The Promise of Tomorrow - 6

Hello people! Thank you, faithful commenters! I love you for reviewing my work! 'Me' especially made me smile - I think all every writer ever wants to hear is that his / her style is appreciated! Thank you. :)
This quote may seem totally random, but you will get it when the story finishes, I promise! Same with the picture that came with the 'blurb'. Love you all! Happy reading!

x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x

Blaze, seemingly oblivious to my internal torment, turned his back on me and walked to a large rock, which he prised easily from the dry soil. He then proceeded to pull out a black duffel bag, which got my attention all right.

I walked over to where he stood.

"What’s that?" I asked curiously, standing on tiptoe to peer over his broad shoulder.

"That," Blaze said seriously, "is my sketchbook."

And he pulled a large black book out of the bag. My eyes widened, and then I blinked in surprise.

"I thought you painted, but ... you draw?" I asked softly, reaching out to run my finger along the binding. My father had drawn, before he died of cancer a year back. He was ace at it, too, always taking rough sketches of mum and me, and sometimes the fruit bowl and flowers in our old garden.

I loved all the soft pencil drawings that I would find scattered about. Before the day we found out that he had passed on, my mum had adored them, too. She would frame them and place them randomly around the house, proud of them to no end. Now she was more inclined to bite her lip and rip them in half, to let them flutter into the bin in a way that made my heart break

In a way, I thought that this was just what it did to her to find reminders of her husband’s absence - that every rip through the paper was her barely intact heart ripping itself apart again.

I swallowed the lump in my throat and looked up at Blaze, who was staring down at me with that impassiveness again. I wished I wasn’t so stupid to have accepted the date. I wished I could know what he was thinking, gazing down at the girl he had asked out to the woods that suddenly had unshed tears in her eyes and a mouth that pulled down at the corners, with teeth that bit her bottom lip in an attempt to hold in unexplained sobs. I wished it so much.

Silently, he took my hand and pulled me down to a patch of grass near the pool of water. Gratefully, I sank into the grass and shivered against the brilliant sunlight that shone down on us from above the mountainous volcano. I felt so cold all of a sudden, like somebody had doused icy water on our warm afternoon.

Still silent, Blaze handed the sketchpad to me and watched as I carefully flipped the front page open. It was blank. A small smile spread on his face as I turned each empty page, a look of confusion momentarily distracting the grief.

"I start a topic, or theme, and use up a whole sketchpad based on that. Like the last time, I decided on sunshine, and drew loads of pictures of trees and things in the sun, using colour on the one object that the sun shone on directly. Like now," he looked up at me and a miniscule smile played on his lips, "I would draw you."

I immediately blushed, even though I didn’t quite know why. No other human being on this earth had made me feel enough to blush so much and so many times.

Something nagged in the corner of my mind, and without thinking, I blurted out,

"Why me?"

Blaze didn’t look at me like I was crazy, or move away. His smile only widened to a small one, instead of a tiny one.

He reached up, and with a touch that was as light as a feather, brushed a curl away from my face. My skin warmed under his, and my stomach stirred restlessly, wanting me to reach up and grab his hand, to keep it there.

Needing me to do so.

With the last scrap of self control I had left, I resisted, and kept my fingers clenched into tight fists in my lap.

"Because you called to me," he said softly, and then his hand was sliding down the side of my face, down my neck, across my shoulder, down my arm, to my fingers, where they tangled themselves in with mine. I looked down at our intertwined hands. A trail of fire was smouldering stingingly down the side of my body that he had touched. It stung, but there was no pain. It only stung in shock.

Blaze, his eyes hauntingly dark and broodingly beautiful, didn’t make any move to do anything further, and of that I was glad. I was on that precipice again. I had slowly, though surely, climbed back up that rock face, and was back to safely being sat on top - but he had urged me again, pushed me to the edge.

This precipice, though deceptively similar, was not the same. I knew that much. This precipice was something more.

I gulped soundlessly. I had to stop. Now. I had to pull away, to break the spell, to breathe…before…before he gave the last look, the last touch, the last push, and I fell – undoubtedly, irreversibly and inexorably – in love.

x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x~x
The meeting beside the stream, I was soon to find, was the first of many. Blaze and I had an indubitable connection, and who was I not to give into the powers of destiny? I tried to hold back, tried to say no when he asked, but my lips, suddenly disconnected to my brain, always formed a smile and gave him the answer he wanted.

And yes was the answer he wanted.

I found, because of some sort of dysfunctional glitch in his brain, that Blaze did want me - he went as far to say that he wanted me more than I wanted him. I would smile, secretly, and give in to his playful banter.

Wanting him was one thing. Needing him was another.

Although our irrational relationship began to span out over weeks rather than days, Blaze never asked me for anything. He would never take a kiss, nor give it – and this was the reason why I was still a lip virgin when he asked me to go to the stream again one weekend.

We always went on Saturday afternoon, but it was a Sunday when he called me, so I agreed with a mixed feeling of excitement and happiness and confusion stirring in the bottom of my stomach.

He came and picked me up in that fantastic car - mum watched from the window as he reached across and took my hand carefully, delicately, as if I was made of spun glass. He didn’t say anything; he was a man of few words, but the small smile that played on his face was more than enough for me.

He drove quickly but not recklessly, and we were at the clearing within minutes. Then, with a touch light as a feather, he took my waist and led me through the trees to our secret meeting place.

I sat on the lip of the pond and pulled my shoes off so I could dip my feet into the warm water.

"Why the spontaneous need to see me?" I teased, turning my head to look at him. He stood, leaning against a big boulder, watching me with those beautiful eyes
.
"I missed you. Is that so wrong?" he teased back, coming to sit beside me. My head yearned to rest on his shoulder, and I let it. I was breaking down all the barriers now.

"No, I suppose not. Considering I was missing you, too." I replied truthfully, and his arm came around me almost instinctively. He was so careful with me, like he knew I was fragile, but that was impossible.
Nobody but my mother knew of my secret. And I intended it to stay that way.

"What would you like to do?" Blaze asked in a quiet murmur, as his cheek rested on my head. He was smiling, I knew. I loved that fact that I could make him feel enough to smile. He had once confessed that he preferred to be alone, that he didn’t much care for anything, or he cared for everything too much, and that his mood swings were beginning to tire his family out so he restricted himself to a select few places where he couldn’t hurt anybody else.

He never told me what made him this way, what made him so bitter with the whole world. I never asked, not wanting to pry. It wasn’t like he owed me anything, after all. We were just … I didn’t even know what we were. We were just … one.

"Do you still have those swimming costumes in the bag?" I asked in a voice as quiet as his. We had stashed our costumes there when he had once told me how the water was perfect for a spontaneous bath, and that he frequently did so. I had demanded we do that one time, in case of a need for them, so we had put them with his sketchbook.

"Yeah. You want to take a dip?"

I lifted my head so I could look at him. His gaze, like it frequently did, bore into mine and knocked my train of thought of its once stable tracks.

"Please," I replied easily, and then we were up. He threw my black sting halter two piece towards me and I blushed as I caught the skimpy things. It had been for holiday, as I actually didn’t engage in that much swimming at home.

We each walked in different directions to give the other privacy. I took much longer than him. I tugged at the costume, wondering self consciously how bad I looked. The top had four strings that tied at my back to make a halter, and the bottoms had little strings in either side.
When mum had bought it me, she had insisted that I looked like a model in it, but I wasn’t so sure. Okay, my legs were long and I was a decent cup size, but my stomach was impossibly flat and my butt impossibly not. Maybe he didn’t like that kind of shape?

I had dithered, working up the courage to walk back, and then finally pinched myself and practically pushed myself out into the clearing.

Blaze was there, sitting where he was before, his legs in the water. I walked out and he looked up.

His eyes widened, and he blinked once. I saw him swallow, and knew everything would be all right.

"You - you look…" he seemed lost for words, and it made me smile. I was ridiculously happy at that moment, and just wanted to take him up in my arms and hold him that way for the rest of the night. I didn’t rush to him and do so, though. For all the times I had spent speechless in the presence of his beauty, I waited for him to spit it out. "You look … breathtaking."

His eyes were completely serious, and he was unsmiling, which made my eyes prick and a lump rise in my throat. Why pick me? Why me? I wanted to shout, to yell the words. Why pick the only thing that will let you down? The questions spun in my head but I couldn’t force them past the tears overcrowding my throat.

I did the only thing I could do.

Which was step into the warm water, walk to him, take his hand, and gently pull him in with me.