Run Away

I brushed my fingertips against the back of his hand, that were clutched into the soil behind him to keep his back upright. He wiggled his toes, with dirt in between, that was evidence of the journey we took to get here, and it's those two things that he focused on first, before he leaped into being vulnerable in front of me.

I gave him time to reflect on what he needed to in order to step up in that way. Besides, a lot of the times, there's a feeling that we ourselves can't comprehend, and explaining it is a lot of pressure on its own. I understand that, and used the seconds he needed to revive my lungs, that's been in need of the freshest of oxygen for years.

"Betrayal hurts, you know? And the way you perceive something makes a big difference, even something as basic as a color. My father believed in and loved purple so much that I almost had to love it too, or he persuaded me to even when he was gone, but when something changes and twists your entire belief, you want to run from it. Once you got to purple, you had your 'limitless', but red was the first, the one furthest away, and I confided in it to cope." He finally spoke up, his voice soft and shyer the more he talked.

His way with words wet my appetite for more, and I was interested in where it was heading. I was interested in him more than anything, and his life story was important to me. Holding that back was getting more difficult, as much as I didn't want to make him feel rushed in a topic that was sensitive for him, but I slipped once. I was unsure whether to regret it or not. "What exactly caused the betrayal? What happened in such a short period of time that changed everything?"

I studied his face. He didn't seem disturbed that I was so full of question. In fact, he might've been more willing to talk knowing that I was listening. "You know that I hated my father for a while because I thought his disappearance was on purpose, and I knew how much it hurt my mom. I was a kid, so I didn't get it. Over time, you start to learn that some things just happen that aren't deserved, and that hating on those things is a waste of energy. So I had to hold onto that color as if it meant my life. When I was around 14, life was turned upside down and I didn't know what to hold onto anymore."

I laid down on his legs, my vision winning a straight line to the structure of his jaw that everyone in right mind would go crazy about. On instinct, he began to stroke through strands of my hair. For a while, talking about it came off to be a little easier for him. "My mom fought for below 100 rankers no matter what it took, and honestly at one point I didn't know why. It was the law, so fighting against it seemed wrong. That's what everyone at school told me and it's hard not to be influenced. Yet my own father was a 55er, and a lot of my mom's friends were, but because I never saw them it didn't mean anything to me. Until once, my mom went full fight to protect two of them."

I could swear that if there wasn't a slight breeze that dried out his eyes, tears would be falling down his face by now. I was kind of glad the wind existed, because I didn't want to see him that way, but expressing his true feelings in front of me was a privilege I'd never reject. I know not anyone gets moments like this. "You tend to remember every detail on days with big events. School's extra activities let out at 5:25, and I was six minutes late when walking home compared to the usual because I got distracted picking plums from our neighbors yard, very much illegally. My mom called the home phone at 5:44 telling me to thaw the remaining chicken, boil her some water for tea, and start the rice. I was happy, because that call meant that in 20 to 30 minutes max, she'd be home from work, but 6:04 rolled around, and she wasn't home. 6:14 came, and she still wasn't."

I sat up when his struggle to speak was coming back to him, and his hand was frozen from stroking my hair, to lean against his shoulder instead. Anything that I could do to make him certain that I was here for him. With it, he did manage to go on. "By 6:20, I was getting this gut feeling that something was wrong, so I left our house and went by the town's river to look for her. I found my way to the forest, where two people were slashed at their throats, a man, and a woman, but with as far as I was, and hidden behind a tree, I couldn't see the cuts. I could only hear the pain. My mom was yelling at the officials. She was dressed just as formal as they were for her job, they looked on the same team, but she was saying stuff to command them to save their lives and get them treated for their wound, but they didn't, and she was beaten for insisting against the law."

His voice cracked to avoid the tears, and I was getting to that point as he talked as well, because his words were hitting too close to my own personal memories to act like my mind never lingered there. It's in that second that the man talking beside me, whose lived an opposite life in comparison to me nearly entirely - we're not all that different. We're a coin with the same icon on either side, and our lives might have crossed each other's more than we put our head up to see.

"I was the one who found her body, wounded, bruised, and purple all over. I was the one who had to find out how she was supposed to get treated for the broken bones and the fractures, and I was the one who would come home watching her struggle everyday as she tried recovering. I saw purple everyday in the worst way I could possibly see it, and what drove me nuts at the time is her worries weren't for herself. It was for the daughter of those killed in the forest. It was for the girl I saw running out of it, and the girl that the officials said wasn't worth chasing because she'd die anyway. I heard about that little girl every single day without fail."

"Th-that was me." I stuttered, and by this time, I couldn't avoid the tears. Not just anyone has a story like that, and to hear he knew it shook me up. One things for sure, he was a lot stronger than me in terms of emotions. Even if his insides were completely shredded apart, on the outside I was already a lost cause. I was already taken away by the heart drowning inside of me, and he was still holding on, not letting that out to find freedom of its own.

"You're right, and I know. That was you, Arizona." He scoffed under his breath, a smile on his face to hold in what I already let out. "Gosh! You don't know how much I used to hate you. I thought that the reason my mom ended up that way was because of your parents and you were the only thing out there remaining that I could be mad at. I thought that if I ever saw you again, I'd let you know how angry I was. It took me time to realize we're on the same team. She's only that way because she wants justice for the man she loved, and doesn't want it happening to anyone else."

"Are you that sure you can really fall in love with purple again after experiencing all of that?" I coughed as I temporarily regained control of myself, holding him tighter and closer to me as if tomorrow wasn't to come. He might've said he used to hate me, but lucky for him I find the stories of enemies becoming lovers the most fascinating, and besides, if I knew him back then, I probably would've hated him too. It's not like I can take offense to it.

"Are you kidding? What kind of question is that? Crap, girly. You don't even know do you? Honestly, I never planned to like you this much; love you this much. I never thought that my mind would have you on it as much as it does. It's as if the Gods put our names together and insisted on it, but whether they did or they didn't tell me what to do, I would still choose you all on my own. I don't know what it's like anymore to think about something else, but I never want to go back to it." One tear did escape, running down his cheek like some sort of race, and it pulled the true emotion I haven't fully let go of from the bottom and the weakest part of my heart, as we neared in closer to one another. It's by lips that we tasted each other's sadness, the worst of the memories that we've tried to pretend never hurt us, but most of all, we tasted each other's power and strength to withstand and overcome.

"I didn't know it then, but my purple ran right be me when I thought I was experiencing the ugliest purple of my life, and now I understand my mom. I want justice for my own purple because I'm in love with her and I know her. I've went through every lesson a color has and can rightfully hold a purple of my own, the one that's right in front of me, and I promise that as I fall in love with her heart, and soul, I'll be on a journey that makes me fall deeper into every her that makes her, her."

The longer his lips were against mine, the more time allowed that sadness between the two of us to transform into something charismatic.

"To the woman who made me find beauty in purple again."

"To the man who let me see how graceful red really is."

******

My dress was flow-y with the patterns of the wind on the way back to the house, and I felt closer to Carmine by an extra decade. I started to see what the movie's meant, that a lot of the times time isn't what binds people together, but feelings.

Though in the shows it's exaggerated and a little over the top, it does have a level of truth to it. You can be so deeply in love with someone that you've known for only months, in comparison to someone you might've known for a year. I might not know many people, but with what's happened today, I feel I have the right to stand by it. Maybe not as much as others do, but I do, at least slightly.

The way back seemed much easier than the way there, and it became more evident of how much of a climb we had to make to get to such a view, to sit on the top of the world like we were. To find a place as special as that, and to be Carmine, whose family has so much root and history in it, will wow me each time. It's something that can never be forgotten. Location is a technique of the memory, similar to the way music is, after all. Things like that stick, and the thought alone that I'm allowed to be part of such a special place is an everlasting type of touching.

It was near the season of the year that the weather started to warm, so that has to be exactly the reason the sun seemed higher up in the sky than usual, but it felt like it was put there especially for us. To give our darkest memories that connect further back than I could assume, the chance to resurrect in a positive sense because of what it could become, it felt unreal. Really, indescribable in words.

But if the sun was out there especially for us, it would've came crashing down way too fast. I knew it the second that Carmine's hand touched the doorknob and the second that his back tensed up like a pile of bricks when he got one glance inside, or the second I muttered a tender, "Carmine, what's wrong?," because I couldn't see what he saw yet, and his first inclination was to shove me away, that that sun wasn't ours. It was someone else's happy day for the sky to record.

"They were here," was all he mumbled, "and they got her."