"Are you ready?"
"Yeah- Yes. I'm ready."
His cold, sweaty hand covered hers. And with just the perfect amount of force, he lead her into another world. One built of ivy tangling in iron gates. And apple trees. And some kind of flowers she'd never seen before.
It smelled like happiness but the blue-grey sky over head, the color making the apples burn more passionately, made this place feel like one where all of this beauty came away to hide from treachery. It was an illusion of safety.
"Eli, it's perfect."
She seemed to distract him from thoughts that were, honestly, too big for a teenage boy.
"No,it's not." His eyes focused intently on the bridge of her nose. She stepped into him. He didn't step back, there would be no retreating. She tilted her head and closed her eyes as she stepped in again for a kiss. He was absolutely right, this place wasn't perfect, he was. "You're perfect," he managed to whisper into her lips before a kiss.
And they kissed again. And again and nothing hurt quite as much as the breath between each embrace.
She felt a tug in the back of her mind, one that whispered that she was being stupid. Kissing Eli in a place where she felt good things came to die.
"I love you." He said it. Eli finaly said it, and it was with all the heat, and goodness, and darkness and desire she'd always imagined. And as if it were for the first time, she said it too. But this time it was real, right to his face. And he seemed proud of it, the anger and hurt that typically lurked right at the back of his eyes was gone.
"So, you like it?"
"Like what?"
"Our new hideaway."
"Oh," she took another look round. "How could I not? It's perfection."
He took of his jacket and the light danced off of his brass buttons, he was the perfect foil to this scene. The emo boy taking an afternoon picnic in the Garden of Eden. If it weren't for his eyeliner, for his black fingernails, for the way his dark hair invited you to stare into his eyes, this place would fool her. She would believe it was perfect. But, there was Eli, everything that was right with the dark.
He layed in the grass and stared as far as the world would allow him into infinity. "Lie with me?" he teased her seductively. And so she did and let her head fall on his chest and let her mind play with the questions she wouldn't have been brave enough to ask herself if Eli wasn't there.
Like, "Why am I here? Why am I living? What's the point of me or any other waste-of-space human being?" And "How do I or how does anyone else know what love is like if it cannot be expressed in words?" She searched the sky for answers. Unfortunately, the sun has a way of blinding us.
Her eyes drooped shut as she felt the warmth of his perfectly subtle biceps wrapping around her and the steady rise and fall of his chest lulled her to sleep.