life's rain // bruno mars

chapter fifteen

Chapter fifteen

In that moment I learned something new about being in love. It drives you to damn near insanity, making you do crazy shit you've never in a million years thought you would do. Like walking through a forest at four in the morning. The sky was as black as night, stars across its surface. The moon provided dim light, silver softly shining through the canopy of trees above us, and making Lena's skin glow.

It reminded me of when I was little. My brother and I would wander in the forests, which Hawaii had a lot of. I used to imagine that the animals were my audience, and I would perform for them with this ukulele I owned. My brother would have two sticks, banging them against the trees, emulating his favorite drummer, Ringo Starr. We sounded horrible. Both of us too young to know how to make a proper beat and sing notes, but to us we were the best  performers alive. 

The forest was full of sound. Wind moved through the trees. Every step we made, there was a scuffling sound in the bushes. Scurrying animals. I buried the fear of one of those animals leaping out at us with bared teeth, tearing at our flesh. “Talk to me, Lena.” Even though she was holding on to me, I felt the need to hear her voice. “You gotta talk to me.” 

“Earth is with you,” she said quietly. “The wind sweeps your worries, the water drowns your fears, and the fire burns the bad memories.”

“One of your poems?” I swept the flashlight in front of me. We were walking on a dirt path that ran through the  middle of the forest. Man-made. Often, my shoes painfully came into contact with rocks.

I could tell she was smiling. “I just made that up.”

“You're good. Really good. But there's a fault in one of the lines.”

“What?” She was so shocked she nearly stumbled, making me trip over a thick tree root. There was nothing but air to reach for as I hit the ground, landing on my side. The flashlight rolled out of my hand and onto the path. Lena fell to her knees on the side of me, her mouth covered with her hand. “Bruno! Sweetie I'm so sorry. You okay?”

“Yeah.” I sat up in the dirt, brushing some off my shoulder. I wasn't hurt, only my ego. “I'm all right.”

And then she bursted out laughing. It made me jump, the sound so loud it made the whole forest fall silent. Like all the animals stopped, just to hear her voice. I reached out and pinched her side. She swatted my hand away, still laughing. “Stop it!” She wiped at her eyes. “You should've seen your face.” She covered her stomach with her hand, her eyes widening. “Shit my stomach hurts.”

“Stop laughing then.” I tried hiding my smile by standing up, brushing the dirt off me. I helped Lena up, and she went and grabbed my flashlight. She slapped it against her palm. Then looked up to me when it didn't turn on. “Congratulations, your superlative fall broke it. You owe me two dollars and ninety-nine cents.”

I grabbed her arm. “Let's just go. I'm ready to get out of here.”

We started walking. “You're not mad at me for laughing are you?”

“Yes. Especially now that I'm in dept of three bucks.”

She grinned. “I'll show you some leniency if you're reason is sensible as to why there's a fault in one of the lines of my poetry?”

“The water part,” I said. “Drowning your fears. That's not the way to go, right? Drowning them, I mean. It's like you're ignoring or denying them, which is easy to do, sure, but the truth is you gotta face them. Let them rise to the surface, you know?”

She was quiet for awhile. “You're really something else,” she said finally.

The forest was gradually thinning, until we ended at this wide, dark as obsidian, road with streetlamps on either side. It was beautiful, really. “Park,” Lena said. “This leads to a park. You want to take a shortcut or follow the road?”