Hendrix
Elle has the nicest car I’ve ridden in. Leather seats, air-conditioning that works and an engine that doesn’t sound like it’s about to rattle out of the frame. It’s a smooth ride, and it’s been a silent one except for her fingers that tap against the steering wheel at stoplights. She’s nervous. So am I. No telling how talking to her father is going to go down, but the rolling in my gut keeps screaming it’ll be bad.
She pulls in her driveway, skips the right that would take us to the front of the house and goes around back to park in front of a massive garage. The smooth engine shuts off, and it’s absolute quiet.
“You don’t have to do this,” I say.
Elle looks over at me, and those normally intimidating blue eyes are soft. “This is how I was raised. My dad taught me to fight for people, and you’re someone worth fighting for.”
Fighting for. I’ve been in fights my entire life. None of them worth being in. All were with my fists, and if Elle wasn’t in my life, there’s a good chance I would have continued down that road, and I’d be fighting Jeremy with my fists again.
I love Axle, but when he told me to accept the plea deal, that was worse than being kicked in the balls. Worse than having my head torn off my body. Worse than having my heart ripped out of my chest as it still beat. My brother told me to give in. He told me we couldn’t win. He told me not to fight.
Something broke in me then. Something that has kept me from feeling whole. But sitting here next to Elle, understanding that she will bear the wrath of her family to fight for me—emotions build up and threaten to bust past my skin.
I cradle her face with my hand, and she leans into me. “Thank you for this.”
“They’re probably going to ground me,” she says, and that smile she tries to give me is one of the fake ones. “Will you wait for me? There’s a good chance I might be thirty.”
I caress a finger over her lips to ease the fakeness away. I prefer the real her—even if it’s the side of her that’s sad. “We’ll make this work. Your dad is a good man, and I’ll spend as much time as I can proving to him I’m worthy of you.”
“We should go in.” Her mouth pulls down, and it breaks my heart.
Her backyard is big, green and lavish, but what catches my eye is the white gazebo next to the weeping willow. Picturesque, private and perfect. Elle and I need an escape. We need to, one more time, live in our own world.
I exit the car and reach Elle’s side as she cracks the door. I open it the rest of the way for her and offer her my hand. She gives me a shy grin as she accepts, and I knot my fingers with hers. I close the door, then stare down into her eyes so she knows I’m dead serious. “When we get past this, I want you to go on a date with me.”
Elle shines. “Was that a question? Because I’m not sure I heard the question mark at the end. In the real world, people ask for dates. They don’t assume dates.”
She’s killing me. “First apologizing and now asking...you’re high maintenance.”
Elle laughs, and I pull on her hand. “Come with me.” Before we go in and place ourselves in the head of a salivating lion.
We walk across the grass, hand in hand, and Elle points out where Henry had built her a tree house when she was ten, where her father had taught her to hit a ball with a bat and where her mother used to lie with her on afternoons and read books on lazy summer afternoons.
Under the cover of the weeping willow, I tell her how Axle taught me to play the guitar, how the drums came naturally and how when Holiday’s grandma said I wasn’t being an ass, she’d teach me piano. I tell her that we throw cake at each other on birthdays because I first did it on my birthday when Holiday was getting on my nerves. She threw cake back. A tradition was born.
We talk, we laugh and for a few minutes it feels like two teens wasting away a summer afternoon. Warm breeze, blue sky, birds singing to one another, and we move to the shade in the gazebo where Elle caresses my arm as we sit on the wooden bench.
“Someday, I’d like you to be the one to walk me into a fund-raiser,” she says, and her voice has a soft whimsical feel as if we’ve been transported to another time, another place.
“Does that mean I have to wear a tux?”
She winks. “Definitely. You’re stunning in your suits, but I’ve dreamed of you in a tux.”
“We need to work on your fantasies. Mine include less clothes, not more.”
Elle turns red, but she smiles—the real one. “You have your fantasies. I have mine. But imagine it, you and I walking in together. I’ll be in a long flowing dress, you’ll be all adorable in black, and then we’ll dance. Then you’ll have that snapshot in your mind forever of me in a beautiful dress and of us dancing.”
I can see it. It’s not hard to do. If she only knew how many snapshots of her I have in my mind already. But I hear what she’s saying. She wants to spend time with me as her man in public. She wants to be with me in public during a dance. She’s about to walk through hell for me, and I can do this for her.
A gust blows through the gazebo and strands of her hair blow around her face as I stand. With her hand still in mine, I squeeze. “Dance with me, Elle.”
Elle is blinding. Her eyes, that smile—a sun that’s the center of my world. She stands, and in the middle of the gazebo, she wraps her arms around my neck, and we sway from side to side. I then do something I hardly ever do—I sing.
Low, soft, right in her ear and we move with the beat, move with the melody. I sing of flying, wings and how some loves are meant to be. And my favorite part of the song, the part where the beat picks up, the part where the rhythm changes, I spin Elle. A turn for every tap on the snare drum. Then there’s a dramatic pause where there’s no beat, no voice, no music, and I dip her, holding my breath as she looks up at me with so much love, my heart is overflowing.
I bring her back into me, and where we should keep dancing, we instead hold on to each other. Her head tilted up, my hands framing her face, a lick of her lips in invitation and I kiss her. Easy and slow. A memorization of how soft she is, yet strong to the core.
There’s a burn, a match that’s been struck. Mouths moving, her hands along my back, fingernails tickling along the skin of my neck, and her body pressed to mine. The fire runs hot, starts to consume, but this isn’t the time, and it isn’t the place because this kiss is a promise.
A promise that no matter the consequence, I’m not going anywhere. A promise that I love her. A promise that someday I’ll be the man with her in the middle of the dance floor. Me in the tux. Her in the beautiful dress.
I gently kiss her lips one more time, then pull back. I don’t tell her I love her because my kiss said it all. She doesn’t say it back because the deep blue of her eyes tells me all I need to know. I enfold her into me again, wrap my arms strongly around her and close my eyes.
I will hold her again, I will be with her again, and when I do it, I’ll be a man truly free of his past.