a cottage secret

polaroids

Those last two weeks were too precious to be written into words.

Betty's mother let her stay in Barbara's house for as long as she wanted to because she wanted her kid to have the most amazing days of her life so far. She couldn't possibly deprive her girl from loving when she had such limited time.

The woman took upon herself to suffer as much as she could in behalf of her sister. She carried that sadness like an armor so her daughter wouldn't have to; so her daughter could take those two weeks and shape them into the happiest stories of her teenage years.

And the girl did it. She took those last fifteen days and wrote them as this beautiful part of a beautiful story, instead of a melancholic ending.

The two girls went on to have picnics in the wild, climbed the closest mountains to have the freshest air, picked the most beautiful flowers to give to each other, ran on every green field and played each other songs at night – Betty on the guitar, Florence on the piano.

Together, they created beautiful harmonies everyone around the house loved to watch. Together, they brought light and happiness to that big farm – a type of light and happiness that hadn't been there in years. Everyone was happy, even though they knew everything was coming to an end.

Betty and Florence made art about each other; the city girl drew her lover in the most colorful palette, when the countryside girl wrote beautiful lyrics about hers. They shared everything with each other, including the bed.

At night, after everyone had gone to sleep, they'd stay awake for long hours before dawn to kiss each other and roll under the blankets. They usually slept in and woke up at lunch time. Barbara never said anything, although she had an idea of what happened when she fell asleep. She just thought it was funny when they would go down, with messy hair buns and silly smiles on their faces.

One day, they took their bikes and went on a long and mysterious ride. They just wanted to feel the wind on their heads and faces, in shouting conversations, by themselves. When they did that, they felt completely free.

Freedom, after love, was what they felt the most for each other and with each other. Then and there, they learned that that's what love is supposed to be about: to be completely free to be oneself while being appreciated for that.

With Florence, Betty learned to look outside of her old comfort zone and was able to imagine a bigger future for herself. Being loved like she was, she realized there was a whole world and a whole life ahead of her and that she could take advantage of it, if she wanted to.

With Betty, Florence learned that having a home and being in love is, indeed, the greatest thing she could ever achieve. She understood that there was no need to run away from her problems, because they'd go away by themselves when she was happy and appreciated said happiness.

In that love, they were able to know a whole new world of possibilities to the future that they hadn't seen before.

Looking each other in the eye, they saw home. Destiny. Eternity. And, at that point, the fact that said eternity wasn't forever was okay. They enjoyed holding each other's hands too much to care about the ending at that point. They enjoyed touching lips, sharing a bed too much to care they had limited time.

Maybe there wasn't going to be an ending, after all. Maybe their story would follow them throughout life. Maybe that would keep being written as long as they wanted it to.

They would hold onto each other as long as they could, because they fit in each other too well. They would hold onto what they had for as long as they could because that relationship, even if brief, could define their choices for the rest of their lives.

Or maybe not. Maybe, after separated, they'd leave the past in the past and look for new people that would fit into that void the other left. But they weren't that type of people. They'd think about their love when everything else was quiet; when they'd close their eyes and think about a happy and calming time of their lives. And they'd text each other when that happened, just so the other person would know they haven't been forgotten and could never be forgotten.

Florence would look at the polaroid pictures she had of Betty with a hopeful heart. Hopeful to meet that girl again and take her places she had never been. Hopeful to be able to knock her door, years in the future, and ask her to join her in an adventure – in a life together.