Page 22 of Haunt Me

“Oh ok.” She takes it in her slender fingers. Looks at it, turns it this way and that. “Seriously, what is this?”

“You know, gum. You chew it and stuff.”

“I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never seen it up close,” she says. “It’s… way thinner and harder than I thought.”

“Wait, do you have an allergy to gum or something?”

“No,” she replies, unwrapping it as if it’s a ritual. I watch her, mesmerized by her every move. “Wow!”

She looks so impressed and I don’t know what to do. She puts it in her mouth and I watch her lips close around the pink piece of gum. I think I know what suffocating actually feels like. I keep looking at her mouth moving around the gum and I completely forget how to breathe.

It's completely worth it, too.

“Gum is so worth the hype,” she says, her mouth full.

“There is no hype surrounding gum,” I murmur, hardly knowing what I’m saying. I should be saying, help, I’m losing my mind over here, watching a girl chewing gum in the woods. But I don’t say it. I don’t care that I’m losing my mind.

“Oh, there’s definitely hype around it, trust me.” She is chewing with vigor. “And this is coming from someone who had no idea it existed until a year ago, when I randomly heard about it in a movie.”

Ok, she’s definitely kidding.

“Who has never had gum before?” I burst out laughing.

She tentatively joins in the laughing and next thing I know, I’m teaching her how to blow bubbles. We end up sitting on a tree stump, chewing gum like a couple of five-year-olds. I think this might be the best day of my life.

A wave of joy and protectiveness grips me and I don’t know what to do with it. Except I do know. I need to stay the heck away from touching her and be more careful with her than I’ve ever been in my whole life. She is fragile, possibly broken, although not as broken as me, thankfully. She can’t be. No one is.

But she is a little naïve and sheltered, she doesn’t know a lot of things, and I don’t want to scare her away.I want to keep her, I realize. I will keep her. I don’t want to do anything to scare her away. The one thing more important than sitting next to her right now is making sure she will be here again tomorrow.

So, naturally, I go all sullen and silent.

Being happy is synonym with feeling guilty now. My brain won’t allow it. So my laughter is cut short, and I look stonily straight ahead; it doesn’t seem to bother her.

This is the best day of my life, and I can’t even smile about it.

But for once, here in the woods, with her, it’s ok. It’s ok not to smile. No one is expecting me to, and that makes it easier to breathe. No, not easier: possible. I steal glances at her—I can’t help it. She isn’t smiling either anymore, but she stays. She picks up her book again, and chews the gum while reading it.

I stop pretending I am not looking at her.

I think:A week ago, I came here with lungs bursting, gasping for air like a drowning man surfacing from the darkest depths of the ocean, and I found oxygen. I found air. I found her.

I take in a breath so deep I almost keel over.

She, absorbed in her book, doesn’t even appear to notice. We don’t talk for the rest of the day, but that’s ok. I know now that she isn’t here because she’s expecting me to talk to her, to entertain her, or to do anything specific.

She is here because I am here.

I am enough, just by existing.

…

Two days later, it’s raining again—really pouring down this time. Her braid is dripping, her lips pink with droplets. I take off my blazer and drape it around her shoulders. It drowns her.

“Are you soaked all the way through your sweater?” I ask her. “Are you going to get pneumonia on me?” She shakes her head. “How long did you walk in the rain to get to me?”

My voice is hoarse, clogged with emotion and need. My lips are brushing the top of her hair as I lean over her, and she smells like rain and woods, and I am about to lose it. I am about to lower my head and kiss her until I pass out.

“Kind of,” she replies, oblivious to the haze that’s taken over my mind. “I had to walk far to get to this part of the woods. But it’s the prettiest, don’t you think?”

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