The second the DeSoto was out of sight, she was flying out the backdoor and scaling the fence into his backyard. The old treehouse was still there patiently waiting for childish shrieks of laughter and tiny sticky hands to drip popsicle water on its floor. She paused just long enough to give the dusty tire swing a gentle push. Sweet Mary Mother of God, Summers! Only you would be dumb enough to get your leg stuck in a tire swing! Oh, quit whimpering, big baby, I'm coming. There, all better. All right, all right, I won't tell anyone but you owe me. I'm thinking a nice big piece of that apple pie your mother was making yesterday. Now come on, we're supposed to meet Xander and Angel at the baseball field. And you are not playing catcher anymore. You couldn't catch a cold. Hurry, hurry, sheesh Summers, you run like a girl!

She carefully lifted the third flowerpot on the patio. Nothing. Oh please, please let it be around here somewhere. She looked under all the flowerpots. Nothing. Tears were stinging her aching eyes. The cold cement scratched at her knees as she searched frantically. Finally she saw a glimpse of silver peeking from the dirt in the first pot of white roses. She felt faint with relief. Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely fit the key into its lock. The backdoor hinges creaked and groaned as she opened it.

Inside, it was cool and smelled like antiseptic and bleach. She shivered as she walked through the kitchen, the still-leaky faucet dripping water onto one plate and fork in the sink. It was so silent save for the plop, plop of water and the ticking of the clock. Passing through the living room, she saw dusty picture frames still scattered on top of the old upright piano. Every picture was of him. In his baseball jersey emblazoned with the number 9, in his navy church suit, in his baby stroller; his chubby face screwed up in a wail memorialized for all time. She didn't dare touch the pictures, afraid to leave fingerprints in the dust. Noticed that every other surface seemed to be clean and gleaming with furniture polish.

She crept towards the front hallway, careful not to disturb anything. When she looked up she almost fell to her knees, her legs suddenly nerveless.

He was there.

Standing on the landing at the top of the stairs. Dressed in a wrinkled white oxford shirt and ill-fitting blue jeans, bare-footed. Clutching the railing, the skin on his knuckles stretched tight with stress. His blank eyes staring off into the distance.

Oh god, he was different. He was exactly the same. Straight and strong and delicate shouldered like in her memory, her haunted daydreams of him. When he spoke, she felt flayed open with the exquisite familiarity of that voice. Deep and low and true, soft as a dying prayer. Tremulous and tender. The way it had always been, even when he had been insulting her.

"I knew you would come."

"How?" Winced at the shakiness of her own tone. How could she speak when she could barely breathe? He stole her breath away.

"I would know the sound of your footsteps anywhere."

The tears finally sprang free and rolled down her cheeks. She grabbed onto the banister and started climbing up the stairs to him.

"I'm coming up Will. I'm coming."

He waited, so silent, so still except for the muscle twitching in his jaw.

Her mother used to read a story to her every night when she was a child. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair. So I may climb the golden stair. Her whole life was for this moment. To climb the golden stair. At the top was the fairytale treasure. Completion. Love. Ever After.

When she reached the top, he was there. She had almost expected him to have faded away, as if he was only a waking dream. They were standing so close, they could have been breathing the same breath. Every cell of her flesh called out for his touch.

As if he could read her thoughts, he lifted a steady, pale hand. It found her cheek unerringly even though his placid eyes were fixed on the empty dark space over her shoulder.

"You're crying. Why?"

She placed her hand over his.

"Because I am so happy." Because I love you, love you, love you. More than the air I breathe. More than life itself.

His hand was soft and so warm under hers.

"I'm glad. How are you?"

She made a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob.

"I'm older."

His lips quirked up in a shadow of his boy-hood smile. She could have died between his lips.

"So am I. How do you look?"

She guided his hand over her face. Moved his fingers over the slope of her forehead, the softness of her eyelashes, the funny bumps of cartilage on her nose. What's gotten you so excited Summers? Finally going to get those ugly bumps removed from your nose? Led his fingertips over the barely perceptible lines at the corners of her eyes and down her thin cheeks, lingering at her lips, tracing their shape over and over. Down the length of her neck, their joined hands feeling every cord, every sinew. Running over the curved notches of her collarbones and stopping, the pad of his thumb resting in the hollow at the base of her throat, feeling her pulse throbbing frantically for him. He sighed and the sound went straight to her lower belly, making her insides molten with want.

"You're the same as I remembered. How do I look?"

Oh, she craved him. Craved the thick dark gold of his eyelashes, the deep twilight blue of his eyes, the strong arch of his nose, the shadowy hollows under his high cheekbones. But her tongue could only form one word of her hunger.

"Beautiful."

She placed her fingers on his lips. So soft, so soft. With her other hand she took his hand resting at the base of her neck and put it over her fingers at his lips.

"Feel how beautiful you are. Feel your beauty through me."

And with his hand over hers, she traced her longing on his beloved face. The familiar scar trisecting his left eyebrow. Her mark on him. The unfamiliar faint, small white scar lines radiating out at the corner of his right eye, where the bullet had entered, just missing his brain but severing his optic nerves leaving him in forever darkness. Cruel fate's mark on him.

"Can you feel yourself through me?"

He leaned his forehead against hers. "Yes."

She didn't know how long they stood like that, foreheads together, hands clasped resting on his cheek. Breaths melding.

Suddenly he jerked and she was snapped out of her desire-heavy haze. They froze listening to the rumble of a car pulling up.

His lips tightened in panic and he moved his hand away from hers. She wanted to cry out at its absence.

"My mother's back."

"But I thought she was at work?"

The expressionless mask that dropped over his face terrified her.

"She doesn't work today. She just went out to the store. You have to go. Quickly."

He turned awkwardly to go back to his bedroom. She grabbed his hands in hers needing to feel him, if only for one more second.

"Please, please. When can I see you again?"

His shoulders relaxed a little.

"Tomorrow. Come tomorrow. She'll be at work then."

"Yes, yes. I'll come tomorrow as soon as she leaves."

He squeezed her hands gently in his.

"Go now. Before she sees you."

She drank in the sight of his face, branding it into her mind to tide her over until tomorrow. Then she ran down the stairs, through the house, and out the back. She stopped long enough to lock the backdoor again and push the key into the first flowerpot. When she was in her backyard, she ducked down and peeked through one of the gaps in the fence to see his mother at the front door of the white house struggling to get out her key, bag of groceries in her arms. She went quickly back inside and ran straight up to her bedroom. When she was at her window again looking at the shuttered blinds of his room, she put her lips to the cold glass. And imagined him standing by his own window. Imagined he could feel her lips on his. Her mind curled around the image of him and whispered tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow...

You said you were so happy. My heart is threatening to beat out of my chest. You were everything I dreamed. You are so beautiful. I can still feel your fingers like flames on my lips. Igniting me. I will sit here in front of my window all through the night thinking of your sweet voice, of your gentle tiny hands, of Tomorrow. I am on fire for you.

Next Part

Story Index

Site Index