Good Together

Chapter 10: First Dance

Rain fell as two young girls sprinted across the beach together. The first, just several steps of ahead of the second, wore her brown curly hair in two french braids that ended just above her shoulders. Her vision was blurred, rain fogging up her glasses, but she was undeterred. Lisa had a heart full of adventure. Despite the fact that her parents had been killed in a car crash a year earlier, Lisa had a vivacious grip on life.

“Come on, Jennie!” she yelled back to her friend as she hopped over a log and looked back over her shoulder.

Jennie, wavy blonde hair matted to her face, too short to pull back with a hair tie, fumbled her way through the sand to follow her friend. The brunette slowed down to allow for the blonde’s shorter legs to catch up with her. Jennie was always just several steps behind Lisa, their friendship one they’d shared since early childhood. They’d raced on the playground, the beach and in each other’s backyards. Jennie always just a step or so behind Lisa.

The brunette reached out for Jennie’s hand and the exact moment lightning struck barely feet away from them. Both girls screamed and Jennie leapt into Lisa’s embrace.

“We needa get outta here Lis!” Jennie yelled over the storm. They had other friends, of course, but they’d always been a ‘we’.

Lisa simply shook her head in response. “Don’tchya know?” she asked. “Lightning never strikes the same place twice. Besides, come ‘ere.”

Lisa grabbed Jennie’s hand and led her the few feet to the site of where the lightning had struck. The sand there was still smoking so Lisa held Jennie back with a hand as the younger girl looked down. “What is it?” Jennie asked.

“Once it cools, we’ll dig it up and I’ll show ya,” Lisa smiled. Lisa’s parents had been the one to tell her about how glass forms when lightning strikes sand.

“Ya know, you never answered my question from earlier, Lisa,” Jennie crossed her arms across her chest. “You said you wanna marry me, but that’s silly. We’re both girls. Why’d ya wanna marry me for anyhow?”

“Well before they died, my Momma and Daddy always told me that they got married ‘cuz they wanted to marry their best friend. And you’re my best friend,” Lisa answered matter-of-factly.

“That the only reason why you wanna marry me?” Jennie taunted.

“Well that, and so I can kiss ya anytime I want,” Lisa smiled, causing the smirk to fall from the younger girl’s face.

The two young girls leaned in at the same time and their lips touched tentatively. Lightning struck behind them. This time is was Lisa that yelped at the sudden sound of thunder and pulled Jennie to the ground.

“We’ll be safe here,” she repeated as the two friends sat beside the smoking sand, hands held tightly, but still smiling at having shared their first kisses with their best friend. Neither girl thinking about the fact that one day, they’d promise to be each other’s last kiss as well.

Jennie stood in the middle of the aisle in the backyard of the Gardner plantation. She was dressed in a full skirt, Vera Wang bridal gown, her hair elegantly pinned back, makeup artistically applied. Waiting for her at the end of the aisle was a man who wanted to marry her and provide for her everything he could. Surrounding her were aisles full of Manhattan’s elite alongside Polis Alabama’s everyday people.

Jennie Kim stood in the middle of them all, torn. Torn between the floppy-haired, well-groomed brunet at the end of the aisle and the brunette whose hair was more often knotted than not, clothes stained with grease and years of age.