Ivory Flowers

Day was just beginning to fade to night.

I stepped out of the car, stilettos hesitant on the concrete. I turned and glanced in the reflection of the car window, my eyes searching for my face in the dark glass. My blue eyes gazed back at me, dark against my pale winter skin. My dark curls fell down my back in a black cascade. With nervous fingers I rearranged the white flower pinned amongst them.

At home, I had stood in front of my shadowed mirror and gazed at my hazy reflection. At home, my brown curls had seemed too dark, too morbid to match my flighty smile. But here, the flower that lightened them seemed too daring, too bright. I hesitated, fingers smoothing the soft petals, and then shrugged.

Inside the bar, feet light on the wooden floor, I found my friends dressed in gaudy pinks and softening blues. Besides them, the white material stretched across my top seemed minimal, my dark curls seemed mellow, but nothing could fade the brilliance of the blossom in my hair.

I didn’t see him when I walked in, didn’t see that smile, the deep eyes hidden under that dark hair. He was taller than I’d remembered, and darker, more mysterious. His sun bleached hair had darkened with the winter, and framed his face with shadows.

I don’t know what made me turn, turn and see him. Perhaps someone hinted to his presence and I turned to find him. Perhaps I turned to cross the room. Perhaps I turned to look out across the room, searching for the face of someone I knew.

Whatever it was that made me turn, turn I did. As I spun on one elegant heel, I stopped, brought up short by his eyes gazing steadily across the room at me. He smiled just slightly, and in that smile was everything I needed to know.

-

I saw her as soon as she walked into the room. She was just the same, older, more polished, but no different from the girl I had known last summer. She looked different, in her heels and makeup and curled hair, to the girl I had run along the beach with, who I had fallen for with no makeup, fallen for when her hair fell in wet tendrils down her back, unadorned with anything but the sun.

Yet here she was.

She was stood with friends at the bar, flashing ID that I knew couldn’t be hers. She was still young, for all her makeup and careful fashion. She was still a young girl, with a smile as eager and free as the sun after the rain.

One of her friends pointed to something across the room, and as she turned to follow her gaze, her eyes locked on mine. I felt my lips curve into a smile as her eyes widened. She raised one hand slightly, as though she almost pointed at me in disbelief. Her lips were parted slightly, her eyes wide, hair pushed back from her ivory forehead. Her eyes were alight, fiery, and I found myself stood, oblivious to the room around me, unable to tear myself away from the fire in her eyes.

Then she stepped forwards, and the spell was broken. She rushed forward, hair flying back over her shoulders, curls escaping their pins to fall over her face in a cloud of darkness. She crossed the room to fall into my arms, and my body remembered the familiar curves of her body as she wrapped her arms around me.

-

Rushing across the room, my mind flew back to the months we had spent together, the summer days on the beach, sailing on azure lakes, dancing across lush fields. My mind flew back to a time when the world had contained only us, when the world had seemed to be set up purely for us to enjoy.

With my arms around his neck, his hand clasped in my curls, his lips to my neck, everything between then seemed irrelevant.

Beneath my hands, I felt his shoulders stir and begin to move back. My body echoed his movements, sliding away from his grasp until we stood with air between us once more, our eyes still entwined.

His face was more guarded, more cautious than it had been before. I longed to reach up, and run my fingers along the harsh line of his jaw, to soften the frown etched across his forehead, but something in his eyes warned me off, so I remained, hands locked behind my back.

He gazed at me for a moment more, his face still heavy, still shadowed, as the party swung on around us. Then his face cleared, and the boy he had been stood before me.

With one hand he reached up and gently touched the flower pinned in my dark curls. Then he wrapped one strong arm around my waist and led me outside.

Outside, the night was dark and clear, the first stars beginning to show as the clouds cleared. I raised my face to the heavens, letting my hair fall back from my face, my eyes fixed on the lights above us. Each star seemed to me an ivory flower, in a field of darkness that stretched all around us.

I let my gaze fall, until it rested on his face once more. Outside, some of the darkness had returned to his face, shadows plaguing his expression. He seemed once more lost, as though he could not find the freedom that rested all around us. I waited, his arm still resting around my waist, for a moment of recklessness to bring us together.

-

Her gaze on my face was light, trusting. For all the dark makeup artfully smudged around her eyes, they were still bright, still burning with youth, with innocence. Her face, beneath the dark curtain of hair, was alight with expectation. The flower in her curls glowed with ivory brilliance against the black waterfall of night around us.

Her eyes flittered across my face. Glancing between my lips, my eyes, and back again.

I looked away, and felt her smile fade away with uncertainty.

-

He kept one arm around my waist, his fingers grasping my waist tightly. I waited for him to move towards me, to brush his lips against my skin once more. But he kept his face averted from mine, avoiding my questing eyes.

He spoke then, of another girl, with hair as blonde as mine was dark, with eyes as green as mine were blue. He told me it was over, finished, done. That beside me, she was nothing. He spoke of a distance growing between them, a drift towards insignificance. He spoke of how within minutes, she could be gone from the picture he longed to paint for us.

I heard the words, but they meant nothing to me. My eyes were blinded with her imagined face, her blonde hair tarnished, her green eyes loosing their blossom.

I breathed in and out, and tired to stop my shoulders from stiffening away from his.
It did not matter whether everything was over, would be over, or could never be over. Betrayal was betrayal.

-

I kept my voice light as I spoke, trying to make her see that since our last summer together, the world had spun on, out of control, and things no longer had the perfect symmetry they once had. As I spoke the words, I longed to pull her closer to me, to lock her form to mine so that she could never break away from me.

I knew that to the girl in my arms, it did not matter whether everything was over, would be over, or could never be over. Betrayal was betrayal.

I longed to make her see, to understand, that in the months she had been gone, everything else around me had become a way of hiding the space she had left, of keeping me together so that I may be whole for her when we met again. That anything else but her was insignificant, as lost as one flower in a field of hundreds.

But I knew that with every word that I spoke, I only pushed her further and further away.

Her face showed none of the hurt that I knew must be surging beneath her skin, showed none of the indecision that must be fighting beneath every movement, every breath, every silence.

Darkness caught on her shoulders, hunched away from me. Every fibre of her body was tense, controlled, as though her body longed to lean towards me, and she controlled it only with every scrap of willpower she had.

She turned her face upwards once more, to the stars watching us, her face set.

-

In that moment, I almost longed to be the girl that could be thoughtless, that could act without fear of her own conscience destroying her chances of happiness. I almost longed to be more selfish, that I could put my own happiness first.

I almost longed not to care about the other girl, the nameless faceless girl, grieving somewhere, missing him somewhere. Because of me. I almost longed not to care.

But not enough.

I did not want it enough. Even for a chance to see his smile again, to see his eyes glint with mischief, to see his shoulders bunch under his t-shirt as he shrugged. Even for that, I could not be the girl I almost wished I was.

Before my reckless body could betray me, I stood and began to walk away.

-

Eventually she stood, and began to walk away. I did not move, did not call out, only watched the space between us increase. The ivory flower in her hair glinted, pale against the black mist of her hair.

I knew then that had she been any different, any less principled, any less stubborn, I would not have wanted her anyway.

-

Above us, the stars were scattered across the sky like ivory flowers in a field of darkness that stretched all around us.

I pulled the flower out of my hair as I walked into that darkness.