Because of Ellison (31 page)

“Ellison, I think we need to turn around. The storm is
really bad. It would be dangerous for us to be caught out here.”

There had been many days and nights during the past summer
where I’d been introduced to the Florida storm. They came in fast and hard,
they ravaged and they destroyed. And, sometimes, they killed. Lightning created
fires where it touched and winds knocked over large trees. Two storms had
destroyed the progress I’d made on the porch and I’d spent the hours after they
passed trying to repair the damage they’d done. It was an exercise in patience
on those days where I killed myself working only to have the sudden storm come
and fuck up everything I’d worked to accomplish. If that had happened at the
beginning of the summer, I would have lost my shit and given up. But, during
the months I’d been in Florida, I’d learned that obstacles would happen and
that roadblocks were a normal part of life. Character was built in jumping those
obstacles and crashing through those roadblocks and I learned to appreciate
them for the person they were creating within me.

“Go home if you’re scared, Hunter. You have no obligation to
stay.”

The bitter tone of her voice shocked me and I didn’t
respond. It was obvious she was determined to go wherever it was that she was
going and I had no other choice but to follow her blindly. My weary eyes looked
up into the black depths of the clouds above us and I swore that if Ellison
wanted me to walk with her into the middle of that storm, I’d do it.

Twenty minutes passed as we walked the narrow path and
raindrops started to fall on my shoulders. Light at first, I was able to keep
pace with her, but when those drops became heavy, when they landed in my eyes
and distorted my vision, I became worried. In the distance, I saw lightning
touch the earth and I worried that a fire would ignite from how dry it had been
over the past few weeks. Despite the inclement weather, Ellison never slowed
her pace. She was going somewhere and nothing was going to stop her from
reaching her destination.

Eventually the path she followed broke apart, splitting open
into a massive field with a single and small patch of trees in the middle.
Ellison hoofed it out onto that field, the lightning illuminating her skin as
she went. The thunder was ceaseless and the winds tried to tear the clothes
from my body. However, I wouldn’t give up. I pulled my shoulders back and I
marched behind Ellison onto that field. The ice cold rain stung against the skin
of my face and visibility was getting to the point where I couldn’t see 10 feet
in front of me. But I didn’t care. Wherever she was going, it had to be
important.

When we reached the edge of the small bundle of trees in the
center of the field, I thought she was going to seek shelter. But when her body
went down, when she dropped to her knees and when she raised her face into the
sky and screamed as loud as she could at that storm, I shattered. My heart, my
soul, my mind … all of it broke open and my entire body tensed to see her in so
much pain.

I ran to her and dropped to my knees behind her. I didn’t
touch her or try to stop her, I just sat there and made sure she knew she
wasn’t alone. That was all that mattered. I was letting the same storm that threatened
her threaten me because I refused to let her endure it without someone standing
beside her.

Lightning flashed around us and I saw it strike the ground
not a hundred feet from where we knelt. I pushed up on my knees and attempted
to lean over her. I was afraid we’d be struck and I hoped that if it occurred,
it would only hurt me. It was a stupid idea and I knew I could never protect
her from lightning, but that knowledge wasn’t enough to stop me from trying.

After a few minutes, she stopped. Her entire body went
still, and she curled over on herself in the middle of the field where we sat.
Her back shook from her sobs and I couldn’t keep from touching her. When I
placed my hands on her shoulders, her skin was cold to the touch. She was
fucking freezing. I quickly stripped off my jacket and wrapped it around her.

“Ellison, we need to get under the trees. I’m going to pick
you up. I’m going to carry you to a place where we can get out of this storm as
much as possible.”

She didn’t respond, she just kept crying and whimpering
,
releasing all the pain she had stored up inside her into
the chaos of the storm that surrounded us. I lifted her into my arms and
cradled her to my chest. She fell against me like a broken doll and her hand
came up to grasp me on the sleeve of my shirt. I moved quickly to seek shelter.
I knew it wasn’t wise to hide under trees in a storm, but, given no other
choice, it was the only means I had to get her out of the direct wind and rain.

Sitting down against one of the middle trees, I silently
held Ellison to my chest. I wrapped my body around her, attempting to warm her.
I was almost completely folded over and it was an uncomfortable position to
hold — but I held it anyway. I cried with her under that tree and I
waited for her to release everything that she needed to let go so that the wind
could carry it off somewhere far where it wouldn’t hurt her anymore.

After a while, the storm’s intensity lessened: the lightning
stopped striking the ground around us, the clouds shifted away, and when the
rainwaters subsided, Ellison’s storm had also calmed. Her breathing slowed and
she eventually moved to push the wet hair from her face. She didn’t speak to me
about it at first and I was perfectly fine with her silence.

I watched through the thin canopies of the trees as the moon
came into view, accompanied by the appearance of what looked to be millions of
stars. I’d never seen the night sky so clearly before and I was in absolute awe
of how vast and beautiful the world was when you took a moment to notice it.

Ellison stirred in my arms and I looked down to find her
staring at my face. She reached up and placed her palm over the cold and
chapped skin of my cheek. The tears that had cascaded down her face only
moments before finally eased and only a few still rolled along her skin,
reflecting the light of the moon as they traveled.

“Why do you keep chasing after me, Hunter?” I could tell how
raw her throat must have been by the scratch in her voice. I was thrown off by
her question and it took me a minute to formulate a response.

I didn’t answer her immediately because I felt like
everything, all the times we’d spent together, all the smiles we’d shared and
the tears that had fallen, and all the years I wanted to share those types of
moments with her in the future hinged on my response. Why did I keep chasing
after her? To most, she was just another girl in small town who was struggling
like the rest of us in an attempt to find a place where she belonged in this
world. Most of those people weren’t lucky enough to know her like I’d known her
— they hadn’t talked to her, hadn’t been shown the depths that existed
within her. Much like the moon and stars that hung above us tonight, Ellison
was a light that wasn’t easily contained. She burned bright enough to break
through the dense fog I’d walked in my entire life. Because of her, I’d opened
my eyes when I hadn’t even been aware they’d been closed — and for that,
I’d chase her forever.

Clearing my throat, I reached up and pulled her hand from my
cheek when I turned to look her in the eyes.

Speaking quietly, I confessed, “Because you are a dream and
someone once told me that if I had a dream, I should chase it.” It was a simple
explanation, but somehow I knew Ellison would understand the honest weight of
what I’d said.

Her eyes blinked slowly as she studied my face and as usual,
she did something unexpected. She laughed. The corners of my lips turned up
when I tried to suppress my grin. Her laughter sounded fragile, as if something
so tiny could come along and break it apart - but it was there and my heart
raced against my chest to hear it.

“That is probably the strangest thing I’ve heard you say
yet.” She sighed and pushed herself up so that she could sit beside me rather
than in my lap. The cold wind stung the parts of my body that were exposed when
she moved away and it made the loss of contact more painful to bear. “You’re
crazy for following me out here. You can get sick in weather like this.”

I nodded. “Same goes for you.”

Chuckling again, she quietly responded, “Yeah, but I have an
excuse for being crazy. What’s yours?”

My hands grabbed the side of her face so I could hold her
stare when I answered. “I fell in love with a crazy girl.”

Her responsive laugh was a short burst, but then she pulled
away and her eyes drifted to look out into the distance. “I think we should get
going home. We’ll both develop pneumonia from being wet and cold.”

“Oh, fucking thank you, because I didn’t know how much
longer I was going to be able to sit out here before I froze.”

She laughed again and I smiled to hear it.

It felt like, finally, the storm had passed.

The Florida winter came and went and spring was emerging in
late March. In the time that had passed since Christmas, things had returned to
a comfortable calmness within both houses. I still hadn’t spoken to my parents,
and when I returned to my apartment up north for a week to vacate my apartment,
I sent them an email, letting them know.

Standing out in the driveway at the asscrack of dawn, my hiking
packs were weighing me down while I waited for Ellison to get her ass outside.
Her door opened and I was met with the familiar barks of the dogs as they
charged down the stairs in my direction. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out
two small pieces of bacon that Lily had given me before I left the house.
Ellison noticed me handing it to the dogs and laughed.

“I knew it. I knew there was no reason for those dogs to
like you as much as they do. You’ve probably been giving them bacon since the
first day you met them.”

“Nope. It’s like I said,” I wrapped my arms around her as
she approached me. “That was my sparkling personality … plus I think Sasha kind
of has a crush on me.”

Ellison slapped at me playfully before pushing up on her
toes to kiss me. Softly, at first, her lips brushed across mine and my tongue
flicked out to taste the strawberry
lip gloss
she
wore. Her mouth opened slightly and I took the opportunity to deepen the kiss
while pulling her tight against me. She let out a small squeal and her hands
came up to grip my hair. I couldn’t help but smile when I kissed her. We’d
slowly come back together after that night in the field. Although we spent
almost every minute together, and fell asleep almost every night holding each
other, I hadn’t rushed having sex with her again. I didn’t want to take
advantage of a girl whose world had been ripped out from beneath her. That’s
not to say that it wasn’t the hardest thing I’d done, but somehow I’d found the
strength to abstain and keep my physical needs in check while I was with her
despite the raging hormones that took hold of my body when I was around her.
Even with something as simple as this kiss, I had to arch my hips away so she
didn’t feel my pants tightening against her hip.

She slowly pulled away from me after a few minutes. The
small rays of light that broke through the tree limbs above us caused her blue
eyes to shine when she looked at me. “Let me put the dogs up and we’ll get
going,” she said.

I was surprised. “They’re not coming with us?”

“Not today.” She smiled.

“Why not?”

Her hands came to my chest and she pushed away from me to
walk to her house. Looking back over her shoulder, she answered, “No reason.”
When I saw her wink after saying that I didn’t know if I should applaud to have
her back or run like hell because those words meant trouble. I groaned at the
sight of the way her body moved as she walked away from me and decided that I’d
be brave and tag along to see what she had planned.

After the night in the field, Ellison and I had fallen back
into a pattern of hiking much like we’d maintained during the summer. It was as
cold as a bitch most of the time, but something about those walks was
therapeutic for us both. I assumed that during the quiet parts of those walks
Ellison was working through the loss of her dad, while I was devising a plan on
how to finish school and afford graduate school. Becoming a doctor wasn’t cheap
and I refused to ask my parents for help; I had cut up the credit cards once
I’d used them to get my stuff. I’d taken a job bartending at The Tavern and
worked two nights a week to help chip in on food and other bills at the house.
The job wasn’t that hard actually. I only worked Tuesdays and Thursdays and the
place was always dead when I was there.

“Think it’ll get
hot
enough for us
to go swimming today?”

I looked at the back of her head like she was insane.
“There’s no way in hell I’m jumping in that water, El. I’m sure it’ll be
fucking freezing.”

She stopped and turned to look at me. “Oh, come on.” A
mischievous smile touched her lips. “Stop being such a baby. I’m sure the fish
miss us.”

Laughing, I walked up to her and put my arm around her
shoulder. Continuing up the path with her by my side, I answered, “Well they
can keep missing us at least for another few weeks.”

Ellison reached down and grabbed my hand and pulled me onto
a small path that I barely recognized — most likely because it had been
dark the last time I’d followed her down it. To see it during the day, I
wouldn’t have recognized it as anything more than an area that was thinner than
the rest of the brush that surrounded us. After a few more scraps and slaps to
my leg from the overgrowth, we walked out onto the field where Ellison had
broken down.

I stopped in my tracks and was stunned silent to see the
size of the field. I looked around at the amount of space that surrounded us.
Above us was a boundless blue sky and beneath us was grass as far as I could
see. There was nothing else and for some odd reason I felt unnerved to be
standing in what felt like a sea of nothingness.