♤ : Taking a bath together
Okay, so California wasn’t that bad, really. But maybe that was just because he was there with Frannie and they had yet to leave the apartment for longer than a dinner in some fancy restaurant of her choice. Naturally, at least two of them included some healthy snack or salad, like celery or some other tree like that, but he was almost too happy to tease her.
It was ten or noon or maybe it was midnight: time ceased to matter when they were together. Rays of sunlight slipped through the small bathroom window and bathed it in soft golden light that reflected on the white tiles. They were in the bathtub, her back on his chest, his hands moving slowly against her arms, lips trailing on the back of her neck.
“Would you tell me something about it?” Frannie finally broke the silence, his kisses no longer the only sound filling the room. His hand slipped into the soapy water, as if the question caught him off guard - it always did. There was no need to ask her to clarify what the ‘it’ was, he knew well enough by now. And they had skirted around the topic and avoided talking about it, but he could do it only for so long before they couldn’t just go back to the way things were before he shut down.
“I had a friend in my team. A scrawny little fella, about three years younger than me.” Eli started and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close, keeping himself whole for her. “He would always joke and tell us crazy stories about his life before he got deployed. Because of him I always thought there was something to come back to when it was all over.”
He made a pause, as if he was going through the events in his head as he spoke about them, reliving them.
“One day, we were on our way to join another camp. He was in the humvey in front of ours and they were probably messing around, because they kept swerving. And we were laughing, wondering what the hell that was about. I was driving and I started to roll the window down to yell at them, say some stupid joke when it happened. He drove right over a landmine. There was nothing to do.”
Eli shook his head slightly, the weight of his friend’s death too heavy on his shoulders still. It was as if he lost all hope that day; all reason to fight. Until Frannie came into his life and gave him something to hope for again.
He felt her hand moving against the back of his neck and she turned slightly in his arms to look at him. For a moment, they were silent, eyes glued and bodies intertwined, no telling where one ended and the other began. But as they blinked, the moment passed and he leaned down to kiss her forehead, unable to utter a word more.
