He put his arms around her, enclosing her completely as if he didn’t want even the intangible to escape.
She was a thin, a thin burning flame, colorless yet fresh. Her smile came first slowly, shy and bold, as if all the life of that little body had gathered for a moment around her mouth and the rest of her was a wisp that the least wind would blow away. She was a changeling whose lips were the only point of contact with reality.
He was tempted to lean over and kiss away her tears.
She had magic in her pink palms and her cheeks lit to a lovely flame, like the thrilling flush of children after their cold baths in the evening.
She lent him her lips again for the faint brush of a kiss.
He was remembering too vividly the youth and freshness of her lips.
This is how we are: we fall in love with each other’s strengths, but love deepens towards permanence when we fall in love with each other’s weaknesses.
Sometimes there would be couples, arm in arm – laughing, happy, amorous. Victims of an enormous fraud, and at the same time its perpetrators, or so I felt.
If you took all the trouble most girls got into as teenagers and boiled it down for twenty-four hours, you’d wind up with something the size of a Snickers candy bar. But if you melted down all the trouble Gillian Owens got herself into, not to mention all the grief she caused, you’d have yourself a sticky mess as tall as the statehouse of Boston.
I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then...
Intimacy and romance are not synonymous.
Whatever problems we might be facing – and I knew there were plenty – we were together. Forever. And that was enough.
Each kiss was nearer to the last one of all.
I know the devices of a demon. I was taught as a child about the demon lover. I was told about a beautiful temptress who came to a young man’s room. And he, if he were wise, would demand that she turn around, because demons and witches have no back, only what they wish to present to you.
I had to face: I had chosen. My choice, this was love. I had chosen I think the way out of the chains of the cage. I needed this woman. Without her to choose over myself, there was only pain and not choosing, rolling drunkenly and making fantasies of death.
During this period, so many important events have occurred, and such changes in men and things have taken place, as the compass of a letter would give you but an inadequate idea of. None of which events, however, nor all of them together, have been able to eradicate from my mind, the recollection of those happy moments – the happiest of my life – which I have enjoyed in your company.
She’d thought there was no greater connection than destiny decreeing them joined. But there was – the choice they’d made to love each other.
Those years ago when I was down in that basement, I wish I had known that on the other side of the world, there was a bold little girl fighting for her pride. And that she would come into my life one day to make it brighter.
It’s easy to look at people and make quick judgments about them, their present and their past, but you’d be amazed at the pain and tears a single smile hides. What a person shows to the world is only one tiny facet of the iceberg hidden from sight. And more often then not, it’s lined with cracks and scars that go all the way to the foundation of their soul.
In true Bastien form – and keeping in mind that he’s only seven at the time – he yanks off his helmet, throws his backpack down, and lies on the ground, using the helmet for a pillow, and says to them, and I quote verbatim, ‘Later, bitches. I’m done for the day. Y’all can carry me home or call for a lift. Either way, I ain’t moving from here. My ass is too precious for this abuse.