What happens when you're just a story written under the moonlit sky? What happens when the only boy you love becomes a faded memory of just someone you used to know? What happens when you can't get your heart back, but that boy left you tattered and...
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One of the most amazing feelings in this world is when Remi would lay her head on my chest. It lifted every weight held down by the cruel reality this world held. My world held. Things she didn't know.
After our fight and I told her why I had to wait, she stood there looking up at me with a look of gratitude that I was waiting for her, and a sadness that I was waiting just the same. Before she could dwell too long on it though, I interlaced our fingers and pulled her to a bench. She proceeded to sit in my lap and place her head on my chest. Like my heartbeat helped calm her down.
How did our fun night out go from being perfect to chaos? I had so much in my past I regretted. I hated how it followed me around. "After my dad died, I went down a rabbit hole. I found an escape in girls who were fine with only having a good time." How could I tell her the whole truth of it? "I liked the high it gave me. It was the only time I felt in control after my world fell apart."
I heard her sharp intake of breath and it gutted me. I didn't want her to carry the weights of regret like I did. "What makes me different?" Her whisper was barely audible over the chill of the wind.
"I always saw you looking at me through your window. Sometimes I wondered why you would just stare. Other times I would see you and your parents out in the yard. You were all smiling and laughing. On the night before the storm, you and your dad were getting out of his truck and laughing. Your laugh felt like a freedom I could relish in. Like it could take away all the bad and leave me with all the good. The next night Daryle was drunk. He hit me for the first time, and when I walked out to leave, the snowstorm stopped me. But then I looked over at your window and I just found my way over to your house." She lifted her head to look at my face. Her browns were shimmering in tears she tried hard not to let fall. "When I saw your face that night and the way you looked up at me in the moonlight, I knew you were different, because no one ever looked at me that way."
"How do I look at you?" She asked me.
I took in a breath. "Like nothing else matters." I told her. "Like when you see me, you see the good no one else sees. Like the only bad thing you could possibly do is see anything good in me." I placed my lips gently against her forehead and kissed her. "The way you look at me is like not a thing else matters, because when you look at me, I'm all you see. But Remi, you're all I see too."
She takes a deep breath then lets it out. "I'm scared." It's barely audible, but still, I hear it.
Placing my finger and thumb on her chin, I lift her face up to mine. "What are you scared of darlin'?"
She tries to look away, but I tangle my hand in the dark strands of her hair making her look at me. She looks all around my face before finally speaking. "You leaving." Her voice trembled as she spoke. "What does that mean for us?"
Getting out of Jackson has been the only thing I have wanted since I was sixteen. The only thing that kept me holding on. The only thing that makes sense, when this place holds too much bad. I look into her brown eyes. They are speckled with flecks of gold that shine in the moonlight overhead. She keeps me grounded in more ways than one. She is like a light that keeps shining in the middle of my darkness.
"Does that mean we end Zachariah?" Her lip quivers as she speaks, and I'm mentally kicking myself for always making her question herself with me.
"Getting out of here is inevitable. It has to happen for my sanity Remi. I can't stay in this town. Heck, I don't think I can stay in Kentucky." A single tear falls down her face. I trace it with my eyes and watch as it falls off her chin and into my jacket. "But you are all I see Remi. So, if that means I have to come back to see you, then I will. If that means I have to wait and drag you away from here when you graduate, then I will do that too."
We sat in silence for a long time after that. I never fully told this girl my true feelings for her. She was too good for me in ways she just didn't understand. One day she would realize her worth and leave me. That's what I always thought anyway. I never thought it would be me leaving her, even if I had pure intentions at the time.
We danced outside of "Bubba's" while the slow melodies of old country music filtered to the outside parking lot. When she was shivering against me, I wrapped her in my jacket and drove her home. I didn't kiss her good night that night. I was serious when I said we needed to go slow. Something else she would realize one day was I had no intention of taking something that wasn't mine. And while I may have had her for a time, that beautiful dark-haired girl would never be mine. I would just be a chapter in her story. That girl, she would be the whole dang book mine was centered around.
