Till Next Time | completed | currently under re-edit

25

25
My fingers have been tingly since the moment I woke up in a convenient hotel room in an uptown neighborhood of Orlando with a steaming cup of coffee waiting for the end of my slumber, put on a polo t-shirt that my mother must have slipped into my bag, that might have cost more than a promising prospect's college tuition baggage and gotten into a Volkswagen to drive to the grand Tampa.

The list of rules Anastasia and I conclusively drew back in a KFC at New Jersey lies crumpled on my dashboard. I pick it up and toss it into the glove compartment, wondering how Jersey seemed like just yesterday.
The instruction screen of the car GPS mocks the feeling of jitters inside me.
28th July, 2019.
Lollapalooza will start from 1st August, which gives me two days to spend time here in Tampa and then leave for Grant Park, Chicago.
Two days until I inch excruciatingly closer to going back to my house.
Two days until I inch closer to the end of probably the greatest summer of my life.

"Can't believe we made it to Tampa already," Anastasia says, like reading my mind. She looks tired. The trip has definitely taken its toll on her.
"Yeah." I could not come up with anything else.
"Can I be completely honest?" she asks. I nod.
"I don't want this to be over."
I laugh, coming off a little more bitter than intended. I sense her candor recoil a bit.
"Funny because I was thinking the same thing. But things always end, don't they?"
She looks at me, concern in her eyes. She reaches over from her seat and touches my arm.
"It's okay, Brooklyn. I'm not going anywhere."
"You can't make that promise!" I retort back, "Don't make promises to me."
"Brooklyn," she grips my arm softly, "I am not going anywhere."
My racing heartbeat slows down. "Then what?"
She moves away, looking out of the window at the shadows the floating clouds overhead cast on the highway.
"Then I guess, you are stuck with me." She smiles.
I force a smile, even though it makes me want to hide my face in the crook of her shoulder and cry.
"We'll have to spend some time apart when this ends. But only until next time."
"Till next time." The words jump out at me and I say it aloud.
"Till next time," she repeats after me.
The juvenile fear in me refuses to subside.

You can smell the corrosive sea salt in the air from miles away in Tampa.
"Everyone is so perfect here," Anastasia says, gawking at the bikini clad girls roaming around in their itsy-bitsy shorts. She was definitely hit by the transition from rustic, scruffy and hardened appearance to copiously surgically perfected exteriors, smoothly somersaulting out of an edition of Sports Illustrated with its full force.
"Hardly," I answer, "You'll be surprised at what some smart money can achieve."
The beach rolls into view, a multitude of swimming trunks, swimsuits and pure breed lap dogs.
"Let's not stop now," I suggest.
She nods, "Too many people."
"We can check into the hotel and stay there. We have some time here. You can get some rest."
She dismisses it, "I am not fragile, Brook. I don't need to rest fourteen hours a day."
I choose not to reply despite not agreeing to her conviction.

I wake up with a sudden shock of fright and sit up straight, gasping for breath. I do not remember falling asleep. As wakefulness catches up with me, I look around the room and finally acknowledge the absence.
Anastasia is not here.
I shoot out of bed. "Anastasia!", I shout when my eyes fall on the open balcony. There she was.
I step out and immediately the strong wind slaps at my face.
She is sat there, facing the ocean, the wanton wind playing with her hair. She sweeps some of it behind her ear.
The same tingle makes itself known to me, like the voice inside sneering, I'm still here.
She must have felt someone standing behind. She turns to me, the swept up hair immediately flying free across her face.
I suddenly grow conscious of the environment around us.
Dark clear sky, the sound of waves breaking on the shore, the whizz of the wind and the soft white light of the balcony illuminating the early evening darkness.
"Are you okay?", she asks.
"Yes," I answer, "Shall we go to the beach?"
She smiles and then nods.

I park the car along the beach.
I open the trunk and bring out a mini cooler I had picked up in Orlando.
"Underage drinking, huh?", Anastasia jeers at me.
I point to her with the bottle opener, "Either you want it, or you don't."
I crack open a cold beer and pass it to her.

"Brook?"
"Yes?"
"Did you like this trip? You know, coming along with a girl from high school you just met two months ago," she asks.
I nod, so full of so many things.
She shakes her head, "I am going to need more than that, Brooklyn."
"This is the best summer of my life," I run out of breath just in speaking this one truth. So I tell myself, go on.
All out, all at once.
"I do not want to go back home to my complacent mother, my cheating father and my fucked up life. I had lost all hope before this. Before you and before this trip. And honestly, I didn't mind. I was so used to being dead, I did not mind not being alive. How can you miss the things you have never experienced? But now I know. I know hope, I know life and I know happiness-", my breathing resumes to grow erratic, "And I'm terrified of losing this. I am terrified of feeling dead after being so alive, I'm terrified of caging myself in after being so free. If this night ends and I turn around and drive back into New York, I will lose this part of me and the pain will eat me away. I will never be the same again and that thought terrified me."
Her eyes look a little glazed, probably for her low tolerance of alcohol.
After a while, she whispers, "Me too."

"Let's go for a swim," I say.
"What?"
I get up to face Ana. "Let's go for a swim."
"No. This is the ocean. It's unsafe."
"This road trip was unsafe. But we did it, right? I would never let anything happen to you, remember?"
I yank the t-shirt over my head and toss it into the back and proceed to slip my shoes off.
"I don't even have a swimsuit!" Anastasia says, laughing nervously.
"Neither do I," I pick her up and run without giving her some time for thought.
My feet hit the sands and the insanity of the thrill sets in. I hold her closer and she wraps her arm around me giggling nervously.
"Brook, Brook. Brook!"
We crash into the water, wading against the current and breaking waves. She shrieks too close to my ear but I can barely hear her over the myriad noises of waves, my own laughter and my heart throwing itself against my ribcage.
I stop when the water is up to my waist.
A wave rushes in and Anastasia shouts, "Oh no! My flip-flop!"
I turn to watch the mint green strap disappear in the water below. She bursts out in laughter.
"Ready?", I ask her.
"For wh-", I fall on my knees, going underwater and stand up after the wave passes from over us.
Anastasia screams and coughs out the salty water, all the while laughing.
"Hold on," I tell her. She hugs me and I let go of her for a split second before wrapping her legs around me and spinning her around.
Her arms tighten about my shoulder and we come face to face with each other.
She is biting her lips so hard to keep from crying, they have turned white.
"Ana?", my voice softens.
"I don't want this to end, Brooklyn," her voice breaks and face scrunches up in agony. The sobs come racking in and I feel her hand shiver against the nape of my neck.

Before I can overthink, before I could run of out of time, I press my lips to hers.
I press my lips to hers and before the voice inside me can scream at me for fucking everything up, she kisses me back.
Her lips taste like salt, maybe from the ocean or her tears. They quiver slightly against mine. I feel my grip loosen around her hips and I break away.
She looks at me, her eyes, still glistening with tears, questioning me
I wade back onto the shore and that is about how long I could stay away from her.
"Let me down," she whispers and I follow her orders.
I put her down and she pulls me in, our lips colliding against each other from the blood rush. My hand reaches up to cup her cheek, all I can think of is, this feels right. I wanted this. I needed this. I need her.
I can feel her chest rise and fall against mine, she kisses me back with the intensity of the mass of emotions I cut her short from expressing and I feel the singeing heat at the tip of her fingers on my ice cold skin, pulling me in.
We break away for the second time, she does this time, out of breath, our noses touching as I lean in and leave a little peck, unknowing of her intent.

Something washes ashore beside us. One mint green flip-flop with a pink pelican drawn.
But she had already dropped the other in the ocean.

A/N: My best friend is going to be thrilled at this.
I hope you liked it :)
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