Free Blue Sky Days by Marie Landry Page A

beautiful in its simplicity. It was like living in a completely different world from the one in which I had spent the first nineteen years of my life. There were no worries, no deadlines, no pressing engagements, just endless free time and an excitement for life I had never felt before.
    The day Nicholas and I spent together had given me a preview of how life could be, and now I wanted it to be like that always. A part of me knew it wasn’t entirely realistic, and things couldn’t always be that simple, but I decided to live in the moment and savour it while I could.
    As spring blossomed into summer, I imagined I could feel myself blossoming with it—growing, changing, evolving, and slowly leaving behind the insecure, guarded, unsure girl I was. It was definitely a process for me, having spent so long making plans and worrying about every little thing, but Nicholas and Daisy were there to pull me out of my thoughts when I got buried too deep.
    Nicholas and I became nearly inseparable. Just before I arrived in Riverview, his dad asked him to take time off from the construction site to help with some long-distance paperwork for the company, so for the most part, we were free to do whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.
    We spent much of our time in the park, or on Daisy’s front porch, or at the diner, talking and just enjoying being together. When we were outdoors, Nicholas taught me to appreciate the beauty of nature—the feel of the wind in my hair; the sound of a chorus of birds singing us our own personal symphony; the smell of the sweet summer air that was a mixture of clover and grass and flowers.
    We took pleasure in things that were simple yet complex—a spider as she spun and wove her silken web; the flowers in bloom; a sky full of distant, diamond-bright stars—things I had been too busy to appreciate before. The world was full of mystery and wonder, and I soon realized that I wanted to experience it all. I also knew that I wanted to experience it with Nicholas.
    I always had butterflies when he called or when I knew I would be seeing him soon. Daisy told me I had a ‘perma-grin’, and I liked the sound of that.
    “I haven’t seen you without a smile on your face in the last week,” she said to me one day, a grin on her own face. “I like what Nicholas has done to you. Tell him to keep it up. I like the change.”
     
    *****
     
    A month or so after my arrival in Riverview, there was an entire week where it rained non-stop. Nicholas and I would sit on Daisy’s front porch to watch the rain fall over the yard, soaking the grass and flowers. Every so often we would head down into the yard to dance in the rain and kiss each other before one of us would kick water at the other, splashing in the puddles like children and drenching each other in the process.
    I had always hated rainy days prior to the one in Farmer Milligan’s field; they usually made me sleepy and grouchy and unmotivated. Now I looked forward to those days when we would act like kids, laughing the whole time. I hadn’t acted like that even when I was a kid, so it was like having a sudden unexpected chance at childhood before having to grow up and make big decisions about my future that I wasn’t quite ready to make.
    When we got tired from playing in the rain, we’d head back to the porch and I would sit in Nicholas’s lap. As I sat curled against him, he would wrap his arms around me or gently stroke my back or hair. I would lean into him and breathe in the smell of rain on his damp skin and in his hair. I found those moments oddly sweet and almost sensual, as they always gave me a wonderful tingling sensation in my belly.
    In all the time we spent together, the subject of sex never came up. We kissed and held hands, but it was all very innocent. Nicholas knew I’d never had a boyfriend, so it didn’t take a genius to figure out I was still a virgin. I wasn’t sure if he was nervous about bringing up the subject, or if he didn’t