Fireflies

Chapter 17: Damn

June 17th

SAGE

There was a knock at the door.

I was in the midst of retrieving a shirt from my duffel bag when I paused at the sound. Was my girl that bold?

The thought of Aryah sneaking back to my room sent a pleasurable thrill through my body. My muscles tensed in anticipation. I couldn't get to the door fast enough.

In the moments before opening the door, I had prepared myself for the onslaught of her beauty, but, on the contrary, was met with the hard lines of Jeremiah's face wearing that stupid smirk from dinner.

The smile slid from my face and I sighed, "What do you want?"

Jeremiah rocked back on his heels and stated casually, "We need to talk, right? Well, here I am."

Indeed, I thought. "Come in," I beckoned stepping to the side to make room for him to pass. He, not a stranger to this place it would seem, walked in quickly and flopped down on the bed.

With his hands clasped under his chin, he asked non-nonchalantly, "What's up?"

"You know what's up," I stated frankly.

Jeremiah sighed. "You mean, Aryah? Look man. It's not like that. I mean, maybe, if I didn't have a girl of my own and Aryah didn't have, well, you...things would be different. But Aryah and I go way back."

He looked away from me and out of the window as if remembering. "She used to have such a big crush on me, but she was younger than me and Ms. Mayberry would have my head if I had tried anything with her. So...she became like a little sister to me. The folks around here always joked though, that when she got older, she and I would be together, you know, get married, that whole thang. I used to just laugh at that, but a small part of me wanted it to be true. She's special man..."

That we could both agree on.

"When she missed her first summer down here, I thought she would never come back. I mean, heck, I knew about her fancy moms and how her mother had problems with Ms. Mayberry. I just figured her mom wouldn't want her coming down here and slumming it with us country folks."

Jeremiah looked to me for understanding and I nodded. I couldn't be sure whether he was being sincere about the evolution of his feelings for Aryah, but the one thing that reassured me that he should not be a problem was his admission of having a partner of his own. A potential trump card.

However, there was still this nagging feeling clawing its way to the forefront of my mind. It was the fact that I could see them together. It wasn't far-fetched for me to draw the same conclusions based on their shared history. They were both attractive and young. They had already, and inadvertently, had the blessings of their friends and family. And quite frankly, they had a lot in common. They shared a cultural identity, something that, while had not been an issue between the two of us, could potentially be a huge barrier between Aryah and I down the line.

Jeremiah broke through my thoughts with questions of his own, "And you? What's your history with Aryah?"

How careful did I need to be with my words in response to his questions? Were his questions a way to size me up and find a way in or was he simply asking the way a "big brother" would - as a way to protect his "sister"?

I settled for the whole truth. "Weeks ago, if you were a psychic and you told me that a boy like me would find myself head over heels for a beautiful girl from, what feels like another world, I would have laughed in your face, hard." I ran a hand through my hair and inhaled deeply before I continued. "So, it goes without saying, Aryah's presence in my life was unexpected, but, honestly, serendipitous."