Free Falling Away by Devon Ashley

snow! My boots sloshed through the dingy white patches and skidded over the thinner areas, slipping on the frozen water beneath. I’d barely missed my bus and decided it wasn’t worth waiting in the cold for the next one. Boy was I wrong. I knew there was a reason I never walked more than four blocks in the wintertime. I was lucky I hadn’t fallen on my ass or seriously pulled a thigh muscle every time my leg slipped outward. A fine mist of frost coated the air as the constant traffic whipped past, chilling my face, surely giving my cheeks a rosy glow.
                  So long as my nose wasn’t as red as Rudolph’s.
                  I stretched the tail of my scarf towards my face and smothered my nose and mouth, the heat of my exhalations warming my wind-nipped skin. But as miserable as the cold numbing me from head to toe was, it was the stuffiness crowding the inside of my head that was really crushing my jovial, post-Christmas mood.
                  My phone jingled from within my purse, and I groaned as I removed my bulky glove to retrieve it. The familiar tune told me it was Robert, and he was probably wondering what was taking so long.
                  “Hello?”
                  “Hey. Where you at? The movie starts in twenty minutes.”
                  “Yeah, I know. I’m almost home. I missed the bus and had to walk.”
                  “Jenna, I could’ve come and gotten you.”
                  “Believe me, I wish you had. I’ll see you in a few.”
                  We said our goodbyes and I sloshed through two more blocks, finally turning on the avenue that took me to our apartment building. If only I hadn’t been stubborn and just called Robert to come pick me up, then I never would have heard his gentle voice saying my name as he slipped up beside me. My body jerked, setting off a domino effect of fearful vibrations throughout my body.
                  “Evan!” What was he doing here? How did he even know where to look? A million questions scattered my thoughts as my eyes took in the sight of my once dreamtime lover. But this wasn’t the face of the fun and humorous crush I came to love, but solemn, and quite frankly, way too serious to suit. His eyes seemed almost pained, his smile nonexistent. “Evan…” My words were there but barely audible. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?” He looked so much worse than he did in the hospital. It was the kind of look you typically saw on someone who lost their dearest friend, pale and just absolutely drained of life.
                  He nodded slowly, his hazel eyes piercing mine, fixing me in a daze that refused release. He stepped before me, so close his breath tickled my cheeks. They were fast and heavy, and something told me it wasn’t ‘cause he just rushed over to catch me. No, he’d been lying in wait for me to arrive tonight.
                  My chest gasped as his hand caressed my cheek, either from the chill of his bare hand or the forbidden action itself – I wasn’t really sure. We hadn’t been close like this since before he awoke from his coma, when the fear of him forgetting me plagued my thoughts. Now, almost two years later, his sudden nearness had me on the verge of a massive anxiety attack.
                  His thumb gently stroked the delicate skin under my eye. “I remember,” he said softly, and my chest suddenly became too heavy to breathe, my mind spinning madly with incoherent thoughts that might as well have been spoken in a foreign language, for they were useless to me. “I remember everything. You. Me. Us.”
                  Mentally, I tried to say no as his face neared, but my body was too stunned to react. I didn’t even kiss him back when his lips first connected with mine, so his hovered, barely gracing the sweetest touch, waiting to lure me in as his