation than he is. He's always known that something looms before him, something he cannot escape and that grows closer each day, but that's just it; it looms. It isn't right here in this moment, which is the only place the girl's sorrow seems to be. It's painted on her face like a crude mask, through the dark circles under her eyes and the salty buildup on her cheeks. He can tell that she's been slipping away for almost a week now, and he can hardly bear to think what will happen if he loses her too.
They do what they have been doing for countless days now, scanning over text after text and chart after chart for any place they haven't thought of before this moment. There's an unspoken agreement between them that day, that there's very little else that can be accomplished because, to some extent, both have lost the will to try. But they move on, pretending for one another's sake that there's something very obvious that they're missing, neither one willing to admit defeat for fear of forcing the other to accept failure.
She hasn't really looked at him for a week. Her eyes scan the books in front of her as her lips move slowly and deliberately, careful not to look at him as she stands up and softly excuses herself for a drink of water. He knows that she's been crying through the entire night, sniffling until the dawn lights shocked the top of their makeshift home. Somewhere before the twilight set in, he had sat on the edge of her bed, stroking her hair in some feeble attempt to help ease the pain that they both bear like a cross, but she simply cried harder and pulled her legs to her chest as he walked away and felt a sharp pang on his forehead.
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He knows today that things are much different than they have ever been before. The rain continues through the entirety of the light hours, falling in sheets around them and he thinks for a moment that the small tent might crack under the pressure of all he water. She's not even remotely paying attention to her books anymore, her eyes flickering over the same lines of text without ever really reading them. She finally gives in, murmurs something about feeling claustrophobic in this tiny room, and heads for the door.
He watches in wonder as she pulls off her heavy sweater, placing it on the ground of the tent along with her wand, leaving herself in a blue blouse that one should hardly wear on a breezy spring afternoon, much less in the middle of a storm. She holds her finger on the wand for a second too long, touching it like he imagines she would touch a child, before dropping her hand to the side. Before he can ask where she's going, she leaves, going into the pouring rain without so much as an umbrella or the means to conjure one. The flap of the tent is wide open enough for him to see that's she's not gone too far, simply a few feet from their house of sorts, and he watches as she sits on the ground, allowing the rains to cleanse her.
The boy has always been very aware of how he feels about the brown eyed girl. She is his best friend, after all. But he's very aware as she sits outside in the falling rain that she is not his sister, not the way he often tells himself he loves her as, and, for the time being, she's not the girl his other best friend has fallen in love with. She's turned into somebody completely different in the last few days, a shell of a person he once knew and cared for, but something stirs in him in that second, and he remains transfixed on her weeping image for what feels like hours more.
The wave of emotion hit him so suddenly that he is startled by it. He doesn't understand how it started until it is already there, forcing him to sit down and clutch at his heart. All he really knows is that one moment he is fingering the locket around his neck, feeling the weight of the implication and object multiplied, and in the next moment, he feels a tear slide down his cheek. He tries not to cry so loud that she hears him; he somehow knows that the moment he starts showing his own reluctance and mistrust of himself that she might too leave him, believing her friend to be incapable of completing the one task he was entrusted with. He stands up calmly, trying to keep his tears to a minimum, and heads for his bed in hopes of retiring to it without making a scene.
The wind rushes in, and he looks back to the front flap of the tent. She's there, dripping all over the floor. A sad knowledge blazes in her eyes as she steps almost uncomfortably close to him, her breathing rapid and shallow. For some reason, in that instance, it seems like a good idea to touch her hand softly with his own hand and he does so, his skin burning her skin. She's still crying as he pulls her closer, his other hand touching her face, brushing away the bluish tears that spill precariously down her face and then between her breasts. She flinches slightly, and he thinks for a second that she's feeling the same guilt that he ought to be feeling but strangely doesn't.
Before he knows what is happening, he's tugging off her soaking blue blouse from her frigid skin. At first her arms lay limp at her sides, unmoving, save for the boy lifting them off the wet clothing to undress her. He leans in and kisses her neck, knowing now that he is so much bolder than he imagined himself to be, and he can almost hear the blood coursing through his body with a warming sensation. He breathes her in deeply, smelling that she is dirty, but not the pungent dirty that one associates with old garbage cans, but rather the sweet scent of dirt and dew after it's rained for many long hours.
Her blouse drops to the floor, forgotten. She shivers, her hands covering her front like she is ashamed. For the first time in what seems like a century, he looks into her dark brown eyes, the small orbs filled with questions he scarcely has the answers for. On an impulse, he grabs the hands that cover her chest, and slide them down her sides and says something that sounds like 'beautiful' but really, neither one of them is sure exactly what he said at all.
His body covers hers then, and he finally kisses her mouth, demanding and terribly fervent. He can feel her heartbeat through her skin as he puts one hand on the small of her back, pulling her closer. And then she's kissing him back, and he's kissing her back again, and suddenly it's very hard to figure out where his heartbeat stops and hers begins.
He wonders for the briefest of moments, as she unfastens the button on his jeans and pulls him onto the quiet comfort of her bed, if, just maybe, he did love her all along. Maybe the younger redheaded girl was a substitute for something he never thought he could have in the first place because he never believed she could want him back. He's sure he's in love with that fiery young woman, but he knows that love isn't always what it seems.
But then the brown-haired girl's hands are in his hair and trailing up his back and skimming down his thighs and he doesn't really care to think anymore.
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Afterward, as he holds her fiercely against his bare chest, he tells himself that it was grief that drove him tonight. Sadness for the red-haired girl he left behind, sadness for her brother who left him behind, and the desperation that comes with recognizing one's own limitations. The black-haired boy convinces himself that she's done it for the same reasons, because everybody knows that she never loved him, not like this, and therefore she must have committed this act for reasons that few would dare speak of. He says it over and over, a mantra of sorts, that grief makes one do terrible, terrible things, and that this is a perfect example.
But some part of his mind is uneasy as she turns over in their small bed, her hands unconsciously winding around his naked waist as he pulls her closer. For the first time that evening, he feels guilty about being with her like this, not because he feels as if he has been cheating or that she has been cheating, but because he knows how selfish he has been. Silly him, believing that she loves him like this. He doesn't even know if he loves her like this. He knows there's something here, something much deeper than he had ever given it credit for, and for that knowledge he is thankful because he doesn't know if he can stand the loneliness he's been consumed with for so long anymore.
She pulls him impossibly closer, and sighs gently into his skin.
She doesn't cry that night in her sleep.
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He wakes the next morning with a sense of calm that has eluded him for far too long. He pulls on his trousers, torn and stained though they are, and feels his heart sink as he realizes that he is alone again, the thunder from the impending storm rolling above his head.
After pulling on the rest of his clothes, the boy walks into the main area of the tent, waiting for something to happen, though he is not quite sure what that is. He sees her stirring the water in a pot gently, looking over as he walks into the room. Uncertainty clouds his face as he comes closer to her, heart racing. She smiles the same sad and quiet smile she has since they departed as if nothing has transpired, and for a brief moment, he believes the whole encounter was some sort of dream he needed to have to regenerate his soul.
But then he sees the marks on her neck, and he can almost still smell himself on her as she crosses across the tent, carrying who knows which heavy text in an attempt to distance herself from him. He hates himself now, knowing that he took away something from her last night, even though she herself seemed willing to give it.
When he comes up next to her, words struggling to come out of his mouth, she stands and holds his hands. Gently, almost too gently, she kisses him, and he knows that he doesn't need to say anything.
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"I love you," she says once in her sleep that night, as she rolls over and clutches tightly at the tear-stained pillow beneath her. "I always have."
He believes it's meant for him, but he won't ask in the morning.
Fin
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Disclaimer: I don't own it. But you knew that already, didn't you?