Key To The Blue Flame

Chapter 8

I sit in the passenger's seat beside him and watch him as he puts his car in motion. His face is calm and plain though I can still feel heat radiating from my face. How could he just be so nonchalant while I stay in this loop still thinking about the kiss?

 How lame am I? Overeating like this, it's not like it was my first kiss. But still somehow I have got somewhat of the same feelings that I had got that time. It was a perfect seeming moment with lovely gut wrenches but maybe I’m just little too rusty in the dating department and taking this date all in because it's been a while. The soft confident movements of his mouth…

"I can feel you staring at me," he laughs.

"Oh, sorry I’m not trying to make you feel uncomfortable."

"No your not, I just want to know why you’re staring at me so intensely so... passionately."

I instantaneously flush, once again thinking about the kiss again, and although I tell myself I would never ask what I want to know, somehow I guess I no longer know myself because I being to open my mouth and my words commence to betray me.

“How is it your face is so white?”

“What? I guess it’s because I’m Caucasian.” He answers never ceasing his laughter. “How come yours is so pink, are you cold?” he says reaching over and brushing his softly rough hand across my cheek.

“Why do you seem so unaffected by your actions, touching my cheek… the… kiss? I want to know how you feel about these things because your face gives me nothing.” I say in an embarrassed rush.

It’s silent for only a small second but to me somehow it seemed like minutes leisurely passed as I sit etched in place in another one of the moments that is taking it’s time in becoming a memory. I’m acting like a teenager in her first relationship, why is one single boy that I just met is making me react this way, why is it the longer I can feel his presence the more I like him?

A grin appears on his still un-flushed face.

“I like it. That’s why I kissed you, and why I’m still with you now, I enjoy your company. If I didn’t we wouldn’t be here right now. It’s just because feel comfortable with you I guess is why I’m not shy or self-conscious to kiss you.” He says perking up his lips in my direction.

“I can still remember it, the feel of your suspecting lips, the way they didn’t know to correspond to mine at first- your face is so red now.”

“I know it’s because you’re talking about…” I trail off.

He leans in close to me sending a powerful look into my weak ones.

“Do you want another?” he says lowering his voice.

My heart just can’t take the way he said that, if he keeps this up I feel I’ll faint. My body tilts forward but it is the willpower of my smart brain which makes me reverse my little forward. I can’t, one kiss is enough for one date, no more kisses. I regain my rationality and realize again I’m in a car with the opposite sex. So I clear my shaky voice to obtain seriousness.

“It’s only our first date I don’t think we should!” I kinda say a little louder than I expect.

He becomes hysterical. Why is he always laughing at me, am I something funny?

“Hey I noticed that though out this date you’ve kept laughing at certain thing I’ve said, why I don’t understand? I never meant for it to sound like a joke.”

“It’s because you’re cute. You ask cute things. No girl has ever asked me the questions you have, even if they wanted to. I think you’re a pure girl with a lot of shy confidence and I was just joking to see that pure reaction.”

I just smile. I turn toward the window and look out. The frosty world I live in doesn’t match my warm heart but still feels as if this kind of weather perfects this warmly cold night at 11:02. I put my hand against the window, the coolness to touch cools me instantly, sending me into a calm state, which it has always been able to do. Is the world a sleep, in this soundless split second, It seems light of noise. I can hear my steadied heart beat in the empty believing world.

The weather quieted the people, the snow scared them all away, made all the trees cry their leafs away. This winter which only some like in the beginning, this winter which everyone went home to avoid seeing it as cold harsh judgment, instead of soft white beauty. The time put the business asleep, leaving the outside now with only Mekhi and I as witness to the serene place they left us with my only emotion and sprit feeling buoyant.

“We’re here, it’s not much but this is the place I come to when I want to relax. Although it’s cold I think it looks most beautiful at the winter.”

“I love the winter the most out of everything like a man loves a dog, a baby a bottle, a woman her shoes. It’s my thing, my season, a slightly under appreciated season.”

I see one red wood bench, the color neglecting the wood. An old dim light lit above tries it’s best not to die. A twisted irregular tree sadly is planed in the ground, wanting to fall. Half dead with the branches handing low, some broken, losing all it’s color from the tips spreading and with time will lose it’s hue and become an unwanted stump. A beautiful small pound is right in front of that small red bench only big enough for two people. Frozen, the climate unable to let it be what it truthfully was.

This place whispered simplicity, it is a place many would walk pass and never notice especially in this time of year. People much rather go to the movies or a restaurant so is it weird when I say that I would notice it, that I like places like this? I step on the untouched snow and walk over to the bench to dust the snow off. People may think of us as crazy as we are sitting in the cold at 11:20 just because we want to. Mekhi meets my dazed eyes and warmly looks into them. I could feel the heat of his eyes while he looked into mine. It gave me warmth, that honest gaze. I grab his hand, warming both mine and his.

“I wanna thank you for a fun night, I really needed something like this.” I begin.

“But thank you more for bringing me here, it shows me something about you.” I smile.

“What does it show about me?”

“It shows me that you have a deeper side that you can connect to something on a bigger scale, and I like that. This place isn’t surprising but it’s still special and it’s still here and that’s why just sitting here and enjoying nature with you just made our date even better and our connection.”   

“I’m glad you think that.”

I put my head of his shoulder and we sit there as if frozen in time on that icy bench that we wanted to warm. Time passed and by time we knew it, it was almost 12:00. By time Mekhi dropped me home it was a little after 12:00. I was embarrassed about my apartment building but I didn’t think he even noticed much because it seems all he’s doing was staring at me.

“So will I see you again?” he says shoving his hands into his pockets getting strait to the point.

I blush.

“I would love to keep in contact.” I say lamely. Why couldn’t I have said a different choice of words! What I have said made me sound old. The tint of my face intensifies.

  “Great!” he beams.

We exchange phone numbers.

“Well I had a great time, text you later.” He says then kisses me on the cheek. I hold the spot as he gets in his car and waves bye, he is just all I even wanted in a guy. It seems like everything in my life has turned back to normal with no more weird stuff happening but can my life stay this picture perfect or is it destined for me to have unexpected unwanted occurrences? Can I really stop having the nightmare of things coming to get when I go to sleep today, are there really monsters hiding under my bed still? Can I finally be at complete peace?