Memory

     Maybe I was a little too mean, maybe I could have related to him. None of that mattered anymore anyway, the car was puttering in the drive-way and I was ready to leave. I checked the house once more, making sure I had packed everything. Plastic covers wrapped around the couch, a table, and the bed up stairs. Funny how you start at one place, make a bunch of memories and then leave them all behind in some sort of renovation. My fingers brushed against the wall, over the hand print in purple paint. The place where his hand fit so well, mine did not however, it was smaller then his had been, my fingers were dwarfed by the print. I remembered this night, a smile played along my lips as the scene played out in my mind.

     "Sarah! Get down here!" a deep rumble of laughter shivered through the house. I was locked in my room, curled up into the corner of my bed reading, The Shining. I had jumped at the sound of the laughter thinking it was the book and relaxed when I recognized who was laughing.

    "On my way!" I called, my feet touched the ground, it was cold and I flinched. "Jerith!" I had called, I heard your heavy boots on the stairs. Your sandy head flopped in the doorway and your smile spread over your lips, white teeth gleaming.

   "Floor too cold?" I nodded and you laughed, it vibrated in my head and you swung around so your back was to me. "Hop on," you laughed as I jumped on your back, and slipped my arms around your neck. You were warm and solid under me. We plotted down the stairs and I squealed with happy laughter as you jumped down them two by two, we were planning on painting the hall with my dad and uncle but you were too distracted. By me? You never did tell me. The sun was dipping down in the horizon, dad and uncle were out out on the wrap around porch drinking a beer. You set me down, toes first then the balls of my feet and finally my heels. We talked cheerily as the sun sank into his bed, waiting those last few minutes to let his sister moon polish her shine. Your eyes flicked over my tangle of golden curls and sea foam eyes, taking a soft finger and lifting a curl from my cheek you cupped my chin and looked at me. I blushed as I watched your eyes, clouds of silvery greys and flecks of blue. Those were eyes a girl could drown in and be lost forever, and I was being pulled in hard.

   "Ivy," you had whispered, a shiver had traveled through my body and left a tingling sensation in the tips of my fingers. I looked down, looking anywhere but your eyes because it seemed too irresistible and if I ruined it that it would be lost and never again found. Lost at the bottom of the ocean. "Ivy, look at me," you had whispered, peppermint breath touching my lips and warming my cheeks, I listened and you smiled faintly and leaned a hand on the wall tilting your head at just the right angle to catch my lips with yours. The kiss was long and gentle, not pressing and full of drunken stupidity like all my other kisses. This one felt right.

  The light had faded away and all that stood now were two teens who had pulled away from one another, cheeks flushed and soft panting. You looked up where your hand was just a moment before and started laughing. I was confused and turned standing next to you and started laughing too, you must have gotten paint on your hand because on the white wall was your purple hand, fit perfectly from every gently sloping curve to the long life line on your palm.

   Back in the present I traced the life line. Funny how life lets you down, glancing at my hand I traced the short life line and tears filled my eyes. Wishing for just that moment I could hold you again, that I could bear the pain of your death. But the truth was I couldn't and you were gone, everything hurt every last hole in my heart and emptiness in my stomach. Gone like a butterfly, here one moment and gone the next. I leaned my head onto the print and gave myself to the tears, letting them wash away the stinging in my eyes from holding them back for so long.