Fire Meets Gasoline : Wildfire

Chapter Three : Expeditious

MIKE TORRENTES. As John and I promised each other something as random as getting a toy from those carnival machines, we went fishing in the same place for a few hours. We didn't get any fish, but just by being close to John brought a comfort I didn't know it still existed. The truth was that when I found him in that LA nightclub, I was sure things wouldn't be the same as it was in Elpida, but slowly things started taking shape, and when we least expected, John and I were once again close to each other.

"You wanted to be a florist?" I asked him while we were talking about our dreams.

"Yes! Don't look at me like that though!" He hid away with his hands while laughing.

"No, I mean I get it! Flowers are pretty!" I tried to make him feel better.

"It's not just about the flowers being pretty" He explained "They give me some comfort".

"You never mentioned that before!"

"I honestly forgot about it. Only remembered after picking Julia's flowers" He pulled his string from the water.

"You never told me what you wanted to be either" John pointed out.

I took some time to take in what he said. He was right. I never mentioned my dreams to anyone, because honestly I never had one, and if I did, I never had the chance to find out. My dad was always at the doorstep of my mind waiting to just slam the door each time I had a motive to do something, and if that wasn't enough, I got comfortable just going by the moment.

"Working at a coffee shop would be good..." I said it out loud.

John looked at me a bit confused.

"Okay the person who wants to work with flowers should not be looking at me like that!" I alerted him jokingly.

"It's not that. It's just-"

"My dream is not working at a Starbucks! I want to have my own little coffee shop!" I tried explaining myself.

"We can do that!" John suddenly responded.

"We?"

"I mean. That's a probable thing to happen. We just gotta resolve the police thing".

I sighed at his words and decided to take a bit of my attention towards the river that shined with the sun setting down in the west. John and I talked a lot that day, about our dreams, fears, curiosity, and even about the people we used to hate in high school. It was nice having a true connection with him after so long. Something was different though, that being we both had changed a lot. I don't know if John ever thought about that the same way I did, but I could notice the change in our personality. John was more confident, he was still shy and would usually walk in eggshells with his words upon his head, but he changed. I was still in my own way fearless, but I wanted to hear more from him, I wanted to share an experience rather than being the experience itself, there was a sense of distribution within my feelings, some weird shit was happening to me, that's all I meant to say.

It was night when John and I noticed how fucked we were if we would get lost, so we started going back and trying our best to see the trailer lights up in the hill. As I walked behind John, trying to to pick upon his pace, I saw the clear and  ostentatious river, the water was so clear yet so dark in the mix of the night, and I knew it was cold since we were in the middle to end of December, but I wanted to get in anyway, and that's what I did. I slowly took off my clothes until I had nothing but my red boxer on. I folded the clothes in my arm and bit my lip from the cold wind I felt upon my legs.

John was startled as he saw me diving in the water with nothing but my boxer on, he screamed my name many times and tried to get my attention, and all I did was swim away from the shore and feel my feet slowly freeze.