"Tag you're it!" He let go of my hands and started running around in our front yard. I stared at him for a moment, then a feeling or complete weightlessness took over and I ran to him, grinning and starting to chase him. He had long legs so he was forever tripping over stuff, but they helped him get away from me. He slowed down for a moment -- on purpose, I knew -- and let me catch him.
"Tag, you're it!"
I started to run away, breathlessly laughing as he started to chase me. the rain fell harder and every step I took ended in a splash of mud on my jeans. They were heavy from absorbing the rainwater. Finally, after running my heart out, his arms laced around my waist and picked me up, swinging me around and setting me on the ground to face me. We stared at each other, for a moment, breathing hard then burst into a fit of laughter that lasted for minutes. I had no idea what we were laughing at; it was just fun to do it.
The rain started to let up a little, so that it was more gentle on my skin. I looked up from the embrace that we were in to see his mischievous gaze.
"I don't think we've ever kissed in the rain. Have we?"
I shook my head no and with a very familiar curve of the lips, he leaned down and kissed me in a way that set my entire body on fire. We kissed in the rain.
Finally, when he pulled back, breathing hard, he said,
"There."
He was like rain. There was no other way to describe him. He was my rain, I was parched and dry without him.
And then, without warning, my tears started to flow. They came down my face with the water from the sky. It was funny, how it was raining on the day he told me, and it was raining now.
The sky was crying for me and this child that was growing inside of me. There was no other way to put it.
When I finally got to the hospital, I was done crying.
"If you're going to cry, Taylor, baby, you cry big. Promise me that you will." He told me on the night of the awards show, randomly. He always came out with random life lessons that somehow, you just had to know.
"I promise."
I had broken my promise. I didn't cry big; I cried in small pieces, when he couldn't see. But I was done with that, because I had to be strong. Besides, we were even. He couldn't keep from breaking his promise more than I could.
I walked through the sliding doors of the hospital, my eyes probably red from crying my last tears. His mom hugged me, even though I was soaked and my stomach was keeping her from hugging me fully.
"How are you honey?" She asked me, looking at my face. I tried to smile for her. "I'm okay."
My heart was crumbling...how do you think I felt? The man I loved just died.
She touched my stomach with one hand and closed her eyes, like Danny used to do. "At least he left you with something other than memories."
That's what he wanted to do, I remembered. He told me that in case things went bad, he wanted me to have a piece of him. We were both twenty-one, and even though we weren't married we were closer than most married couples than I knew. That was why the magazines and tabloids ate us up; we didn't have drama. Someone once told me that we were role models.
I nodded. "So...where is he?" I asked, swallowing the lump in my throat. I refused to cry. I couldn't. I wouldn't.
"They just took him away."
Danny wanted to be cremated. I wrote out his instructions for what happened after he died once, when things were bad.
He wanted me to go with our child, to our spot, and scatter the ashes. He also wrote something, a note to our son or daughter (we were keeping it a surprise), in case he didn't get to see them before he was gone.
So when our little boy, Luke Daniel Marshall was born three months later, and he was old enough, I got on a plane and we flew to China. I ignored my face on some of the billboards, pushed through the crowds, took taxis around the place, and finally arrived at our other house.
I unlocked the door and stepped inside, smelling tea bags and dried flowers. It was more of a cottage really; a small place with just two bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen combined, and sliding glass doors that led out to a huge wall.
That wall, was the reason we had bought the house. Not even pausing to see how well one of my best friends had been keeping it, I went straight out that glass door with Luke on one hip and the key to unlock it, a notepad, and a pen in the other.
The door was old and worn, but the key slid in and unlocked it without protest. I opened the gate and stepped into our place.
"This, Lukey, is where you'll take a girl someday. I promise you that. He left all of this, to me and you."
The magnolias were in full bloom, pink and wonderful. The grass was overgrown, giving the garden a wild look, but it was still beautiful. Our place. Our personal little Eden.
I scattered his ashes everywhere, not crying, but smiling. Smiling because that was what he would want me to do.
I couldn't stay; Danny's mom would go insane. He didn't know his father, but that was that guy's lost. Danny's dad just missed out.
We stayed there for hours, Luke crawling around on a blanket that I got from the inside of the house and just listening to the birds sing. He looked just like his daddy that it almost hurt, with his bright green eyes and our blond hair. He had small freckles too, and dimples that just made your heart break.
Sitting there, watching him, I finally knew where to start.
And I wrote Danny's song.
~*~
I think I started out okay, but as I progressed it kind of went downhill. This is my first short story, so please tell me how I did ;). the song is Long Live by Taylor Swift, I think it would be a song from Danny to Taylor, and I was listening to it while I wrote this for the most part. This story was kind of FOR that song, I guess. Comments, please! And if you like the picture I did it myself so yeah...bye!
SarahGrace xoxo
P.S. How would you guys feel if I did a series of short stories like this one? They'd probably be based on songs that tell stories from different genres, so let me know!
Write Me a Song, Love. - A Short Story
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