Vignette 8
"Those green eyes of clear-headed gaze, left in my soul, an eternal thirst for loving." -Aquellos Ojos Verdes
A light, featherlike weight laid upon his shoulder, and he looked down, intensely moved by the sight of her upturned nose pressed against him. So much space, yet she chose to be right beside him and tucked into his shoulder. A sort of comforting warmth that could not be substituted with bought love—that he learned long ago. Nothing short of death could dislodge her hold on his heart, and her gentle gesture, however small, only strengthened its grip.
It led him down the dangerous, hapless road of what if…?
They were indulgent yet torturous thoughts.
Sweet yet insufferable.
If she loved him. If she went home with him. They were hazy images bathed in warm, nostalgic colors that seemed neither near nor far—just stuck in place, in time, existing only in his memory. Alas, there was some romanticism in him, and he kissed her forehead in some attempt to align the dream with some semblance of reality.
With the brush of his lips, she let out a whimper, startling him with its likeness to a hurt animal.
"Scarlett? What's wrong?"
"Nothing. It's nothing," she insisted, yet the tears streaked down her face, and he was at a complete loss at the cause of it all. His hands pulled at the reins and stopped the buggy.
"Why the tears then, darling?"
He cradled her face in his hands and brushed a finger along her cheek, wiping the wet trails beneath her watery eyes. How she trembled under his touch! Then, she paled to a sickly white, her small hands pushing his tenderness away and before he could woundedly lash out, she dashed to the side of the buggy and retched. Dry, horrible, painful noises that shook him with their misery. Seconds later, its implications were like a slap to the face. He did not move, and the warm-bathed image became murky.
As she sat back and began to sob in earnest, he handed her a handkerchief, regaining a composure that was ill-suited to the turmoil he felt inside. Or lack thereof, for at the moment he felt nothing, his senses deadened as they were from the unwelcome revelation. So caught up in the high of reverie, he gracelessly stumbled down as he saw the glaring truth.
She whispered, "Hold me, Rhett."
"Darling!" he replied, impassioned and fleetingly delirious.
He embraced her, burying his nose in the scent of lemon verbena. Though the thoughts haunted him.
A baby. Frank's baby.
And the dream, which he had so elaborately conjured, blurred together with the drowsy future, the rift growing as he sat, helpless.