flower girl // hiatus

{six}

the festival wasn't crowded when flora and jack arrived.

once flora had gotten in sally the smart car, jack had started to feel much more at ease, but the butterflies in his stomach didn't disappear.

she's just so beautiful, he thought while he was driving. originally, they just made small talk, but as they got closer to the school, they'd started to talk about random childhood memories. jack had glanced over at her while she was telling a story about her and her aunt and uncle. her eyes lit up so brightly, and he thought she looked absolutely beautiful.

"and this one time in eighth grade--" she giggled, but then then something in her hesitated, as if remembering something unpleasant, and her bright, gorgeous smile faltered.

"yeah, in eighth grade, my aunt and i went to this amusement park, and there was this guy in a chicken costume..." she said, continuing her story, pretending that her little moment hadn't ever passed. jack wondered momentarily what she was thinking about, but he forgot about it when she told the funny part of the story. they both laughed.

the football field was filled with tons of random stuff. bouncy castles, tables selling raffle tickets, little stands with games - you could be here all day and never run out of stuff to do. in the center of the football field sat several picnic benches to sit and eat food from the vendors at.

"so what do you want to do first?" jack asked flora, looking over at her. she looked around for a moment until her eyes landed on something. she pointed at it and raised his eyebrows, smiling.

"you sure?" he asked.

"very," she replied as she walked quickly to her attraction of choice.

it was a ginormous bouncy house.

flora grabbed jack's hand and pulled him inside the bouncy house. it was a big red thing, with slides on the end opposite the entrance and open space to jump around in the middle. a little climbing wall sat on the left side of the slides. netting covered the walls of the structure. the machine that kept it up with air made a loud noise. in this particular bouncy house, there weren't any other people. all of the kids made a beeline to the biggest one at the far end of the football field.

"something you should know about me is that i'm kind of a five-year-old at heart," flora told jack over the sound of the machine.

"something you should know about me is that i can jump higher than you can," jack replied, challenging her.

"we'll see about that," flora said as she began to jump. jack started laughing and jumped too.

out of the two, jack managed to spring higher into the air.

after a couple minutes of jumping and playful banter, flora collapsed to the bottom of the bouncy house, exhausted. jack too laid down on the floor of the bouncy house, but he wasn't quite as tired as flora. perhaps it was because of his higher stamina from playing soccer or simply because he hadn't put nearly as much effort into jumping higher than flora; he was already somewhat taller than her, making it easy to jump higher.

"damn. the struggles of being short," flora said, out of breath. jack looked over at her, surprised to see that she was looking at him. he felt his face flush, hoping that flora couldn't see the slight twinge of pink on his face.

"you're not that short, are you? you're, what, five feet four or five feet five?" jack inquired.

"well, five five-ish," flora replied. "but that's still not tall."

"you make it sound like you're a literal midget."

"yeah, i do suppose i do exaggerate a bit, but..." her words trailed off.