Up In Flames

It’s late summer, but I can feel that fall chill in the air. It’s my favorite time of year—when summer is fading out and the earth is just on the cusp of fall. The leaves are rustling on their branches, sometimes falling to the ground, but they haven’t yet turned color. The sound of that gentle wind is accompanied by a mellow scent: the soft, fragrant decay of late summer’s blooms mixed with the warm, charred wood of every bonfire in town. This is a story of fire. This story tells much about burning it all down. This story tells much about everything. I just don’t realize it yet because it hasn’t happened. Do you ever feel like something is going to happen long before it does? This feeling is much like that, and it has me perplexed. Maybe it is the time of year. Maybe it is summertime’s warm gust of air winding through wisps of my long hair and displacing them until they settle back down, replacing the air that surrounds my face with autumn’s crisp freshness. Maybe it’s the word cusp. Cusp is an interesting word, and in this instance, it’s the crossover from one season to another. That crossover gives me the feeling that I’m on the verge of something. What will it be?

I sat my journal diagonally at the corner of my desk: the exact spot where two perfectly straight, white lines conjoined. It was often like this; I’d place things in such a deliberate way that I felt at home. My space needed to feel lived in to me. It needed to feel full of life, like there was a resurgence of calm energy every day, seeping through the walls and creeping up through the floorboards. And maybe those words were a dark, ominous choice, but in an old house such as this, I felt confident having had them in mind. This old house, I often thought, told a burning story much darker than my own. The walls, full of character, were covered with hairline cracks that stretched and traveled wildly like the turns of a river on an old map. The floors creaked: a historic, sorrowful ache that I could feel in my bones every time I heard it. It was almost as if they’d say, ‘I’m tired; let me rest.’ It was almost as if they hadn’t already been resting for the entire extent of their existence. The foundation would settle; at least, that was the little white lie I’d always told myself. Maybe it was a black lie, in all honesty. The settling of the house’s foundation was a relief of a thought, even if it was a lie. When a painting would fall off the wall, a door would move on its own, or piles of things would be knocked over in the middle of the night only for me to discover the following morning that nothing was out of place—well, I chalked all those things up to one simple explanation. The foundation is settling, I’d tell myself. How long should one lie to oneself about such a thing? I would often wonder about that. I would often tell myself that, at a certain point, I’d have to cut myself off. I’d have to say to myself, ‘Self, stop lying, damn it.’ But it would only take one more night alone to talk myself out of that little pep talk that I had planned to give.

It was a Sunday, and as I put my pen in the exact place that I’d intended for it to be stored—because everything had its place, a cog in the machine of my life—I decided to throw on a sweater and go for a walk in the woods behind this old house. It wasn’t quite sweater weather, but I never let that bother me in the past. It was an action of my own volition, and I chose my favorite one with great care. Its rich, soft fibers swallowed me up as I pulled it over my head, letting it surround me in a pool of gentle gray. This one was the chosen one. This one was the one that I favored most. In fact, I almost always wore it as an accessory—long enough that it comforted me but short enough that it wouldn’t get filthy. I tried not to wash it often, and the benefit was that it gathered layers upon layers of sweet, sexy perfume on it. Those layers of fragrance buried themselves so deep within the stitching that I thought they would never shake out or fade away. As I entered the woods, they entered my nose.

There was only one trail that I knew of in these woods, and it was created by locals. While there weren’t many people around, the foot traffic in the forest must have been enough at one time to cause the path to remain clear, and I had grown an appreciation for its accessibility, especially in the summertime when poison was known to grow wild. I walked past nothing but tall trees and the gentle hum of late-summer locusts until I reached my favorite spot: a clearing in the woods, almost circular in shape, with long, fallen trees that made log benches. I sat on a different one every time I visited, hoping that a different view would provide a change in perspective.

I took a seat on the center log this time. I had determined that it must be the center log, mainly because there were two logs on either side of it that surrounded the clearing. The opening of the clearing sat directly across from me, and there was no fallen tree in that spot, only the entrance to the clearing and the exit back into the woods. Regardless of which log I chose each time, I would always face the same direction: that of the center of the clearing. I had no interest in turning around to face the woods. They were dark and vast and unknown to me, and while I always felt safe, I refused to believe that I’d feel any safer if I stared into that unknown realm. As I continued looking into the center of the circle, I relaxed and let my eyes close for a moment. I could almost smell autumn approaching. I felt it getting closer—heard it getting closer. It drew so near to me that I could have sworn it was really there.

“Afternoon.”

I opened my eyes, blinking repeatedly and attempting to ground myself. I hadn’t realized how quiet autumn had been until it was right next to me. He was right next to me. He was sitting on my log just a short distance away from me, but he was close enough that I could feel the heat, the warmth, the intense energy that poured out of him. And there was one major difference between the two of us; he was facing the woods.

“Don’t talk to strangers,” he chuckled, a gentle, subdued laugh echoing under his breath. I cleared my throat before responding.

“Are you telling me not to talk to strangers, or are you asking if I don’t talk to them?”

“Assuming that you don’t,” he said.

“Assuming that you do since you’re talking to me,” I laughed, continuing to look straight ahead into the clearing.

“How do you know I’m a stranger?” he questioned curiously.

“Because I was here first,” I insisted.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

This rustled my curiosity. I had to know what made him feel so boldly and confidently that he was there in the circle before me when he clearly hadn’t been. And I did what any hesitant, unknowing young lady would do. I shifted my body on the log, turning to face him and straddling my legs on either side of the tree.

“I’m positive, actually,” I breathed, realizing that he was incredible. Incredible was the only word I could use to describe him.

“Well, how are you with sharing?” he asked, biting his lip and looking ahead into the woods. Immediately, his actions gave me pause and made me second-guess myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have looked at him first. Maybe I should have waited for him to look at me.

“Much better than I am with talking to strangers,” I shrugged.

“Excellent, then I—”

“—I wouldn’t test your luck,” I said condescendingly. “You do realize I was sitting here first, and out of all the other possible seating options, you chose to sit less than two feet away from me. That’s force-sharing.”

“Force-sharing?” he laughed dryly. My cheeks and lips puckered as I attempted to hide the undeniable grin appearing on my face.

“I’m Penny,” I said nervously, still waiting for him to shift his eye contact from the dark, mysterious trees over to my direction.

“You’re breathtaking.”

“I wouldn’t go that far,” I argued, planting the flats of my palms in front of me on the ridged, mossy bark of the log. “And besides, how would you know? You seem more interested in the trees.”

“I already got a good look at you,” he said confidently.

“From behind, you mean?” I asked.

“Just because you didn’t see me in front of you, hiding in plain sight, doesn’t mean I wasn’t there.”

I swallowed loudly, feeling a little startled by his words, especially because they rang true. After all, I had been sitting there with my eyes closed. I argued with myself internally, telling myself that it made no sense. My eyes had only been closed for a short period of time, and I could only recall hearing the crisp air, the leaves rustling, the sounds of the seasons. I shook my head at him, and just as I did, he finally turned to face me, his eyes meeting mine for the first time. They were everything I had never imagined: burnt umber with haphazard flecks of honey and gold. I was entranced, to put it simply. And I couldn’t find the words to speak to him.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he added in a much softer voice. His voice became much like his eyes as it softened and swirled, filling the crisp air.

“You didn’t,” I said quietly.

“Are you sure?”

I glanced at my sweaty hands that were gripping the bark of the tree with such intensity, and that was when I realized that the signs were written all over me. I was terrified of him in a way. And who wouldn’t be? I was in the circle alone until he snuck up on me. As I nervously wondered why he hadn’t told me his name, I shivered, picking up my hands and brushing off my palms before running them quickly over my arms in an effort to warm myself. Just then, a gust of summer wind picked up through the trees and stopped just short of the clearing, sending a small wave of warm air around me and providing me with some relief from the chill.

“I’m just used to being out here alone,” I finally admitted, although I was starting to get used to the ebb and flow of silence between us.

“You’re never truly alone. You can’t possibly believe that,” he chuckled. And yes, this was yet another instance where I was wondering if I really was safe sitting next to him. But before I could react, he was extending his hand to me: his perfect, structured hand, with veins that started on top of it and crawled up his defined forearm as far as I could see until they disappeared under the rolled-up sleeve of his black button-down shirt. I tried my hardest not to lick my lips at those veins, those wildly sexy veins. “Ellis Merlin, by the way.”

“Ellis Merlin?” I repeated. “What kind of fucking name is that?”

“Your language is certainly colorful,” he joked.

“Well, I beg your pardon. But seriously, what the fuck kind of name is that?” I reiterated, realizing that he’d been holding onto my hand the entire time as he watched my reaction.

“I can’t quite tell if you’re judging my first name or my last.”

“The combination of the two. But I’ll give your last name a pass because many people have strange last names,” I justified.

“A name I received from my father, no doubt,” he said.

“But your first name—”

“—Surely you’ve heard it before,” he interjected.

“Maybe once,” I shrugged, attempting to pull my hand away from his. I quickly realized the strength of his grasp, and at the same time, I realized that I had no reason to let go, no intention of really doing so. I wanted to linger. I wanted to hold on.