Monday
Picture 2
AJ Silent Voice’s Choice: Picture 1
Title:
“Who does this anymore, Sara? How old are you anyways?” Jake whined.
She looked at him, then at the swings, and Jake couldn’t help the way his heart swelled. Somehow she always seemed to make him feel life tenfold. It was in the way her eyes looked so innocent but she acted jaded. It was in the little sounds she made, not the bitter words she spoke. It was those nights they had lay together, sweaty and sleepy, and she told him how she’d never had feelings like she had for him...never. As he held her close and she drifted off to sleep, it was in the way she seemed to curl herself around him. It was like home.
“Come on, Jake! It’ll be fun. Or what, did you have some traumatic childhood incident with a swing? Don’t tell me...wait...do I see feathers on your ass?” She teasingly turned him around and gave his cheeks a thorough inspection and a healthy grope before she pushed him away from her. The wood he sported just by her touch was painful, but it was gone in a second when Sara, hands tucked under her armpits, started clucking and flapping like a chicken.
“Buck-AW! Buck-buck-buck-buck-AW!” she clucked until Jake's sides split from laughter. She kept a straight face, god alone knows how, and even scratched at the ground a bit with the tip of her Chucks. Jake watched her, heaving for breath as his loud guffaws rung through the empty playground. She stopped, popped her head up, and looked at him, giving him one last, “Buck-AW!”
“Okay! Okay...you’ve made your point!” He was tugging at her arms and pulling her to his body, trying to knock the chicken out of her. She laughed as she felt him tickle her ribs and automatically threw her arms down in protection. Within minutes, Sara was laughing loudly right along with Jake. When he pulled her into a proper hug, they held each other until the chuckles died down to sighs, giggling. Sara couldn’t remember a time when she’d laughed that hard.
She laid her head softly on Jake’s shoulder as he tightened his grip around her. They rocked and swayed, letting their hands soothe each other with light touches. Jake was the only person Sara allowed to touch her. She didn’t explain to him that he couldn’t touch her, he just picked up on it from being around her. That’s what Sara loved about Jake. She didn’t need to spell things out for him, even hard things that she didn’t want to talk about, because he just knew. He just knew she took creamer in her coffee and nothing else. She asked him how he knew, and he’d confessed to watching her make coffee once. Once.
He just knew she hated the dark. Once, he said, he watched her scurry out the door of her apartment after she’d turned off all the lights. He said he saw her look back several times in fear, purposely not turning her back on the black hallway. That was how he knew about the touching too. I mean, sure, decking Paul was a dead giveaway, but Jake knew before that. He knew when she flinched as their hands accidentally touched over a receipt one day. Sara had never had someone know her so well.
“So about these swings,” Jake whispered. Sara gave him a lazy acknowledgment but stayed close to his body. “Let’s check them out.” He gently took her hand and removed her from him and towards the swing set.
She made him pull her by one arm, as if she were reluctant, but he knew better. Jake had seen the longing in her eyes when they passed the park. As they got closer, Jake spun Sara around and seated her on one of the swings.
Sara felt the warmth on her bottom and remembered her scorching summers in Atlanta. Some days, the monkey bars, the swings and the see-saw where so hot that they couldn't even play on them. But here in Forks, the only thing that warmed the seat was the faint rays of sun that occasionally peaked through the clouds. It was enough, though.
She locked her legs straight, swinging back into Jake’s chest, and felt his hands caress her hips before grasping the chains on the swing. Sara giggled, feeling like a five year old again, waiting for her boyfriend to swing her high.
“Swing me high, Jake,” she said. And he did.
The sheer force of his upper body strength sent her flying through the air on the first push. As she swung back down to earth, she reveled in the slight queasiness that flip-flopped her stomach. It tickled and made her giggle louder.
Jake couldn’t get enough of it. He pushed her higher and higher just to hear that one sound. When the chains started buckling at the top, signaling that she was too high, he decided to do a run under. He pushed her a few times to make sure she was high enough, and, giving one last push, he ran underneath her feet until he was standing in front of her. Her joy rang through the night as he ran around and did it again. Every time, she’d throw her body back letting her hair dangle and fill the night with her amusement.
Jake never wanted her to stop. When she started leaning too far back, though, he leapt behind her and took hold of the chains, skidding her to a halt.
“Why’d you stop? That was amazing! I don’t remember it being this awesome!” She leaned back into him, obviously not too mad he’d stopped her fun, and giggled a little from the lightheaded feeling. Sara never felt like she had to be careful around Jake. If she stumbled, he’d catch her. If she was sick, he took care of her. And when they were together, she could just be a girl who didn’t have a care in the world. She hadn’t been that girl for a long time.
“Stand up,” Jake said. Sara turned and stared at him.
She stood up and let go of the swing. “Like this?” she asked.
“No! I mean, stand up in the swing. Put one foot up and hold onto me, then put the other one up.” He saw a bit of fear in her eyes. “Don’t worry, I gotcha.”
Sara hesitated only a second before turning around and gripping the chain, hiking one leg up, and planting her foot on the seat. Steadying herself with Jake’s shoulder, she vaulted straight up and put the second foot next to the first. When she could stand without shaking, she let go of Jake and grasped the other chain. She wobbled a bit and shrieked.
“I got you, I got you,” Jake said, bracing his body against hers. When he felt her relax, he continued. “Now, I’m going to push just a little, but when you feel it start swinging, bend your knees a bit and push into it. Then you can make yourself swing.”
He gave her a tentative push and panic flashed in her eyes. “Jake!” she squeaked. But this time, Jake didn’t come. Oh, he could have. He could have stopped the swinging and reassured her or even took her down all together. Instead, he pushed a bit more. She wasn’t steady at first. Her body was rigid and she had trouble relaxing into the back and forth motion. Jake kept swinging her until he saw her bend her knees.
It only took one push with her own legs and she was gone. She pushed herself higher and higher, leaning back into the highs and moving with the momentum of the lows. Sara didn’t know if anything in life was better than this feeling. She was so vulnerable, so unprotected, but yet she still moved with the flow. The lows weren’t scary. They were just a place she could pick up momentum to make the highs higher. All she had to do was push through them. And when she was up in the air, leaning back was like free falling. She could just let go and let the world turn upside down.
She felt her knees wobble on the last push, and before she knew it, Jake had slowed her down, and with arms wrapped tightly across her waits, pulled her down and into his arms.
Jake held her close as she sighed and regained her footing. She was still swaying a bit, so he steadied her until the motion stopped. “Fun?” he asked.
Her childlike expression told him all he needed to know. “Yes. God, it was amazing,” she said.
He laughed and quickly kissed her cheek before whispering in her ear,ready to bolt the second the words left his mouth. “Yup, it was amazing...especially the view up your skirt!”
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