Lakeside

[9] The Meadow

My eyes were starting to open, and my vision was blurred for a few seconds. I saw the bright light streaming into my room, lighting it up.

I sat up and stretched out, hearing my stomach rumble. I looked to my phone to see it was already 2:16 in the afternoon. That was a con of taking a walk around the lake two hours into the day.

I stumbled over to the hatch, opening it with a groggy moan. I took each step down the ladder carefully, then took slow steps over to the kitchen. Nobody was here since it was now the middle of the day. I felt grateful, too. I was barely talking to my family since they had yet to apologize for the way they were treating me. But thinking about that, I felt like crying and I truly believed I had used up all my tears last night. So I shook the thought away from my mind, put on some running shoes and walked out the front door with an apple in hand.

I saw Ash sitting at his back porch as I walked further towards the beach. My parents were lying in the sun at the beach, and I watched Hayden and Brenna laugh at each other, but I saw right through her.
There's rumors all over school about her hooking up with other hunks at school, but Hayden never believes them because he "trusts" her. But when you confront Brenna about it you can watch the blood rush to her cheeks and her emerald eyes shift to the ground.

"Hi." I come up behind Ash as he stands, watching my family at the beach. I stand by him and put my arms on the railing.

"Hey there, Pretty Girl."

I gushed at his cute nickname. Right, your... feelings about him. I convinced myself on the walk that I just really appreciated how much he cared about me. I was in complete denial of my feelings for him.

But I felt his bicep touch against my sweater, and I felt the urge to lean in more. No! You don't like him! Stop!

"So where were you early this morning?" He asks me, averting his grey eyes to look at my brown ones. I hoped he didn't think that I was staring at him, but I could have been.

"I went on a walk around the lake." I tell him. "How did you know I was gone?"

Ash sighs, and looks down at his folded hands. His wrists were supporting him on the railing.

"I was going to close the blinds this morning and I noticed that the note wasn't on the chimney so I knew you read it." He tells me without looking up from his hands.

"You knew where it was?" I asked in disbelief.

"Yeah, I can see it from my window. One night I went to read it because my curiosity got the best of me. But you can't be mad about that because you did the same thing."

"I'm not mad, honestly. I just wasn't expecting that you already knew about this note."

"Do you want to look for the next one?" He asks, looking to me, but I'm only staring at the ground.

"I think I've made you wait long enough. You and I are both curious what Brooke did to Grace." I looked up and into his eyes, and they captivated me. They were so beautiful.

He smiles at me. "Very." He responds. "Where's it at?"

"Here, let me show you." I took his hand in mine to lead him down to the beach. The heat rolling off his hand made me have all kinds of feelings. My hand just felt right in his, and I shook my head at the thought. But I loved the feeling of his skin against mine. It was so soft and warm and inviting.

We stood next to a bush on the trail down to the beach. I didn't want my family to notice we were there.

I stretched out my arm and held out my index finger. "See that big mountain on the other side of the lake?" He nodded in response. "We'll have to climb it. There's a small plateau on sort of the other side of the mountain. It's this beautiful meadow, where Brooke and I played fairies when we were seven. We only got to visit the meadow a few times in our younger years since it was so dangerous to climb to, but Brooke and I snuck off in the night to climb it all the time as we got older. We never called it a meadow, though. It was always The Magical Fairy Kingdom to us, even when we got older." I smiled at the old memories.