Page 71 of Artfully Wild
“What the fuck do you have in there, knives?!”
Unfazed, she shrugs and puts her focus back on her empty sketch page, splitting her gaze between the brown mare and her charcoal.
“I’m getting one of those pictures,” I decide. I’ll take a thousand more cuts if it means I can add another one of her drawings to the stack I have stashed in the bottom of my dresser drawer. She hates her drawings, always pointing out how the shading could be better or the lines are too thick. What she doesn’t realize, and something I have relentlessly reminded her of, is that most teenagers who are drawing things aren’t worried about their shading or their lines. And they definitely aren’t drawing as well as she is.
“You’d have better luck kissing me first,” she jests, her usual sarcastic tone in her voice. Her pencil stalls in her hand briefly, showing that she didn’t mean to say those words. A blush creeps up her neck which she seems to play off as she goes back to her drawing.
“What if I said I wanted to?” Now it’s my turn to blush. I thought I could maybe be bold enough, but with the way her head snaps in my direction, furrowing her brows, part of me wishes I could bottle thosewords up and toss them in the ocean. My own message in a bottle getting lost at sea never to be seen again.
Both our eyes widen as we stare at each other in shock, neither sure what to say or what to do next.
She takes a deep inhale. I decide to move closer until we only have inches of space between us. I almost expect her to move away, but she doesn’t. We both hesitate, staring at the other, wondering who will break first. We don’t and Skylar looks at me in a way she hasn’t looked at me before. Something more than skepticism and sarcasm is etched on her face and I think I could sit here for hours studying her and still be completely in the dark about what is going through her mind right now.
Her eyes bore into me and it feels like our roles are reversed. She’s the fox and I’m the prey frozen in time, because it knows it has no chance of escape. The only difference between me and the prey—I don’t want to escape. I want to be fully caught in her trap and stay near her forever. I knew that the day I met her and I know it now in my bones. And this is the first time I feel like I might actually have a chance at my feelings being reciprocated in any form. Before I can decide to do anything, Sky drops her pencil and tentatively reaches up toward me. I stay frozen, afraid I’ll scare her off if I do anything before she’s ready.
She touches my hair and her fingers thread through it until she starts to tug me closer. I am more than eager to close the distance between us. I’ve waited five years to kiss her and now I finally can. I close my eyes and wonder what her lips will taste like. If the chapstick she uses throughout the day even has a taste. I hope it tastes like strawberries. Or cherries. Or Dr. Pepper. I always wondered what that one tasted like when I saw it in the store shopping with my mom.
A loud neigh sounds through the clearing startling Skylar who jumps back from me. She quickly pulls her hand from my hair and I already miss the warmth of her touch.
She clears her throat and starts packing up her supplies, gatheringtwo crumpled sheets she added to the ground and her pencils that had rolled off her sketchpad.
I help her grab everything and the silence stretches between us like taffy being pulled in a factory. Once her gear is safely secured in her bag, we grab the horse and head back to her house.
“Hey, wait, before I forget, I have something for you?”
“Another flower?”
“How’d you know?” I joked. I always brought her flowers when I wanted to see her smile. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a somewhat crumpled daisy, the petals still intact.
She takes it from me and holds it right in front of her nose. “And what is this one for?”
“Friendship.”
“Jacob,” I hear her say. But it isn’t in the soft voice I hear when we wake up in the mornings together, our bodies tangled together. And it isn’t the way she says it when she has her legs wrapped around my head, breathless and wanting.
Until the moment in her supply closet, that was the last time we had the air charge around us the way it does now when we are together. It was also a few days before we made that stupid deal. A deal I am so glad we broke.
Or rather, shattered like a thin layer of ice covering the expanse of a lake. We found the biggest rock we could carry and tossed it as far as possible. It fell through as the ice around itbroke and cracked until there was nothing left behind but water where it had been solid before.
She had done that.
Skylar.
Fuck, I love her. I don’t know wh—
“Jacob.”
Her voice now is desperate and frantic. Like she’s lost and looking for answers and if she doesn’t get them now, she’ll never be found.
“Jacob!” she says again, except this time it’s louder and even more desperate. I feel her hand grab one side of my head as she rolls it from side to side, softly patting my cheek. I barely feel it. I want to answer her, but my voice isn’t working.
Nothing is working. I try to move my legs. Nothing.
I feel heavy. Numb and heavy. I want to tell her I’m okay, but I think that would be a lie. I feel her grab one of my shoulders and roll me to my side again. She struggles and I attempt to help her, but it feels like I am buried in quicksand and it’s so heavy now. I think I’m going to go to sleep soon.
Wishing I could understand what is happening to my body, all I can do is listen to her voice. And every time she says something or asks a question to someone I can’t see, my heart is pierced with the sharpest arrow at the pain I hear there. I don’t want her to hurt and I think I’m the one that hurt her? Am I?
I try to get my arms to reach out to her and the sand pulls me further. I am sinking and no matter what I try to do, it keeps pulling me under. Further and further until once again, there is only darkness.
