Summers of Eden

It was 11:09 on a Sunday night as she sat in her kitchen eating her dinner of spaghetti and red wine.  She felt elegant and mature as she sipped the wine from a crystal glass.  Her mind painted thoughts in her head and she drifted away.1

She stepped off the plane in long legged, sun bleached perfection.  Her low slung jeans hugged her hips and a casual mint green tank top covered her toned stomach.  She could feel the sun on her lips and they curved in a vivacious smile, letting her drink in the warmth and happiness.  She walked across the tarmac to the place where you collect you luggage.  Her shiny hair fountained out like a banner behind her and her turquoise heels clicked as she walked.  As she got closer to the building she scanned the glass for his face.  A concierge held open the door for her “Welcome to London, miss”.  She nodded at him and smiled, too nervous to trust her voice.  As she stepped inside she pushed her sunglasses from her face and let them rest on her head.  She could sense someone watching her.  She lifted her eyes and across the great room she saw him.2

She downed the rest of her wine and got up from the bar stool on which she had been sitting.  As it always had, impulse guided her to the back door and out into her gigantic yard.  Her thoughts paused for a moment on the idea of footwear, but she kept walking and the pavement turned to stepping stones and then to grass.  The garden lights glowed and made patterns with her long, champagne coloured tresses as they swished across her back.  The warm end-of-spring air caressed her bare legs, and she felt content in her oversized camouflage t-shirt and navy underwear.  The darkness and the trees and the soft wind made it Eden, and her Eve.  She was brought back to a time a year ago, a minute ago, a lifetime ago.3

She had met him in the middle of the night, 2:00 am.  Up for 28 hours already, alive on caffeine.  Her hair, shorted then, became damp the moment she stepped outside.  They left their bikes on the front lawn and the four of them walked to the beach.  The two girls exchanged excited whispers and parted, each with a boy on her arm.  She went off the boardwalk, leaving her suede flip flops and walking barefoot to the rocks.  He helped her as she slipped time and time again.  They sat beside each other without touching.  The waves splashed against the rocks, as black as the sky, both seeming to go on for eternity.  They spoke and she was in rapture of his deep voice and his elder experiences.  Her naivety seemed heightened and their one year difference felt like a lifetime.  She was a child and he was a man.4

But she was bold and impulsive.  This made her feel older, and right now all she wanted to do was jump off the rim of childhood that she had been hovering on for nearly a year.  She took his hand.  It was warm and dry and huge holding her cold, damp, tiny one.  They walked along the beach and the wind blew her hair around her head.  She tried in vain to put it up, feeling the salt encrusted waves between her fingers.  She liked her hair like that.  She liked her plaid boxers and her thin black tank top.  She liked the feel of the sand beneath her bare feet.  She was elated with confidence when the moment came along.  He stood a foot taller than her so she had to tip toe.  But he saw in her eyes the innocence her boldness had masked.  He was a man; she had not yet grown into a woman.5

She smiled at the memory, knowing that she was no longer a child, missing her naivety.  In the three weeks that she had been away that summer, she had grown up.  When she got back she had changed, she was somebody else.  He had seen it.  It seemed that every guy had seen it.6

Her feet padded the ground softly, her arms swaying at her side as she wondered if she would come back this summer a different person.  She couldn’t grow up again, but she wondered if this summer would change her also.  Last summer had been the summer she stopped being a kid, her fist teenage summer.  Would this summer be her second, or her last?7