The Promise of Tomorrow - 9

Okay, I usually hate doing this, but the picture is one of Ella. I hate trying to find pictures of my characters because nobody ends up looking exactly like them (obviously) and it really irks me, but this is close enough. Ella, though, is a little more full in the lips, and her eyes and hair are lighter. :)

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:) - x
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>Blaze <

It was like my heart was ripped out of my chest, torn into a thousand tiny, insignificant pieces, and then burned to a pile of ashes that were scattered by the winds before I got a chance to compose myself.

Leukemia.

The one word that had haunted me for a full eleven months, 23 days and seven hours had come back to hit me again. It hadn’t stopped after taking my mother. It had decided to take the love of my life, too.

I hadn’t intended to fall in love with her. With Ella, I mean. Ella. Such a pretty name for such a pretty girl. No - pretty didn’t even cover it. To me, she was everything, and to me, she was stunning. Like the sun on a cloudless, summer day - so bright and beautiful that you have to wear shades to protect your eyes.

But my eyes, instead of feeling the need to be protected, drunk her in like a gaspingly thirsty man presented with cool, clear water for the first time in years.

Sitting on the bus for the first time. Her eyes - wide and innocent - reminding me of Bambi, in fact, looked up at me. They were framed with long, thick lashes that brushed her flushed cheeks as she blinked. I was drawn to those delicate lashes and beautiful, large almond shaped eyes from the moment I first saw her. They were the kind of perfection that I longed to draw.

Her nose fit perfectly in with the rest of her face - not too large, not too small - and her lips absolutely captivated me. Plump, soft looking lips with a rare double curve on the top one. Her cheekbones gave her the immediate beauty that made you want to stare at her, but her lips were the ones that put you under an unbreakable spell.

I saw her on the bus and my fingers itched to reach for my charcoal and paper. She was like my muse - I was inspired enough to draw a thousand pictures, and then more. And that was a remarkable achievement, because I was having one of my bad days. When the smell of flowers and the sight of a summer dress would get to me. They reminded me of my mother when the leukemia took her - out in the garden, stretched out on a sun lounger with lilies in her hair, with the lavender colored summer dress that my dad had brought her especially for laying there billowing out around her like wings.

And then I saw Ella and it was - bam! - the flowers were back to smelling beautiful and summer dresses were something that every girl wore, but couldn’t pull off as well as my mother.

I envisioned the stranger girl in a knee length, demure white number, her curly hair loose and dark down her back as she lay in the long grass and looked up at me with those eyes. I envisioned myself a distance away, drawing her. Then I envisioned myself lying next to her.

Both daydreams had an extremely delicious quality.

And then when she told me in her soft, intoxicating voice about how she’d like to explore the woods, my beloved woods, it was too much of an invitation. I asked her to go with me casually, nonchalantly, as if it was an offhand thing. I was already imagining the drawings I would do.

It was a great thing for me, a leap rather than a step. I wasn’t ready to be in contact with any girl, any woman yet. I had always had my trouble with unsociable behavior, but she just begged to be taken with me. If anything, it was primitive, macho urges that finally persuaded me to take her out.

She looked so fragile, so delectable, that I felt the need to protect her – to take her in my arms and make sure no other man so much as looked at her, never mind talked to her. Every day, watching her walk with Adam Hollister, letting him touch her hair, the back of her hand, her elbow, made my blood boil. There were those primitive emotions again. She was mine. Mine.

I would break his bones for ever thinking otherwise.

And then when she agreed, and blushed in my presence and acted like she might feel the same way, it was like my starved lungs were allowed a breath of deep, fresh air after years of nothingness.

The first time she took my hand. It was like all my dreams were coming true. It may sound stupid, but it was like coming home. Her dainty, slim fingers slipped into my considerably larger ones, and both sets tangled together instantly, as if they had been doing so forever. It was like an invisible command. A bond that was made that couldn’t be broken.

It took all the strength in my body not to draw her to me and kiss her like there was no tomorrow. Not that I knew, of course, that there was any possibility of that.

We walked and talked and soon, I realized that I didn’t need to kiss her. Having her close, having her choose me, say yes to me, was enough. It satisfied me to have her say, in her own invisible way, that she was mine.

When she told me, it didn’t even register that God could be so cruel. We were meant to be. Meant to be. Nothing in this world could ever make me think anything different. It was inevitable that she became mine. Everybody knew that. Right?

No - everybody, it seems, except for fate. Fate played me like board game; let me go along a steady pace, then took me up the largest ladder. Showed me the end, the win, and then pushed me down the longest snake imaginable. Right back down to square one again. And the dice was thrown away, lost, so it seemed that I could never move from the all time low I had hit.

And I was, in a way, content with that. For what is life without love?
Nothing - a life without love did not and does not exist.

So I held her hand, and stole her last kisses with a need that went beyond teenaged lust. I took her to our special place to make one last memory that I could hold close for the rest of my life.

"Blaze," she murmured my name as I drew away from her slightly. I was kissing her like my life depended on it. And, in a way, it did.

The sound of my name on her lips did strange things to my stomach. My heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings.

"Ella," I breathed, taking in her scent – something fruity and tantalizing.

"Blaze, love me," she said, her eyes closed and shoulders tensed as if she expected a rebuff. Love her? But I already did…

The realization hit me like a truck. Love…her? She wanted me to… I sucked in a lungful of air. It was what I wanted, but her? Was she ready, or was it an on-the-spot thing that she would regret later?
She opened her eyes and I looked down at soft, shining chocolate.

"Please?"

It was too much. With a strangled, hungry moan, I carried her to the long grassed bank and took from her the only thing I didn’t have.