Trust and Hope-James Conrad-Skull Island

My Life 07

"Well, if you want to know my life story. Where should I begin?"

It was a rhetorical question, and thankfully James didn't answer. I paused for a moment to breathe.

"My parents are from Canada, I'm from Canada. Not that it maters too much. It's nice there. People, places, all nice."

I sighed. I was stalling the inevitable.

"My mom was great when I was really little, but my dad was the best. He and I were super close and I always followed him around." I sadly laughed slightly to myself. "Daddy's little girl."

I looked up at the celling. I tried to avoid James gaze. "Yea, everything was great for a long time. He worked as a mercenary, one I got older he started to teach me stuff.  Mother never approved but he wasn't around much anyway."

I paused. "I was 11 when he got a really hard job. He was going to be gone for a long time. The last time I saw him he gave me this necklace, and told me to wait for him to come back."

I realized I was holding my necklace again as I said this. It was a simple pendant. No engravings. Just a piece of metal. I felt myself tear up a little but swallowed the feelings down the best I could.

"So I waited." I half smiled. Bittersweet. "He never came back, he died saving his team."

"So yea.. I know how it is to wait. My mother didn't tell me until a year had gone by. Then she changed, she was... Controlling." I cut myself off.

"Yea.." I felt stupid. Oh I shouldn't have told him that. Idiot.

"Wow." Out of all the responses possible, I didn't expect this. I looked at James, he was looking at the wall across the room.
"You are the first person I've met who really does understand."

Something about that, felt nice, right.

I felt a tear slide down my cheek, I hadn't realized I'd stared crying. If only slightly.
I hate crying in front of people. It makes me feel weak.

I reached up to wipe it away but my hand was met with James's. He hand was rough and larger than mine, yet had a gentleness to it. He had turned to look me in the eye.

His hand was on mine, cupping the side of my face, slowly he moved to wipe the tear from my cheek.

We never broke eye contact, and everything slowed down.

James, he was everything in that moment.

For a second the world moved around us, time was fiction and nothing was real.
We weren't stuck on this island anymore.

A feeling in my chest swelled, happiness, sadness, fear, anger, love, hate...
I don't know.

All I knew was him, and all he knew was me.

Then it was gone.

The moment had passed and the emotions that had swelled burst out in tears.

I was sad, for my father, scared for what was happening to us all now, angry at my life, happy I was with a friend, one of very few, and something else I couldn't place.
I had barely gotten one sob out before I was enveloped in a warm embrace.