To Love Again

xiii

Blurry eyelids lifted, squinting, as they spied the naked and pure light of dawn that poured through the misty window. Instantly I was aware of the rise and fall of rhythmic breathing beneath me, making me rise abruptly as memory came knocking. Sleep drunken, I'd leaned a little too much into Blaze who suddenly shifted beside me.

"Good morning," he said, his voice breathy and tone dulcet-like.

Did my movement awaken him? "Good morning," I replied, looking down at tender eyes set beneath high eyebrows in a high forehead of a flawless face, framed with the tidiest possible hair given that he'd just spent the night in the most unbecoming position. Pangs of guilt swept through me at such a display of tenderness, presently impossible to reciprocate. His hand reached up to push a stray of my black locks behind my right ear, his light touch almost unveiling a tingle in me, almost. I ignored the urge to tidy my tresses, which I now imagined looked as trampled as an overused footpath, the thought coaxing me to escape the firm hold of his penetrating gaze; besides, I feared leading him on by returning his soft stares. I turned to peer out the front windshield, unrecognizing a thing from all the mist on the glass where streaks ran down on the outside.

"The rain has stopped, finally," he commented, his words capturing my attention again.

I turned my gaze upon him once more. "How long have you been awake?" I asked, giving in to finally smoothening my hair.

"A while," he replied. "You were sleeping so soundly, I didn't want to wake you." His smile broadened, evoking a hint of an alien warmth within me.

"Oh!" I turned to stare out the side window, through which droplets formed and slid down the outside, unveiling clearer streaks of daylight. Instinctively, I drew my hands onto the window, wiping at its mist, and better clearing the view.

An old wooden whitewashed storage shed, the size of a ten by twelve, stood reposed at the front of the compound, in front of a broad expanse of land behind a rusty wire fence. The shabby eaves beneath which we sheltered were home to a host of ornamental plants, a few, much overgrown for their pots and in dire need of weeding and transplanting.

"I'm glad you were able to sleep, given the circumstances." Blaze's voice cut in, interrupting my surveillance of our surroundings.

I looked sideways at him, his amiable eyes boring through me.

He sat upright and continued to appraise me, his eyes twinkling. "And I apologize for taking you out on a night such as last night."

He really had the kindest eyes I'd ever seen. Had he always had such kind eyes? "It's okay."

He looked at his watch. "It's now 9:30 a.m. The—."

I couldn't believe my ears. "What? It's so late?"

"It's this rainy weather," he replied. "Anyway, the officer from last night said that the road should be passable by this afternoon. Perhaps I can interest you in breakfast at a restaurant one village over, Aaron's Kitchen in Granville."

Oh, breakfast! I imagined an oncoming stomach grumble, any second now, from the thought of food. "Yes, that would be nice," I remarked.

He climbed into the driver's seat, and I followed and soon settled on the passenger's side. Not long afterward, we were headed to the restaurant, the drive to which was mostly consumed with reticence, except now and again to comment on nature's overnight rampage, the effects of which presented itself in profusion as we traversed along the roadway. Trampled and broken trees and branches lay reposed in numerous forested parts, and here and there some reclined as slaughtered branches in a forced retreat from the carriageway; a clear sign that someone had passed and cleared the verdant wreckage.