Hold Me While You Wait

18|breathe without the hurt

breathe without the hurt

The garden was beginning to come about as the days went. Elis spent each afternoon directing her attention towards fixing it. Her mother had watched her in content on one sunny day. She'd often come into Elis's room and walk over to the connected balcony just to watch her work.

And that's what Elis would rather find herself doing. It was what Elis did to get her mind off things, and the curly haired girl had been succeeding in doing so. But as an attempt of not wanting to be working under the scortching hot sun on every afternoon, Elis found herself seated in the front yard, right under the old mango tree with her cigarette in hand.

She remembered the long gone days in which she would sit under that shade to paint, watching Bryson and a few of their other friends attempting to swim in the lake. This afternoon was different, however. Instead of Bryson and their old friends that have all seemingly left the small town to pursue more of their lives by now, it was Gray who was in front of the lake, peacefully reading a book as the ginger girl sat cross legged on the sand.

Elis had watched her all the way from the mango tree, wanting nothing but to close the distance between them and to touch her in the purest way. However, it was the laughter coming from the house that reminded her that she couldn't just go over to Gray. Elis didn't trust herself enough not to act like she wasn't at all smitten by the ginger girl when she'd sit next to her.

The joyful and exuberant voices coming from inside the house wasn't just that of Mrs Collins and Aunt Lauren. Her mother had invited some of her old friends back to the lake house that afternoon. Margot and May. They were two women who not only came to visit their old friend, but they also came to announce their one year marriage to each other.

Elis remembered them to be really close in the past when they'd spend days at the lake house, but she didn't quite understand their connection nor fathom their feelings, and it was until that very day when Elis met Gray, that Elis could say she actually understood.

The women have been in the house for about an hour when Elis spotted Margot walking out the door, the dark skinned woman running her eyes over the lake before her blonde wife walked out to stand by her side. It was then that Margot said something to a smiling May that made her look under the mango tree where Elis sat.

The married women shared another look before May went back inside, while Margot made her way to a buffled Elis.

"What are you doing?" Margot said when she sat next to Elis, sharing her view of a reading Gray in front of the lake.

Elis looked at the dark haired woman beside her and she exhaled the smoke, beginning to draw random shapes on the sand with her other hand. "Nothing."

Despite her blunt answer, Elis shared her smile to Margot once again, before she halted her drawing for a moment to take a long drag of the smoke.

"Congratulations... For the marriage."

Margot returned the younger girl's smile. "Thank you."

"How did you know that it was May you wanted to spend the rest of your life with?" Elis asked, returning to mindlessly sketching shapes on the sand. "What I'm asking is... How can a person ever be sure?"

Margot warmly smiled, looking at the curly haired girl next to her. "Well... Let's just say I saw May for the first time and in that very same moment, decided that I would marry her someday."

"Really?"

"Yeah," Margot answered. "We sort of both knew that we would spend our eternities with each other. And there's no exact point at which a person can know whether or not they want to spend the rest of their life with a certain person. The feeling of not wanting to be with anybody else other than that person is just a mere reminder that that is your person in this world. In this life."

Elis slowly nodded, looking at the woman next to her. "I struggle with... Knowing and understanding my feelings towards things."

"Towards her?" Margot shifted her eyes to Gray before looking back at a surprised Elis. The curly haired girl then sighed, bringing her knees to her chest and hugging her arms around her legs.

"Is it that obvious?"

"Kind of," Margot said. "I saw you from the window of the kitchen looking at her in a way I would look at May. Her name is Gray, right?"

"Yes," Elis nodded.

"So what's the issue? What is it you don't understand?"

"Me," Elis shrugged, her eyes trailing over to Gray once again. "Her," she continued. "I don't know... Everything."

"Okay. Just know that I'm not gonna say anything to you that will suddenly lead you out of all the confusion you're feeling, but I notice that hiding from your fears makes you sentimental. And perhaps, in the end, it will be because of those fears that you'll suffer, when she has come and gone because you failed to feel something other than your hurt when Gray was only there to lead you out of it. So I'd say give it all you have, you're too young to not make any mistakes. And for me it might've been because of those mistakes that I ended up meeting May."

Elis sighed as Margot spoke, and trailed her gaze to Gray for the last time.

She envisioned an infinity she'd only want to live if Gray was by her side. And maybe that's what Margot meant; when a person suddenly knows that that's a person they'd want to spend the rest of their eternity with. And if Gray was the only person Elis has ever known in this life, then she had chosen her well.