acquittal given
The sun moved, or maybe the earth did, because she didn’t. The sun’s rays fell very softly on her still face, amplifying the brightness of her eyes, imparting a deep glow to her taut, tanned skin. Her unruly locks fell over her cheeks, as if she proudly displayed her undisputed right to rest there. Once again, her memory rushed so that no detail missed her record.
Driven by what one doesn’t know, she turned around, only to see him walking toward her, hands in his pockets, a smirk in his place. Yet for a moment that she later called dark, she sensed the hurt of her purpose in this easy stance of his. An instant later, however, this perception was discarded. Her face breaking into a sudden declaration of joy, she settled back into her position and waited for him to yell in that teasing tone of his that he adapted especially for her, “Hey, Squirt,” which he inevitably did, and to which she he answered without realizing it. , “Hears,_______”.
She breathed easy as she realized that his mocking smile and demeaning manner had disguised the tender protection and fierce possession with which he had been regarding her. Not bothering to pull up his already wet denim, he made his way through the water to where she was sitting…and in one sudden movement, he had pushed her with a playful wave of his hand, into the water on his way. down. . But maybe she was expecting him, or maybe she was too quick for him; she had violently grabbed a handful of her cotton shirt. And the result? If any viewer had been present to observe this subtle interaction from the beginning, and if he had, by sheer chance, lost his attention for a few seconds precisely at the beginning of the moment of chaos, he would have discovered that between now and then, his gaze had traveled transitional millennia. For those who had been conversing through furtive glances and hidden musings now wallow wildly in the water, splashing it with noisy euphoria… the silent anticipation in the air had turned prematurely into spiteful abandon, chaos unleashed.
While their limbs were involved in this frivolous exchange, as things happen, their lines of sight collided. And for one long, deliberate moment, a moment of intense joy and exultant symphonies and final releases, they simply stood looking at each other; her face closed to everyone else but her, her eyes looking at nothing but his. The silent struggle that she had tried to contain within the shell of excruciating effort, she had been counting the restless moments to reach this prolonged one, and with her unconscious consent, a few things happened. Chief among them was a fissure, blasting her long-suffering projectile into unrecoverable shards. The central desire of her existence, the painful arguments with which he had spent sleepless nights to placate himself, the fear of rejection that hung tantalizingly over him, but above all the hope of acceptance and the happiness that would be for them except the hope would be fulfilled. , sprouted to find expression. Expression in the three words she spoke with an absolution given only to the best of us, holding her face turned towards him.