To Have and To Hold

Chapitre Huit

I was convinced that the Cake Gods were real and Jeremiah was my soul-mate. Seriously.

Otherwise, why else would I be gallivanting through a copse of trees at three o'clock in the morning with a complete stranger. For all I knew, he could be taking me off to murder me, chop me up in tiny little pieces. It could happen, and I couldn't have cared.

"Just a little further," he told me, guiding me along. His warm hand was on my clammy one, fingers wound and secure, and each time he'd give it a squeeze, my heart would mimic the pressure. "How are your feet?"

I glanced down at them, down at the hem of my now dirt-ridden dress. I didn't mind. My feet, however, I knew would be bruised in the morning, but after all the trauma they'd had throughout the day, they'd gone numb. "They're okay."

Jeremiah was using the light on his cell phone to guide us through the fallen limbs and forestry, almost as if he'd done this before. In the dim glow, I could see that his shoe was scuffed remarkably, probably due to our trip out here, and that his pant leg was pressed with dirt. "Ask me another question."

"What kind of question?" It was hard to think of my life outside of here, hard to think about anything except for tonight. Because right now, with him, I wasn't some overworked vet-school student with a job at an animal clinic, stressing about how she was going to make rent once her best friends moved out due to their undying love. I was this girl, in a bridesmaid's gown, her mint-green heels sinking into the soil, letting a handsome man with a camera lead me to where I needed to be. I had gone with fate, and this is where I was ending up.

I had no complaints.

"Any kind," Jeremiah said.

"I'm assuming, after Mrs. Ashcroft told you that you were the worst student she's ever seen, that you got better at photography?"

"That would be a correct assumption."

I stepped over a plant that vaguely looked like poison ivy, pulling at my coat sleeves as my heels sank into the earth. "Did she apologize for saying such rude truths?"

"Not really. She said that knocking my abilities everyday was ultimately what made me thrive."

I snorted. "That's sounds like a load of bull-crap."

He glanced back at me, one corner of his mouth tugged up. "I agree. So, for the rest of my high-school career, I'd take her photo and edit a picture of a bunny's head in place of her own and tape it to her classroom door. I'd titled it 'A Penny Fur Your Thoughts', instead of 'for'? I wasn't very creative."

This time, I choked on my snort of laughter. "A bunny? Why a bunny?"

Jeremiah, too, was laughing, and it was a deep sound, like the sound of wind whizzing through tree branches, the sound of autumn leaves falling to the ground. "I couldn't use a cow or a pig, because then I'd probably get expelled. Or the very least banned from her darkroom. Thus, the bunny, innocent enough but degrading all the same."

"What'd she say?"

"She thought it was a compliment! She'd hang them around her classroom. It backfired big time." Jeremiah lifted up a branch so I could pass underneath, and then let out a soft exhalation. "Here we are."

The copse of trees broke into little clearing, and there was a river that ran through it. Not really a river, I suppose, more like a creek, shallow, but the water was trickling through quickly. Stones were littering the waterway and onto the bank, flat and shiny. And the way the full moon reflected off the top of the water, it looked mystical, as if it were a doorway to another world. "Woah."