Before this moment, she had buried her face in his shirt. It smelled of the meadow they had slept in the night before and sweat and his hair pomade. Before this moment, he had been feeling the boniness of her spine as he roamed the expanse of her back. Before this moment, she had told him that her favorite flowers were red poppies.
"It's yours after all isn't it?"" She said as she tossed the shirt to him.
"You're something," he laughed as he slipped his arms in the sleeves, "I know you want to keep it."
"Well, you're ridiculous," she rolled her eyes and assumed a tone she had perfected, "I have plenty of clothes. Why would I want that?"
"Because, little rich girl, you are afraid of tomorrow."
"And what about it so frightens me?"
"You are afraid it won't come, that your life will just be parties and sadness. That you'll be drunk with the lovely, lonely, little, lie of your life."
"You bastard."
"You liar."
"Peasant."
"Princess."
"You're a cynic about something you know nothing of."
"Oh, aren't we all?" He climbed out of the water.
"I'm leaving, " she said as she glared at him from above, "Give me my skirt." She sat with her long legs crossed, in only a thin blue blouse and her lace underwear.
"I'm keeping it," the boy told her as he stuffed it into his makeshift bag that rested on the bank.
"You are not. Don't think I won't have you arrested for stealing."
"You won't and anyways I have a reason too keep it."
"Oh really?"
"Yeah, I'm afraid of tomorrow too." He loved the way she looked just then: dark hair obscuring her features: the ears that were a little too big, the lovely pearly pink color of the scar underneath her left eye.
"This won't be easy." Her voice lost its tone.
"Ty takaya mudraya." You are so wise.
"Come here." She spoke in volumes.
The boy, not yet tall enough to reach the bridge's rim, jumped and pulled himself up to her. He was on his knees, scrambling underneath the wood railing when he felt her pulling at the shirt's edge, then her slim fingers slid underneath and across his chest, her raspberry lips skimming the edges of his ear as she said, "I am just afraid of the familiarity of you."
He whispered: "I'll get a new tattoo every day so that my appearance is always changing."
"Promise me, you'll read a new book everyday so that your ideals are always evolving and becoming something intangible and swift." She breathed into the hollow of his collarbone.
But those are just the fast changes.
"And gradually, my hair will lose it's pigment. I will gain wrinkle after wrinkle after wrinkle, around my eyes and nose and mouth."
"And you'll l lose around five thousand hairs a day!" She exclaimed.
"I'll think of a new places to kiss you (marking every place I've kissed with blue pen)!"
"We'll never sleep in the same room or position. We can spoon or lay with our legs intertwined." She spoke with the air of a person who has just been enlightened.
"So you see, my dearest dear! My most darlingest darling..."
"That's not a word," the girl said.
His fingers came over her mouth as if to say, "Hush now..."
And then he went on, "....my most lovable lover! My most enchanting enchantress! We're all changing! I'll never be the same!"
She danced unto his body and repeated, "YOU WON"T EVER BE THE SAME?"
"I WILL NEVER BE THE SAME"
Her happiness drenching her words as she told him the truth, "This isn't love, you know but it's something like it."
And with those words the girl, who was approaching her seventeenth birthday, kissed the boy, who was approaching his eighteenth birthday and her back pressed into the dead wood of the bridge, "This is uncomfortable," the girl said aloud. The boy, who always wished her to be comfortable and safe, offered to switch positions with her: so he would be lying with his back pressed against wood. The boy felt that if he could make her life easier and less painful, he could be happy. A lack of pain, a smooth transitions from one stage of life to the next and a person whose hand you could hold when you were scared were things that he felt, were more important than love.
The boy, who was not really a boy at all, cradled her head in his large hands and watched as she shut her eyes and rolled her shoulders back.
And he thought her dancing; he closed his eyes and saw her the way she should have been: exuberant and vivacious, dressed in satin and tulle. Her cheeks should have been rouged. Her hair done up in a knot just above the nape of her long neck. She should have hypnotized women and men alike with a just a few steps on her toes and perhaps, if those failed to impress, a languid leap would follow. Then they would be rendered helpless by an amazingly agile routine, in which she seemed to float across the stage. They would pray for the curtain to never fall. They would rise to their feet as if pulled by marionette strings and shower her with applause like a steady spring rain. The men would throw red roses because that's the only flower they knew how to give. The women would click their tongues, behind the secrecy of silk fans and laugh to each other, "Oh, men and their silly fancies. If only they knew that ballerinas don't fall in love."
As he dreamt of her dancing he kissed her collarbone, her belly, the knobs of her knees, the lean space between her. His lips knew every hollow, every corner, every crevice of her. Except for the only imperfect part: her ankles. Too weak and too easily shattered, the boy stared at the only part of her anatomy he usually avoided. A thin web of scars ensconced both, lines that came from knives slicing and rearranging. Mottled, bruise-purple lines that never healed. He grimaced as, for the very first time, he ran a finger over them, tracing her past and then the makeshift hero of a boy, cried.
As the boy cried, he knew that he could never be enough for the girl who had just laid her damp forehead on his chest. He would never measure up to the girl who had just told him, "You're so wonderful." The world, that silly spinning ball in space, would always keep on loving her, even though she was used and useless. The world, with it's philosophies on life, would always be enchanted with the ballerina who could no longer dance. Everyone loves a project, a broken object. Something to make them feel prettier, more graceful, smarter, needed. But it wasn't just that. If someone were to pay her a backwards compliment they would say, "You're so endearing." She wasn't endearing- she was everything. You didn't just accidentally fall for her, it was never a minor stumble, it was no mistake. You purposely untied the laces of your shoes so you could trip and then be helped up by her. That's the kind of girl that she was.
"Oh, the things we all should have done! Oh, all the places we should have gone to! Oh, the people we should have been! Oh, the dreams we had when we were young!" The boy heard a voice inside his head. A voice that told him nothing will ever be as great as we planned it out to be. Nothing will ever be as beautiful as we can imagine it to be. He recognized the voice of his father.
And for some strange reason the boy then thought of what his father would think of Darya Movitz: of her mismatched lips (the bottom one gave her the look of someone who was an excellent pouter, the top one gave her the look of someone who smiles only in photographs), and of her eyes- the eyes that the boy imagined, held every shade of blue within their irises. She was transcendental. What would his father, Domovi Wolowitz, think of dear, broken, Darya Movitz?
