Free Forsaken by Keary Taylor

caught myself
before I started babbling about how I couldn’t figure out why a
sadistic angel had come out of the land of the dead after me. Or
about how I was afraid he wasn’t actually ready to leave me alone.
“Everything’s just so messed up right now. I feel like everything’s
spinning out of control. It’s killing me.”
    “ There,” Austin said with
a hint of a smile on his face. “You feel better?”
    “ Eh, not really,” I
automatically responded. “Well, maybe just a little.”
    He just smiled and we both sat in the
quiet for a little while. He picked a long piece of grass from the
edge of the steps and twirled it in between his fingers. “I know a
lot about fighting,” he finally said, his voice a little quieter.
“My parents used to fight every night. I’d cry myself to sleep a
lot as a kid. No kid should ever have to hear the things they
screamed at each other. They finally got divorced my sophomore year
of high school.
    “ You’re fighting now.
Things only get harder as life goes along.”
    “ It’s not like that,” I
said, feeling a lump form in my throat. My eyes stung as tears
sprang into them. “No one could really understand what we’re going
through right now. Things will work out though. They have
to.”
    Austin just looked at me for a long
while. I could feel the mood turn all the more somber.
    “ I hope they do,” he
finally said and patted me on the back. “You deserve to be happy.
Just remember he’s not the only option there is out
there.”
    Before I could say anything else,
Austin stood and walked back to his car. Before he got in, he
looked back and waved. He then backed out and drove
away.
    It wasn’t the same as talking to Emily
but it was nice to talk to someone who didn’t know all the gory
details.
    I wasn’t sure I felt any better after
talking to Austin though. Two tears spilled down my cheek as the
clouds rolled in and the sun set behind the mountains. A few
minutes later the rain started to softly fall.
    I still hadn’t moved when Alex pulled
in the driveway and parked. He walked up the sidewalk and stood in
front of me, his shirt slowly getting soaked as he stood in the
rain.
    We didn’t say anything for a few
moments, just stared at each other. Emotions pushed and pulled
between us in unspoken hurt and grief. We didn’t have to say
anything. Everything that needed to be said had already been
said.
    “ Can we just be us
tonight?” he finally said. I hated myself when I saw the pain in
his eyes, the worry and uncertainty that was there. “No worries
about what’s going to happen in the future? No fighting. Just me
and you?”
    I stood up and joined him in the light
rain. I wrapped my arms behind his neck and looked up into his
changed eyes. “I’d like that a lot actually,” I said as another
tear rolled down my cheek, camouflaged graciously by the drops that
fell from the sky.
    “ Come on,” he said as he
took my hand and led me down the hill in the nearly diminished
light.
    The lake was perfectly quiet as the
rain created endless patterns on the water. We were the only ones
around.
    Alex led me out onto the dock and just
held me for several long minutes. It felt nice, to just be together
like this, not worrying about things that felt out of our control.
It reminded me of everything that was really important, why I loved
him so much. This was home; this was where I belonged,
forever.
    He looked down at me and his lips
found mine. They worked together in practiced unison, never tiring
of what they discovered together.
    To my surprise, Alex’s hands tugged at
the hem of my shirt, lifting it up over my head.
    “ What…?” I started to
question.
    “ Let’s go for a swim,” he
said as our lips continued to move together.
    “ In the rain?” I asked
against his lips. At the same time I lifted his shirt off, my hands
tracing the perfect panes of his chest and stomach.
    “ Why not?” he asked as
that smile tugged at his lips.
    I couldn’t help