She married him because he didn't put his hands down her shirt and because he didn't make fun of her hand me down dresses, nor did he try to put his hands up them. He didn't smoke, wear a baseball cap every waking moment, belch in front of her or honk in the driveway when he picked her up. He didn't paw her, clutch her. He said mam to her mother, sir to her father. She was on the honor roll, graduated third. She could have been first, second at worst, except she worked. Money, grades, money, grades. Isn't that how it goes? A bunch of people watching your every move - especially the way she moved.She had a couple of asshole romps, football fucks and stupid quick grope and pumps before she realized that stupid wasn't a road she wanted to take. Those few wanted her again along with all those who hadn't, including several who shouldn't want her at all. She married him the summer after high school in the same dress that she wore to the prom, handed down but never before looking like it did on her. Her father had sold a couple of fixed up cars so that her reception could be held at the Holiday Inn up the road instead of in the church basement. She quit the Dairy Queen for a teller job at the bank the next town over, which was a little bigger, but no better. The town wasn't nearly as pretty as hers, having the creek and the wonderful old covered bridge. They walked to that bridge from their honeymoon cabin at the Sedona bike and canoe resort. The beautiful old bridge; on it was a sign saying: "Cross this bridge at a walk", with guardrails to stop anyone crazy enough to try to drive across it. She told him a certain gait or cadence could take a bridge down, even a horse or a dog, and he looked at her like she was putting him on - sometimes not knowing her smart from her smartass. They walked the uneven planked floor. It was dank, dark and cooler inside, with the fading light beaming through cracks in weathered wood. She skipped ahead to one the windowed openings to look down at the rain swollen June creek; a creek which would be shallow enough to ground a canoe by August, muddy brown. Leaning her elbows on the broad window rail, she watched limbs and logs speed downstream. "I wonder where they'll end up," she said. It wasn't really a question, just wondering. Thinking a river is always a river, but a creek is only a river sometimes. He grinned the boyish grin that she still loved on that June day. In the twilight over the rushing debris strewn creek, he pulled the can from his back pocket and, while she watched, sprayed his love on the wood that had been a wall nearly as long as it had been a tree. He sprayed it above the window she was standing next to, to put his love in writing along with all the other names and dates and similar declarations. He stood back, admiring his handiwork, taking his new bride in his arms and kissing her.There, on the bridge, he kissed her until her grin broke the kiss. He knew that look; the one where he always wondered what was next, her always being a step or two ahead of him. Already her fingers lifting her shirt up over her head, her eyes bright from the light through the window, thumbs working her jeans down over her hips, bra and underwear tossed aside before he could even exhale. With the paint not yet dry on his love, he took her there. Her hands grasped the rail below the window, the setting sun on her face, her breasts, and all the light on her with her back arched to him. The smell of paint was still heady in the musty air; he loved her there, on the wall, in the window. When she had him shaken and spent, while he was wary of being discovered, shying and retreating, she spun on him. Bright eyed, full of mischief and challenge she said, "Let's jump." She saw his eyes form the question marks that she would see time and time again. "Jump, from the bridge, its deep enough!" Already she was climbing up on the rail, crouching and looking at him over her shoulder. "Come on, let's jump!" Not waiting for him, leg muscles taut and corded, she pushed herself out, ducking just enough to clear the top of the window and hurtling into space. Not a jump, a dive. He got there just in time to see her enter the water, her form beautiful and bare slicing into the muddy water, seeing a log float by. "Christ," he thought, "she could have landed on it." He watched her surface, laughing. Her arms waved just under the water, barely visible, her eyes looking up at him in this moment, waiting.He didn't jump. He didn't, couldn't. It just wasn't in him.And now, all these years later, his love was still in his heart, still on that wall and at those windows. His hand resting on the rail that she held while he took her on that June day, took her as his new bride. On that June day she was still his, and on that June day he started losing her - when he didn't jump. He lost her all the other times he didn't jump, the times when she did, and he just didn't. It wasn't long before she stopped asking, jumping on her own, out farther and farther, taking longer to get back. Finally she jumped too far. She jumped away and didn't come back, leaving him there with his love sprayed on the wall in an August twilight, alone this time, wondering if things might have turned out differently. Wondering what might have happened if he had jumped. Wondering, even now, if he could. If he would.
- Brett Prince
myss_cryss
\"best friends are like butt cheeks, crap may seperate
them but they always come back together.\" XD. lmao
posted May 23