Creating a New Neverland

Ch. 7- The Past to Now

"So," he begins to tell me," there is so much I could tell you. Yet I can't. The reason I know this place so well is a long story. Honestly. I don't really know if I can trust you fully yet"

This makes me fall silent. He doen't trust me. Well of course he doesn't. We have know each other for only three and a half days. But I still don't want to reply. But I resist the urge to silently slap him with the absence of words.

"It's fine. There's stuff about me you'd rather not know. And that I don't want you to know. They have a very long explanation following them." I say as I think of Neverland.

I've never explained Neverland to anyone. I don't think I could. How do you describe it to begin with? And now how, since it's all becoming real? And the explanation for why I came up with this was too big a though to put into words.

What happened to make my parents stop fighting? Why are they getting along so well, like in my dreams? And what happened to make these all come real? Questions after questions filter through my mind, attaching to any possible answers. Magic? No. Mind reader? No. Secret implant that reads my mind and programs the JesseBot? Nah. Is this all real? Any possible answer just connects to another question.

Just like a card game. If you find a way to move that one blocking card, you can finish the game. The whole game is a bust because you can't move one card. The key is finding the way to move the blocking one. Where there's a will, there's a way. I may just be able to move that one card.

We continue to walk silently, weaving through the patterns of streets. Jesse just rolls his bike along, which slices the silence between us in half. Every roll of the wheel squeaks. Every turn creaks. Every bump rattles. And the whole time it is moaning, as if

complaining about how it is tired.

The awkward tension of our half fight, half confession session was becoming thicker within the moment. And neither one of us attempts to break the silence. At some point between the ice cream parlor and the bike shop I want to break the silence and kiss Jesse. I just want everything to go back to the perfect little dream land this vacation started out to be. Every vacation has this little sense of being unreal. But this one defiantly takes first place. Everything whizzes by, in a perfect state, so fast that I don't have much time to blink. The saying 'in a blink of an eye' is finally making more sense to me.

"Monica," Jesse calls out in a tone that makes him sound like he's talking to a three year old.

I zone back into the world to find Jesse waving his hand in my face and looking at me like I was an alien.

"Yeah I'm here," I snap as I slap his hand, mid-wave.

"Ow," he says like a child, changing his face to hurt.

I giggle at this. Even in serious moments I melt with his emotions. This is a way I can tell there is a connection. His every feeling, at least the ones he shows, I reflect on. It either makes me happy with him, sad with him, scared with him, or mischievous with him. He brightens and darkens my mood with his own. He is just perfect to me.

"Glad to know you're still you," he says with a smile and pulls me in for another kiss. This one he doesn't pull away from, we aren't interrupted by an ongoing conversation, and I am not pinched by his strong hands. We stay there peacefully, kissing in the middle of the street, with his bike leaning against the surf shop. Almost picturesque. Just a sunset could make it better, even if it could possibly get better.

When we break away, he just holds me. I watch the pedestrians give us glares that are both adoring and annoyed. A simple act of love can affect people in both a bad and a good way. Yet, if they were the ones in love, it would only be in a good way.