Tell Me a Story | ✓

May

May: Inspired by song May by James Durbin

I met her when I was five. Some say it's young love that caught our attention - that we were childhood sweethearts. But our love was so much more than that... it was infinite.

May and I were two children that believed anything our parents would tell us. If we jumped high enough on her trampoline, we'd touch the moon; if we swung off the highest point we could get on the swings, we would be engulfed by the sun. Little did we know that, just a few years later, they would shed upon us the worst nightmare that all beings avoided at all cost: reality.

I was first introduced to the God-forsaken thing when I was ten. I found out what had really happened to my parents - why I truly lived with my aunt and uncle for all those years. I ran into a picture of them - my mom and dad - when I was cleaning out my room. It was a picture of the three of us in the hospital when I was being born.

When I showed my aunt and asked her the story behind it, she had paused and asked for me to sit down beside her. She told me the story of my birth - what I had wanted to hear in the first place. But what I expected to be a happily-ever-after turned into a twisted tale of my mother's passing during delivery and my father's inability to raise me because I had Her eyes.

That's when I knew that this world wasn't a kind one.

But May showed me every chance she had that my outlook of the world was wrong.

The first time she touched my hand, we were sixteen - fresh juniors in high school. I was technically an asshole for not touching her hand first, but I had a valid excuse then: I was scared as hell. We'd "held" hands many times before, but nothing so purposefully; nothing so intimate. She slid her fingers over to where my hand rested beside me on the chair's arm and, without any precaution, carefully slid hers into mine.

It was like hand sex.

We never looked at each other - we just stayed silent on her balcony, our chairs scooched side-by-side and our hands engulfed in the other's - but I knew right then that she could be the one that would make me an honest man.

We had our first kiss on that balcony several months afterward. It was small, but it was nice. No nose bumping or teeth clashing or anything. We held hands every chance we got then, thumbs brushing against the other's palm, and hands squeezing each other's in a silent I like you.

But "I like you's" suddenly transformed into "I love you's," and junior year fell into an unforgettable summer. We went out to the lake - my family, May and I - and stayed in a cabin. Of course we didn't share a room (my aunt wasn't stupid), but besides nighttime, we spent as much time together as we could.

We spent more time at the lake than anywhere else, and didn't care to befriend any of our neighbors there. We tried to reenact "The Lift" from Dirty Dancing and failed quite terribly every time. We laughed hysterically and kissed, because that's what young lovers did.

Our last night there, we were sitting on the lakehouse's balcony, our feet dangling over the edge of the fence as we sat on top of it. She took my hand in hers and gave it a squeeze, and I looked at her and found her eyes meeting mine. I asked her what was wrong, and she asked if I could keep a promise.

Of course, I replied.

"Promise me we'll get married one day," she had whispered, looking away from me wistfully and out at the lake below us. "That we'll have a baby named Wendy and we'll both love and spoil her to death."

Marriage? I had thought, my mind racing. A baby?

But when she tugged at my hand and pulled me away from my destroying thoughts, I smiled down at her and said the golden words: I promise.