Unpredictable - (tristan evans)

Nothing to Leave

Bright sunlight drew her from the clutches from a shadowy sleep, and it took her a long moment to recall her surroundings.

“Tristan?” she blinked, muddled eyes taking in the swaying grass around her, plain from a distance and yet dotted with hidden wonders wherever one bothered to look close enough.

“Good morning.”

She could hear the smile in his voice despite the roughness of interrupted sleep, but he sounded preoccupied, and she wondered what he had been thinking about before she had woken. Suddenly everything came rushing back in a staggering whirl of images, tiny snapshots hanging suspended within time. She remembered him lying beside her with the torn grass staining his jeans; she remembered the way he sounded when he talked, though the words escaped her. And then there was something else, just on the tip of her tongue yet refusing to be snared. Perhaps she had fallen asleep. His arms had slipped slightly in his sleep but his hands held her firm, fingertips drawing patterns across her skin as he pressed cool lips to her throat. They sat there for a long time, each thinking their own thoughts, and it was with a heavy sigh that she finally looked up and held his clouded gaze.

“We should go,” she reluctantly began to untangle herself, letting go of all but his hand. Her legs felt stiff as she gingerly tested them, stifling a yawn and carefully standing up as she smoothed her shirt crumpled by a night under the stars. He watched, hardly realising he was staring at her just as he always found himself doing, and when she turned back to him she was struck once again by the way sunlight played across his face, tilted up to hers as he sat at her feet. Her shadow fell over him; a few tiny leaves dislodged from her tangled hair as she reached for him and pulled him up. He staggered slightly, shaking out his jacket but at the same time retaining a tight hold on her hand.

“Right,” he dropped her hand for a second to shove the picnic blanket into the back compartment of the bike, showering them both with loose grass and a few pitifully wilted petals as he did so. Then he swung his leg over the seat, settled himself into the worn leather and looked at her enquiringly, “aren’t you coming?”

She glanced behind her at the single dirt track winding its way through endless open fields and sparsely dotted trees, trying to remember which way they had come but unable to recall. Facing him again, she quickly got on behind him, wrapping her arms tight around his waist just as he had shown her. He had pushed up his sleeves; she contented herself with watching the few well-worn bracelets flutter in a calm breeze, the zips of his jacket glinting silver, the tattoos that she now knew like the back of her own hand. And then the bike snarled beneath them, and they were flying. Leaving their field far behind them in a matter of minutes and fading clouds of dust, they quickly passed into the boundaries of a small wood, sheltering branches reaching over their heads in a way that was not so much ensnaring as protecting as they zoomed past. She had missed this, she suddenly realised. She loved the exhilaration of the ride, the freedom of being able to go wherever she pleased, but most of all, being alone with him.

Alone yes, but alone is never safe.

Eyes watering with the speed, the branches soon turned to nothing but a hazy green blur around her, she lifted her head and found his neck with searching, gentle lips.

“Scarlett, do you want us to hit a tree?” he sounded amused, though she noticed the way his pulse hammered wildly against her ear.

“Not really, no.”

“Then stop kissing me.”

She laughed, pulling back slightly to watch the wind whip his hair into a tangled disarray of dark blonde, returning to her original position with her cheek pressed against the dip of his shoulder blade.