a cottage secret

inner power

 Betty took Florence home and, as soon as the city girl turned her back to get inside her big house, she started to cry. Her girlfriend's words resonated within her and shook her to her core. She knew she had limited time, but she didn't think there were so many choices in the middle of it.

The redheaded girl had never had anything like that so to her, personally, that was it. Florence was the woman of her life and people who'd come by afterwards in her life would always be compared to that shiny city girl.

She knew she was the type of person who'd have one big love and that was it. An all-consuming, unforgettable type of love. She knew she'd give her heart gladly to the person she loved, even knowing all risks of heartbreak and distrust.

And, although they hadn't said those three magical words, they had said it in non-verbal ways. In holding each other's hands through the woods, preparing food to one another, sneaking out to see each other when the night is dark and the world's quiet, in touching foreheads when sadness comes in uninvited, in locking lips with nature singing around them.

To Betty, that was love. It was love to wake up thinking about her, about how she could make her day better. It was love to lie down in bed, needing her to be there. It was love to picture a future with her, a cozy cottage full of plants and animals and the smell of autumn. It was love to trust her, to share all her thoughts fearlessly. It was love to be able to be completely oneself around her, to discover more about herself than she would have if she had stayed alone.

But the end was eminent and she couldn't control that. Florence would go away, she had to. Betty could not let her stay for the sake of a teenage love, to give up on her dreams of going away and getting to know the world because she thought they had something great.

The girl deserved to live more than that provincial life. And she wasn't going to stop her.

She just wanted the girl to be happy. And if that meant her leaving with a broken heart, that was fine by her.

That's what being human and loving is all about, anyway. She was happy she got to live that.

However, Florence wasn't so positive about it. Her heart was aching. She had to choose. Leaving, as she always wanted, or staying and being closer to the girl she was in love with.

Before talking to her grandma, she hadn't realized that was one of those moments in life where you need to make a choice that will set the path for your future. But now that she knew that, she felt that that responsibility was far too heavy for her to handle. She was only eighteen, after all.

Even though she wasn't a kid anymore, she wished her mom was there to cuddle her until she fell asleep and everything was but a dream. However, she was a grownup now – regardless of having the knowledge to be so.

Instead of falling sleep, she stayed all night awake. When the sun came to her window, she went to the bathroom and took a long, healing shower. Afterwards, she went downstairs and prepared a nice breakfast for her grandmother. She felt like she needed to give back after all the generosity she got from her, letting her stay in her house and shake up her world for that summer like that.

Barbara went downstairs and smiled when she saw her granddaughter. The old woman had her hair all over the place and she was still wearing her nightgown.

"Good morning, sweetie." She looked at the table, full of food like a plate full of eggs and sausages, warm buns and fresh orange juice. "What's all this?"