"out on the wily, windy moors,
we'd roll and fall in green.
you had a temper like my jealousy,
too hot, too greedy.
how could you leave me
when i needed to possess you?
i hated you, i loved you, too."
-"wuthering heights", kate bush
Marla closed the hatch at the back of her rental car, and she turned to Sam. The hot California sun beat down on both of their heads. The trees were already changing from healthy green to an autumnal yellow despite it being the middle of summer. The soil underneath them and the low sparsely forested foothills around them yearned for rain, and she kept her gaze fixated on the glass front door up the walkway from her.
It felt like forever since Sam had been to Lake Elsinore and what better way than to genuinely live by the lake as she began her senior project. Everything was as dry as a bone, and Marla's own caress upon her upper arms meant that the dryness would in fact persist throughout. Sam tucked her free hand into one pocket and she could feel the edge of the paper against her skin.
"God, I know it's hot but I feel it getting cold soon, though," Marla confessed.
"That's the West Coast for you," Sam told her. "The assumption is always one of 'oh, it's always so hot in California—surprised it doesn't catch fire more.' But it's actually cold and dry here, though. It's not like New York where you guys have the lakes and the Gulf Stream nearby."
"By the way, did you tell Aurora?" Marla asked her.
"I did," Sam replied, but she realized that she never did tell Aurora that she was going out to California over the summer, especially since she was due to give birth to her baby any day at that point. She never told her when she would be coming back, either. That is if she ever came back. Bill still never elaborated on what she was to do out there in the Golden State, even on the flight over from New York. If anything, he was awful quiet the whole way, especially with Marla right next to her on in that single row of seats.
Marla herself meanwhile had kept the black hair from the winter months, however she changed the electric blue streak to one of electric pink, and she added a second streak on the opposite side of her head as well. She tucked a single strand behind her ear right then.
"I can't believe you're actually here," she confessed.
"I can't, either," Sam said with a raise of her eyebrows. "But the boys are all up the road, though. If I find the time, I'll drive up there and at the very least visit Cliff."
"That's definitely a must. Your couch is still stashed at my apartment, by the way. You know, when you moved in with me, you had to stash that thing. I might just keep it."
"Hey, it's a comfy couch, you might as well. And I might be back come Christmas, who knows?"
"Miss Shelley?" Bill called from the front door right then. Sam raised her eyebrows at him.
"What's up?" she called out to him. He hurried out of the front door with something flat tucked underneath his arm.
"Hey, that's right, yeah," Marla said with a nod.
"I don't know why I keep thinking it's going to be like forever," Sam confessed, "I think it's the whole 'pick up and move across the country' kinda thing, to be honest."
"I think it is, too," Marla agreed, "going that far and being far away this whole entire time, you get kind of final in your thoughts." He skidded to a stop before them as the words left her lips. He clicked a pen and showed Sam the clipboard with a blank white sheet of paper upon it.
"What's this?" she asked him.
"I'm gonna need you to sign this," he told her as he pointed at the line underneath the edge of the blank paper. "It's an agreement to show that you are in fact out here with me."
YOU ARE READING
souls of black | fever in, fever out
ChickLit*VOLUME 2* The deepening of the relationship between Sam and Joey, as well as Sam and that boy with the silver streak in his hair, as the world around them changes all too often, and all too quickly.
