A Lemon Bar Sunset

May 17, 2013 at 8:24 am · Filed under Mostly fiction, Stories ·Tagged bridges, lemon bar sunset, lost love, sunsets, young love

Marney had been prattling on for what seemed like hours, and I was only half listening, until she said something that caused me to rise up on one elbow and stare at her. One of my eyes was closed—squinting into the sun—causing her to appear as though she were surrounded by a hazy halo; behind her, the trees of Elkin’s woods framed the moment.

We’d been coming to this spot since we were ten, the year I moved to Elkin and found her waiting in the yard in front of our new house. She’d been sitting beside her Schwinn bicycle—it had the little bell and wire basket on the handle bar, and she still rides it. As soon as I got out of our car, she jumped up, rang the little bell, performed a little rah-rah cheer welcoming us to the neighborhood, then ran to me and looked up at me with the biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen. “I hope you like lemon bars!” she said.

Dumbfounded, thoroughly embarrassed by her greeting, and speaking long before my brain was engaged, I said something any ten-year old boy might say after watching such a performance; “Who let you out of your cage?”

That was six years ago, and we’d been best friends ever since. I loved Marney, but would never admit it. She on the other hand, professed—on a daily basis—to loving me with every fiber of her being. She said I was her destiny. I told her that was a darn shame.

“What did you say?” I asked, raising my hand to shield the sun.

“Which part?” she asked. “You haven’t heard a thing I’ve said for the last fifteen minutes. I thought you were asleep.” With my hand shielding my eyes, her halo was gone, and her face shadowed. I couldn’t see the tears trickling down her cheeks.

“The part about being homesick.”

She swiped at her cheeks with both hands. “I said I can’t do this anymore. I can’t go on loving you when you won’t love me back. It’s like feeling homesick for a place that doesn’t even exist.”

I frowned, then lowered my head to the blanket we’d placed on the forest floor, and closed my eyes. I saw pink bicycles, wire baskets, a little girl dancing on a lawn, and heard the ching-a-ling of a tiny bell. The thought came floating toward me like sunlight over the trees at the Johnson creek bridge; I love lemon bars. But, I’d never told her. Instead, I’d made a smart remark—something a ten-year-old boy would say—and I’d kept making them for six years. I smiled, opened my eyes, sat up, and said, “I love you, Marney Wilson.”

The forest was empty and the sun was going down.

 

Copyright © 2013 C Mashburn

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sharing this on Kellie Elmore’s Free Write Friday.

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