ANCHOR

Chapter 14

SAM

  I knew before I started I was going to tell her everything. After all these years, she was here, and I wanted to keep her here. "I know what it's like to need help from anyone, and not have you're parent help you when you need them. I couldn't just leave you there alone."

  "I remember running away," I smiled lightly, "I'm sorry. You were just so beautiful and surreal, right before me. Sometimes the easiest solution at that age is to get away. I didnt know what else to do." She looked at me, hard. Her face hadn't moved a bit and I didn't know what she was feeling. I was aware then, of how she had changed since that day. Her cheeks had thinned and her cheekbones were defined, still dotted with a splash of freckles. Her eyes were bright but showed some kind of knowing. She wasn't the oblivious girl I had once seen her as. Her lips were a soft pink and full. Her dark hair fell in long wavy curls and her. I wanted to reach out, but refrained myself.

  "When you were there," she told me, "there was some kind of feeling in me I couldn't explain. I had forgot about anything else that happened and there was just you. I didnt understand it, but I feel like now I do, because I'm feeling it, all over again." I reached out for her hand, and it was cold, as it had been so long ago. I was aching, needing to kiss her. I shook the thought away, remembering she had a boyfriend. It wasn't as dissapointing as I expected it to be, maybe because I was just happy enough to be talking to her. It seemed like a small boundary that I was ready to cross.

  "I know what you mean." I told her. "My Dad- he..." I struggled to find the words. She looked into my eyes, filled with sympathy. Her head started moving closer and closer, the space disintrigrating as our eyes were steady on each other. Her lips were so close, and I could feel her breath on my wanting lips. "I know." she whispered, and then closed the last bit of distance.

   Everything I had ever searched for was here in this moment. She her lips were warm and sweet. I could feel the world shifting beneath my feet, slow and beautifully, until it was orbiting around the girl here, in my arms, on my lips. I was aching and hurting and loving and falling. It was love and it was taunting me, tangling me, on the tip of my tongue. It was beautiful, all the emotions like colors splashed on the inside of my eyelids, managing to convey everything the world has ever stood for. It was Hope Stryder, and I was undoubtedly, irrevocably in love with her.

  Her lips left mine, slowly. I closed my eyes and sat there, just trying to let it sink in. I felt her presence beside me, her breath heavy and steady. I wasn't breathing.

  "Sam?"

"Hope?"

"How is it this possible to feel this many things at once?"

"I don't know, Hope."

And then we were kissing again.