After the discarding the groceries at
the house, they drove up the winding coastal road into the depths of
the forest. After driving a bit, they pulled into a smaller road
which led onto an empty space overlooking the city, shoreline, and
vastness of the ocean. She parked her car and they both tumbled out.
He led her up a slight hill until they came to a slightly wooden
area with small rocky crags, a place off the beaten path from tourist
prying eyes. He sat on one of the crags overlooking the vast ocean
blue and turned to her, his smile half-cocked expressing an
invitation for her to join him. She climbed up and sat on a crag
beside him, turning outwards to the ocean she breathed it as much as
possible. Then, slowly exhaled.
“It is...,” was all she could say.
“Amazing,” Jesse finished her
sentence. She nodded and turned to him, smiling, suddenly completely
happy and she felt even a sense of peace slowly emerging and
traveling through her. It was a feeling so long unknown to her, she
couldn't at first trace or define it, but the word “peace” was
all she could finally name it. “I love coming here, its the only
place I really feel at home.”
“You grow up here?” Rachel wanted
to know.
“Not so much,” Jesse sighed. “I
live with my aunt. My parents are...no longer living.”
“Oh, I'm sorry,” Rachel said,
turning and facing the ocean. She felt the truthfulness of this
conversation becoming all too real and authentic against her
imaginary cover story.
“Its okay, it happened when I was
just a little kid, like 5, car accident, barely remember them,”
Jesse mumbled to himself.
“So, your aunt?” Rachel asked not
turning to him, but trying to keep the conversation off of herself as
long as possible.
“Yeah, she took me in, the only
living relative that would,” he explained. “She's nice and all
and did her best, but she's got a...a...sorta...reputation, is all.”
“Oh,” Rachel said in response and
let the word reputation lose itself in the air as it wrapped itself
repeatedly in her mind, forming mental pictures that spun from long
ago tucked away memories never to be forgotten. 'Reputation,
reputation,' they breathed toiling through her brain.
“You okay?” Jesse was calling to
her and she turned slowly, full of effort, towards him. He was
rolling a joint. “You kind of disappeared there for a minute,”
he went on. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I was thinking...I'm just
tired, is all,” she brokenly explained, trying to recoil into her
chosen path of hiding.
“You don't mind if I partake, do
you?” He asked motioning towards the joint. “You want some?”
“Please,” she nodded.
He lit the joint and took a drag,
passing it to her. She took it, pressed it between her lips, and
inhaled, feeling the familiar warm pull of the smoke touch her throat
and lungs. She sipped it like honey into her aching soul. Then, she
handed it back to him. His hand touched hers gently as he took it
from her and she felt an electric pulse run throughout her veins and
shoot into her heart.
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