A 90's Friday Night Lights meets Fifty Shades, only the town is the sadomasochist and the two young lovers their pawns.
July Elizabeth Edwards is stuck in the existence her pretentious, rural East Texas town has allotted her. A shift in social statu...
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The house was quiet. It felt almost empty. Strangely so after all the chaos that had ensued only minutes before. Those minutes felt like an eternity. They could only be described as unbearable. Everyone in the house had dispersed to bed once we got it all settled. It's like they disappeared. I needed some air. I took my shirt off and tossed it on my bed so I could breathe. I felt claustrophobic and unjustly liberated at the same time.
I walked through the house, securing every door and double checking all was locked up, just in case. I flipped the backyard light on and opened the patio door to step out for some air. I don't know if I held out hope for a breeze or the security of the empty night as opposed to the emptiness I felt inside that full house.
No sooner than stepping out and feeling the summer heat on my bare chest, did the porch light reveal that the night was not empty. There she was. She stood up from the bench she had been waiting on. She was in the exact spot I had left her that day, the first time my stepmom had called me in to look for my dad.
She didn't move. She just let her eyes meet mine. It hurt to see her, but it was excruciating not to be next to her. I ran as fast as I could to her, and her arms were immediately around me. I don't think I can recall ever crying past being a kid or the day I started to in front of Lynn, but I was instantly sobbing onto July's shoulder. Physical tears of mine began soaking the collar of her blouse.
"He didn't even know how to get home! He didn't know where he was! He didn't even know me!!!" I sobbed so hard I was shaking, and I held her so close, I was afraid I had squeezed her too tight at one point.
She didn't break. She didn't waver, and she never asked to come up for air from me. She just anchored herself, the palms of her small hands pressed firmly on the skin of my back, holding me in return. She let me sob uncontrollably like a child.
"July."
I whispered her name, turning my wet lips toward her ear and staining her cheek with my tears.
"July."
I repeated it as if it were mine to say over and over. A little sound came from deep within her. An almost inaudible moan of relief or satisfaction. I pulled her body up to mine, cradling the side of her face into my neck as she rose to the tip of her toes to reach me. We stood there, breathing together, into each other for the longest moment.
