elizabeth walker ✓

I knew Elizabeth Walker from my days of youth.

She was something that you could never get enough of. Her golden hair that would flow with the wind, whenever she would let them down and the sparkling white teeth that would come in view whenever she would cast a magical smile, is something I wanted to see throughout my life.

I met her many springs ago. She stood beneath the school's cherry blossom tree, with a book in her hand. The petals of cherry blossom flew with her hair which got free from her pigtails, in the vernal wind. The sunlight, which filtered through the tree leaves, fell on her milky white face, making it glow and lighting up her ocean eyes.

I felt butterflies.

I didn't know what love was; the feeling was new, and I loved every inch of it - how her yellow gown flowed around her as she walked through the streets and how she would blush when she would smile at the Sun! Everything. Everything. Everything was flawless about her!

It wasn't until my sixth year, I got the guts to talk to her. It was when Ms. Juniper made us lab partners, I finally saw some hope shining in the black sky. Admiring her from afar, never really showed me who she really was. I thought it was me who makes her feel comfortable, especially when she asked me to call her 'Ellie', instead of 'Elizabeth'.A few weeks later, when I saw her with a boy from our school calling her 'Ellie' as well, my heart shattered. It was on the same day when I saved her from an almost gang rape in the Evergreen Alley, we started to be friends.

As time passed, I gradually gave up my hope of getting back the same feelings from her. Why should one get hurt thinking about getting something one can never get? Moreover, why would she start liking a thin man who wore baggy clothes? But deep down I knew, I wasn't really sure about giving up.

Springs turned into summers, summers into winters, winters into springs. But Elizabeth Walker and Vincent Jones's relationship never evolved into love. 15 cherry blossoms and 15 snowflakes passed, all in vain, slowly killing me as we graduated from high school and started college. 'Pierced from the heart to hearts', watching her read her favorite stories to me, watching her complain about her crooked teeth in front, watching her twisting her silver bangle on her red little wrist, and watching her doing all sorts of things.

I took history, she took literature as majors. We used to talk about our specialized subjects to each other, and we both would listen patiently to each other. As the days passed, I stopped talking about history and started listening to her random ranting on literature. Watching her eyes lit up on incredibly describing a novel and also watching her hand movements as she struggled to put up her feeling derived from the book into words.

On the spring end in 1994, when I was lying on the grass and she was leaning against a tree reading her favorite book, I looked up at her face, her locks fell across her face giving it a beautiful shape. Her eyebrows knitted together as if she was reading something serious. I got up and leaned against the tree beside her, and examined her face. Her ocean eyes moved from left to right and her lips occasionally moved.

"Ellie, what are you reading so seriously? " I asked.

"Oh! It's a wonderful story", she replied nonchalantly without looking up at me.

I went on staring at her face. I could do that the whole day. Every nerve on my hand twitched to remove that lock of hair that covered her ear. But I can't do it, I went on reminding myself. I finally gave in and tucked the golden lock of hair behind her ear. The moment my fingertips touched her skin, she looked at me shockingly and I immediately regretted it.

"Vincent?" She asked.

"You've got new earrings, Ellie. Suits you!" I tried to play it cool.

I can see how flushed she was, but that was nothing compared to the butterflies that were flowing in my abdomen. I was blushing furiously. We brushed the awkwardness off the next day and went back on comfortable terms with each other.
My father's recent pass away took me by shock and left me as the only heir of his company.