If All We Have Is Now

The evening was warm as he stepped out of the ruins of the airplane, and for that he was thankful. He stood looking at her for a while, memorising her silhouette against the dark forest, before joining her on the bit of green grass under a tree.

She merely glanced his way. “Couldn’t sleep either?” she said softly.

“No.” He studied her face openly. A spot of dried blood stained her cheek from the cut on her forehead, and he itched to wipe it away. Instead he asked, “What were you thinking about?”

“If no-one ever finds us here. All the things that I still –”

“Don’t talk like that,” he frowned, but she simply shrugged.

“Why not? It’s only being realistic.” She looked up, past the treetops to the stars that still shined.

“It’s interesting how much things change when you don’t have much time. Usually you’re so worried about millions of ‘what if’s’, and all the reasons not to do something. There are so many things left undone simply because you don’t want the consequences. I’m not saying it’s wrong, sometimes you are supposed to wait, to say nothing and pretend that you…” She stopped talking; looked down at her twisted hands before continuing.  “Maybe there is something better in the future. But now everything’s different…all we have is now. And suddenly, waiting just doesn’t make sense anymore.”

For the first time she looked up into his eyes, and what she saw there made her heart race. What she read in his eyes was the same message that she had kept locked up in her heart for a year; the same look in her eyes that she hid every time she passed him in the hall; the same feelings she tried to bury under all the reasons why they couldn’t be together. It is a bittersweet love; one that will never be fully felt and yet is just as heartbreakingly real.

Yet, in his eyes she also saw something new; something she had never allowed herself to feel until this moment. Hope.

More words weren’t necessary. Tonight it was their eyes, their hands and their lips that said everything.

Still it was not an all-consuming passion that they felt while lying in each other’s arms. It was something as sweet as the evening breeze, as soft as the moonlight, and as clean as the dew.

They had no tomorrow; nothing to cloud their night. They had no yesterday, filled with regret of lost time. All they had was now. Only this moment, wherein they could hold each other and love each other, and in each other’s arms they found a joy and a peace so full and pure that even the animals in the surrounding woods stopped and stared. These two young people who had nothing – no future or hope of tomorrow – and yet, in each other, they found everything.

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Hi! Thanks for checking out my (very short) story. I'm considering turning it into a longer story if I get enought support. What do you think?