moon river ; g.d.

six

(Ur girl started reading her first Stephen King novel so my apologies if I get a little carried away with the descriptions of thing for these next few chapters. I'm a little inspired to say the least.)

A few hours had passed since breakfast, and Grayson and I realized we had a lot of catching up to do. We had been since we finished eating, and made our way over to the couch to continue an ongoing conversation we were having over the flight distance from Oregon to Maine. It was a stupid argument really, one that could be resolved with a simple Google search, but we wanted to prove to each other we were smarter than the other at geography. This conversation was over in minutes, and we were moving on to other topics. Harder topics.

He told me all about his life in Maine, after Oregon. How he had so much going for him, so much potential at making a name for himself. He was a writer. A very talented writer who excelled in any writing field, but his preferred style was poetry. I made a few jokes about this, and accused him of having been the kind of guy that would carry around books without ever having read them and tell girls he loved the way their hair looked when it was flowing in the wind. He admitted he wasn't like this at all, and instead told me all about the several different poems he wrote for his girlfriend.

Her name was Tessa, he told me, and she had light brown hair and bright blue eyes and a talent for calling him at all the wrong times. He said they'd been dating for about a year, and that their feelings towards each other changed as quickly as the blink of an eye. They fought constantly, and the way they'd be acting towards each other that day relied entirely on the smallest things, such as who picked up who for school that morning to the weather at noon. He said he wasn't one for physically saying much, but boy could he write her poems. Poems that would make her simultaneously question why they were fighting in the first place, and they'd be right back in each other's good graces.

He admitted that out of everything he lost when he died, she was the least of his worries, which he also admitted bothered him. A lot. He said he felt guilty over the year of his life he wasted with a girl he couldn't stand most days of the week, especially when he didn't have that many years to spare. If he had the chance to have lived more, it might've not bothered him as much. But he only reached the age of eighteen, a small number in any case, but especially whenever you have as big of a future as he had.

He said what he missed most, and the first thoughts going through his head as he was dying and after he was unconscious, was his family. I always knew the bond he had with his family was tight, but the way he spoke about them, the way he spoke about the gut-wrenching feeling he got when he was taken from them so quickly was heartbreaking. It was a whole new breed of closeness. He thought so highly of his mother, father, and Ethan, that he said he regretted mostly not being able to live long enough to tell each of them goodbye.

His hazel eyes filled with tears when telling me about this, and the words coming from his mouth made me tear up as well. "Not one for physically saying much" my ass. Maybe it was just because of how close I'd become with his family after his funeral, but it all just seemed to feel different and hurt more knowing the ins and outs of their lives.

He was going to BYU after being recommended by a few of his past English teachers when creating a college application. They sent in several of his works over the years and it didn't take long for them to accept him. Well, it took a while, of course. D1 schools are incredibly difficult to be accepted into, but it wasn't hard to guess that he'd make it in, and if not he'd at least have a lot of teachers and professors who knew his name.

He had broken up with Tessa the night before he went to that party, that one damn party. That was the main reason he went, others being the fact that his friends had been bothering him about it all week. It felt so strange to hear about all of this all over again. His parents had told us what happened, so it's not like I was clueless, but it was so odd to hear his side of everything. Why he really went, if he wanted to or not. Which he didn't. He's not much of a party-goer either.

Sooner or later, it was around time for my parents to come home. My dad is always home at least an hour or so before my mom, and I knew he'd react the strongest if he came home to see that his daughter had skipped school to hang out with a boy. Not just any boy though, of course. A boy who he watched be buried and spent weeks grieving the death of. He'd flip shit, in other words.

A few minutes before he was supposed to arrive, I told Grayson to run outside and stand behind the house so that we wouldn't have to try and sneak him downstairs and risk my dad seeing him. So we did just that. I brought a blanket over my legs and nuzzled into the couch, hearing the front door open and close. I looked up and he was hanging his jacket and keys on the hook next to the front door, and didn't see me until he was heading towards the bathroom.

"What are you doing home early?" He asked, giving me a warm smile.

I shrugged and sat up, scratching my opposite shoulder. "I wasn't in the mood to sit through another art class."

"So they just let you leave?"

"I'm a senior, dad. We're pretty much allowed to check out whenever we want."

He pursed his lips and muttered something as he stumbled down the hallway to find the bathroom. I threw the blanket off myself as soon as he was out of my view and ran to the window that displayed the backyard. Grayson was leaned against a tree, staring out into the open field behind our house. I nodded to myself and laid back down once I heard my dad coming back into the living room.

"I think I'm gonna go on a run, wanna go?" I asked, folding up the blanekt out of habit. Like I said, manners.

He chuckled and flopped down into his arm chair, holding his hand out for the remote. "That's real funny, child."

I laughed along with him and handed him the remote from off the coffee table, then jogging upstairs to my room. I peeled my pajamas off that I hadn't bothered to change out of all day and threw on a pair of joggers, a decently clean muscle shirt, and grabbed an oversized jacket off a hanger. I put my phone in one of the many pockets I had on me and pulled my hair into a ponytail. I shut the door behind me and jogged back downstairs, making sure to tell him when I'd be back so he wouosnt suspect anything. He really didn't have a reason to, but there's no such thing as being too careful.

I turned a ninety degree angle and headed for the backyard, right towards the tree Grayson had been leaning on. He must've heard my footsteps, because he turned around to face me as soon as I was close enough for him to hear. "It's been so long since I've seen something like this?"

"Something like what?" I asked, suddenly feeling very out of breath despite not having ran very much, if not at all. I jogged up and down a flight of stairs and then out into my backyard, and I was breathing heavier than I had in awhile.

"This," he responded, bringing his hand out and moving it along the scenery. "It's beautiful."

In my eyes, it was grass. Weeds. Something we cut down and forget about at least once a week. But to him, I could understand how beautiful it must seem. Especially when having gone so long without seeing much of anything, as he explained to me. I smiled as he continuing reaching out to touch the flowers, dandelions, that had grown upwards tall enough for him to not even have to bend over to touch. I let him have a moment and stood back, waiting for him to come to me as I had tried to do last night when I found him.

When he did though, a youthful glow had covered his face and lit up his eyes. "What'd you tell your dad?"

"That I was going on a run," I replied.

He nodded and glanced back out at the open field. "So what are we gonna do now?"

"No clue, got any ideas?"

He sighed, and stuck his hands in his pockets. "Let's just drive. We don't even have to really go anywhere."

"Sounds like a plan." We walked out of my backyard and to my car, while I made sure to keep an eye on the windows in case my dad would have happened to look out one and see us.