Relapse / / h.s.

Chapter Thirty.

     The bright rays of the ascending sun seem to blind me as I maneuvered in and out of traffic and in and out of thought. It seems like such an odd contrast, the way it is so bright outside and I am so grey on the inside.

Elena sat beside me in the car, just her presence alone brightening the dullness inside of me. I'm not sure what it was about her or how she did, but having her here was just better. I already felt ten times more confident than I had any other time.

Today was going to be the day. After nearly two weeks of internal torture, I was going to do this.

   "What are you thinking about?" Elena wondered calmly. The rising sun seemed to make her platinum blonde hair shine and her brown eyes came to life under the rays, displaying different colors of copper and cocoa all coming together to make glorious brown.

   "You," I said with a breath, reaching for her hand over the middle counsel. From the corner of my eyes I saw her smile down at our intertwined fingers and I felt her give my hand a light, reassuring squeeze.

   "Are you nervous?" She hesitated, searching my fave for any sign to stop talking. With Elena, she never pushed. Well, not unless she absolutely had to like that day at the hospital. "I mean about this?"

Her words seemed to have held a double meaning, and I wasn't sure whether she was talking about what we were going to do or what we had done last night.

"I don't know," I answer honestly. She squeezes my hand again and I smile to myself. "Actually, no."

"Good," she told me, leaning over the middle counsel to press her lips to my cheek. The gesture is warming, and seems to send a calm through me.

We pulled into the church parking lot and marvel at how everything seems to look the same. I was just there the previous day, so I don't know why I expected it to look different. Maybe it was because of my different outlook. I wasn't afraid anymore. I wasn't dreading doing this. I was ready.

  I held my hand out for Elena the minute I stepped out of the truck. She scurried toward me, quickly interlocking our fingers and looking up at me with an expectant look on her face.

  "That picture on my desk," I told her, nodding towards the empty green lawn in front. It's decorated with a large, marble cross and a garden of different flowers toward the front door. "We took them right there."

Elena's eyes scanned the perfectly mowed lawn, an appreciative look on her face. That's another thing I really liked about her- she appreciated Lily. She had never met her, but she knew the place she held in my life and tried to understand it.

   "Are you ready to go inside?" She asked finally, nodding towards the wide open front doors.

  I took a deep breath. This is the part where the nerves usually set in, but there were none. I felt a sort of nostalgia calm as I looked back and forth from the door to Elena.

"Yeah," I shrugged, tightening my grip on her hand. Just in case. Elena was my anchor. She always had been. "I guess so."

  She smiled up at me, her brown eyes nearly irresistible underneath the morning sun.

"All right then," she gave my hand a light squeeze. "Let's do this."

  The inside of the church was just as I remembered it. Colored Stained-glass came together to depict pictures on the windows. The floor was made of dark marble and the place was dimly lit from the big windows that stretched from the middle of the wall all the way to the ceiling. A crucifix hung high above the altar and the smell of incense wafted through the entire room, the smell being almost unbearable.