This post is a Theme Thursday response, but I have decided to stop adding “Theme Thursday” to the beginning of my titles because nearly every post in the last 8 weeks has been a Theme Thursday response, so that should be clear by the embedded reddit post at the bottom of each response.
Musical Inspiration: Yellow- Coldplay (And also Strawberry Swing but only Yellow is indirectly referenced to in this).
I never want this moment to end. The hammock rocks and pine needles prickle at my heels. An owl hoots nearby, and crickets serenade us as the twilight chases the sun away. Your fingers lace into mine, squeezing gently and I squeeze back, giggling playfully. The smell of the ocean and the forest is heady while lying in the crook of your arms. Or maybe it’s the other way around?
“Can we stay like this forever?” I ask, but you have a better idea.
“Hey,” you say suddenly. “What do you say we go down to the shore? I bet the tide is just coming in!”
“I’ll race you!”
We grab your grandmother’s scratchy woven blanket and feel our way through the dark, picking carefully over the path in the woods. I’m barefoot, but the tiny pebbles don’t bother me. We’re together, nothing could possibly bother me.
The challenge of a race forgotten, we hop-skip down the wooden steps down to the beach in a little dance, two by two and bumping our hips together like we had had more to drink than we really did. Maybe we are drunk, but it wasn’t on alcohol.
It’s a cloudless night down on the shore, a promise of the lightshow to come. With every moment the waves roll in closer. Your grin is cheeky… I love it… you grin at me and give a little shove. “Race you to the water!”
“Oh ho ho!” I cry, digging my heels into sand. “You’re on!”
Your grandmother’s blanket went flying to the closest berm, our feet slapping against wet sand as we sprinted towards the tide. You won, of course, but you’re a gracious winner, and your lips are the prize I really want.
We stumble breathless back to the berm, spreading the blanket out and collapsing in a heap of limbs. Gritty wet sand flakes off from our legs, but we don’t mind. I’m too busy getting my fill of your kisses.
The ocean breeze is frigid, but the heat of our breath tickles over necks and shoulders, chasing the cold away. The night is perfect as it is, just us and the rising tide of the Pacific.
“Look up,” you whisper, and I do, catching myself in a gasp of wonder.
The sky is all sparkles of a thousand stars, glittering a soft yellow above us. Each one I focus on seems brighter than the first.
“It’s incredible.”
“They’re shining just for you.” Your fingers are running over my neck, stroking my hair, your lips hover over my eyelids. “It’s always just for you.”
I breathe deeply into your chest, smelling the spray of the sea, the scent I can only explain as ‘home’. Home never smells so good as when it’s here on the shore with you.
“No,” I tell you.
Your smile brushes stubble against my face. “No?”
I curl into your warmth as I look up at the sky.
“No. We’re just that lucky.”