Summer Rain

XXI ~ "Like You Love Me"

{I'll Be - Edwin McCain}

...And you're my survival, you're my living proof, my love is alive and not dead...

----

June 23rd

     "How was your dance lesson?" Mom shouted through to me from her room as the screen door to the cabin slammed shut at my back. Bodhi had sent me to collect his things for him while he chose to stay in one of the hotel rooms, our vow of being there for one another despite our parents' detrimental influences on us over the years still prevalent in my mind. Slowly but surely we were filing down our chains to dust.

  "Yeah, fine," I mumbled, passing her bedroom door where the smell of perfume attacked the back of my throat, making me cough heavily.

    "Benjamin was asking for you today." She practically sang her words like an excited fangirl, and I backed up to the doorway I had just passed.

     The last I had seen or heard from Benjamin, he was nearly going to be beaten to a pulp by Elliot after the revelation of his not-so-secret relationship with Poppy had reached the enraged tears of the boy who pursued him on a crusade of brotherly protection. Something I was very familiar with.

    "What was he saying?" My interest shocked not only my Mother but me also.

     I was so used to the apathy and nonchalance I felt with Benjamin's sudden forced place in my life. I guess the threat of his place becoming permanent faded when I found out about him and Poppy but, to Mom, the dream of he and I was very much still a priority in her mind.

    How could I get out of this? I promised him I wouldn't reveal his secret to my family, who would no doubt inform the Beaumonts themselves, their leech-like dependence on the Beaumont's approval and acceptance into the high-society airs and grace which surrounded them like an aura evident in their behaviour around them since we arrived.

    I couldn't continue this charade with the thought of Elliot and me in my mind day and night. It was becoming hard enough keeping us a secret without the added stress of faking a relationship or romance with Benjamin, who was dating my boyfriend's sister. The links and ties between us all were almost sickening. I worried myself into a frightening daydream as my Mother rambled on about this and that to do with the Beaumonts.

  "...Oh and Benjamin did say something about that dancer boy... Now, what was it?" Her eyes searched the air in front of her, my mouth hanging on to the next words that would come out of her perfectly shaped mouth. "Oh yes, something about finding a dance partner for the dance competition in a few weeks."

     Oh. Yeah. Me.

     Elliot and I had begun training but were still to start a routine, the thought making me queasy of people watching me dance, my hands sweaty and my mind repeating the words 'please don't fall' over and over like a prayer.

  "I'm sure Elliot will find one." I smiled as I said his name, so freely and so familiarly before departing from the doorway and continuing on my mission to collect Bodhi's things.

  "Have you heard from Bodhi?" Mom called through to me, her voice taking on a serious edge as she changed the subject.

  "He's fine," I called back curtly.

     Her long sigh made me feel a pang of deep-rooted guilt. Mom had a hold over me that I never could understand. She was the woman who at every turn, constantly mortified me and made me feel like I was nothing but a pretty face. Still, she was the woman who never knew any different in her own life, and who put up with a man who had turned into a power-hungry, verbally violent shadow of the husband and father I remember. Cutting her from Bodhi and I's life would only bring us sorrow.