Asunder

Chapter 28 - It's For You

Water explodes in a booming noise all around me, then submerges me under a liquid sky. I smile as I fall under. Emma's laugh reaches my ears from above, diluted as if it's from a distant memory, and then I feel the air pull me back up to the surface.

Now her laughter is loud and unmuffled as the water drips from my hair, and as the sun deliciously warms my skin.

"That has to be one of the loudest canon balls," Emma laughs, interrupting herself with said laughter, "in the history of mankind."
"You would know." I grin, splashing water towards the poolside where she stands in her bikini, still un-soaked. Which is an issue.
She nods. "I would." She crouches down to slip her feet into the water. "And I do. And I'm telling you, the neighbors might be calling the police right now. You sounded like a gunshot."

I burst out in laughter, throwing my head back to the sun before doggy-paddling my way over to her. Her hair shines in the afternoon heat like white-gold.

"When's your next one?" I ask, wiping pieces of hair away from my forehead. "The next party, I mean."

I hope this isn't crossing a line. I hope she's comfortable with talking about this. We haven't spoken much about it, because our approximate two days a week of seeing each other so far haven't really had anything to do with it. But any time conversation drifts to what I used to think was normal to her -parties, friends, the whole nine- she gets quieter.

She pushes herself off the edge of the pool, the resulting splash almost concealing her wince. "Erm... I don't know," she answers, tip-toeing in the shallow end. "I was going to have one mid-summer, but it's passed already and I guess I forgot?"

I nod, leaning to float on my back, letting to sun blow up in my eyes until I have to close them. "Did you really forget?"
She hesitates a few seconds before responding. "No."

I hear her splash closer, pushing off the surface's cradle. I throw a glance at her in question as she tosses her hair over a slender shoulder.
"I kept delaying it. So the invitations never got out."
I nod, watching her stare into the water. Relived at her relaxed reaction, but tense at the almost too-calm demeanour she's taken on. "Any reason why?" I ask.
"I guess I got my priorities straight." Her eyes meet mine, and a smile smile plays on her lips.

I return it, wading towards the center of the water. The swishing droplets' sounds fill my ears, and I sigh into the warm air. "And you didn't before?"

She laughs dryly. "Never have. Maybe 'cause nobody's ever here to teach me." Her voice drips with irony, but her eyes betray a pensive air in the gap between her words and a smile: "Are you doing anything this summer?"

No. Yes. Writing wills, preparing.

I do need to finish up... the summer is coming to a close, and I can already feel the weight fall off my shoulders everyday at the approaching edge. As if the relief from the end will be so great that it ripples into the past.

I've been trying to write my dad's letter for weeks now. Ever since a blonde boy interrupted me on my balcony. But nothing ever seems right. Nothing ever reads right, or looks right on paper. At first I thought it might be the angles of the bars on my 't's or the way I dot my 'i's, but it ended up just being the words. The words aren't right. But in this rippling clarity, I see why. With him and I loving how we do, with us turning around in these circles, and I keep trying, and the hurt keeps coming back to me... I know why it isn't right.