[Being held by the waist]

please

"Why are you here?"

A girl who I have never seen before is sitting on the swing, her back facing me. She has long, slightly curled light brown hair with faded pink ends and is wearing blue jeans that are cuffed from the ends. Her white t-shirt hangs loosely from her shoulders and the moment she turns around to face me I feel like throwing up.

There is a nasty blue bruise, that has turned yellow from the edges, covering the girls left cheekbone.

She doesn't seem to notice my disgust and even if she does, she decides to ignore it.

As she stands up from the swing, she smiles and takes a few steps closer to me, so that we are face to face but there's still a few meters of free space between us.

"Instead of asking who I am, you decided to ask why I'm here?" she asks, still smiling.

"I don't care who you are."

That's a lie. I have gotten over the shock of seeing the bruise on the girls face and turned my attention to the rest of her face and...

Damn.

She's pretty.

We lock eyes and I panic so I rush past her and sit on the swing.

I hear her laugh for a moment and the everything grows quiet. I can't decide whether I want her to leave or not.

You see, that swing here is my spot, this is where I come when I'm upset or just want to get some peace and quiet and shut the rest of the world down.

It's located next to the sea, there is no sand but a huge flat rock goes till the edge of the water and that's where the old wooden swing with metal poles, that I'm currently sitting on, is attached to the ground. To get to the swing you have to walk through the woods for about half an hour, that's probably why I have never seen anyone around here before.

I have no idea why this swing is here or who put it here but since the day I found it, it has been my favorite place in the whole world.

The only person that I have ever told about this place is Rosie, my best friend, and even she has never actually been here.

I feel bad, I didn't actually mean to be rude towards that girl but I just freaked out 'cause I didn't expect anyone to be here.

I'm still contemplating whether I should apologize to her or not. I'm painfully aware of her presence but at the same time, for some reason it's kind of soothing to have someone else here with me.

I flinch slightly when she start's talking.

"I didn't mean to take away your spot, I didn't know that it was taken. I just found it when I was walking around in the woods." This time I pay attention to how her voice sounds. It's deeper than my voice and a bit scratchy but I like it a lot, it has a warm vibe to it.

"Do you want me to leave?"

I snap my head towards her and realize that I was so caught up in analyzing her voice that I forgot to answer her.

I see her getting up from the ground where I assume that she had sat down when I occupied the swing, and starts walking towards the woods.

"NO!" I wince when I realize that I had yelled that and turn back around on the swing so that the girl can't see that I'm blushing from embarrassment.

The girl bursts out laughing and walks around the swing to stand before me.

I lower my head and stare at her shoes. Dirty, rip-off white vans with loosely tied laces.

"Hey, talk to me. Do you want me to leave or not then?" the girl asks, this time I can hear a bit of irritation in her voice so I shake my head quickly.

"What? Speak up, I don't understand you like this," she says, with a light chuckle spiking through her words.

"I don't want you to leave."

"Why not? It's your spot, I'm an intruder here, why would you want me to stay?"

Good question, I don't know, I think.

I know that the girl is waiting for an answer and I'm desperately trying to come up with a reasonable excuse.

I don't want to be alone? Bullshit, why would I be here then?

I'm scared of the woods? If I'm cared of the woods I wouldn't have came here in the first place.

I'm scared of the dark? It's not even dark outside yet, idiot.

Giving up, I decide to try to talk about something else to make her forget about her question.

"What's your name? Mine is Lizzie."

She laughs and rolls her eyes a little. "I see what you're trying to do here. You don't have an answer to my question so you are trying to change the topic, is that so?"

I hang my head low again and try to hold back my tears.

I came here today because I am falling behind my group with learning a dance choreography and it's frustrating me so much that I wanted to get my mind off of it for a little while. And now that I'm faced with another thing that I can't do, the thing being not being able to answer the question, I can't help it but start tearing up.

She seems to not like it that I keep avoiding eye contact and hiding my face from her so she gently takes hold of my chin and raises my head so that I'm forced to look at her.

She frowns, noticing my tear brimmed eyes.

"Why are you crying?"

"I'm not crying... yet."

She huffs, takes my hands and pulls me up from the swing to stand in front of her.

"Are you afraid of me? I'm not gonna hurt you you know."

"I'm not," I answer but she doesn't seem to believe me because she let's go of my hands and takes a few steps back.

"Really? So if I'd keep coming here once in a while, you would be okay with that?" I can clearly hear the doubt in her voice and nod yes.

She smiles, eyes crinkling up a little, and steps closer to me again.

My body moves on it's own and I find myself hugging her. She flinches a little and I realize that it's because the side of my face had clashed with her bruise.

I step away immediately and she laughs, pulling me back into a hug and wrapping her arms around my waist tightly.

"It's okay."

After just standing there in each others arms for about a minute, she speaks up again.

"My name is Hae."

I can feel the corners of my mouth curl into a little smile.

When I feel that Hae is trying to separate from our hug, I squeeze her even tighter.

I don't even know what came over me and what I meant with those words, but I wasn't able to stop myself from blurting them out.

"Please don't leave."