Unfinished... (Send Help)

(Here's something I started working on back at the end of the summer. Since then I've abandoned it, so I'm posting it unfinished, hoping to get some feedback on where it should end up/what I should do next with it. It's a genre I don't always feel comfy writing in, because of how unrealistic I usually end up making the characters. Anyway, check it out and as always, let me know if it sucks. I tend to get a little carried away with the romantic stuff. Enjoy…)

The tarmac crunched beneath our feet. Wet with the slightest film of rain from the storm we’d had earlier, but not so much that we were standing in a puddle, it certainly wasn’t one of his better ideas. He stopped still between the line that marked the edge and the centre of the street.

“Are you sure you want to stop here?” I voiced my intrigue, the sound shattering the otherwise still of the night.

“Of course.”

We were standing right at the edge of one of the city’s smaller parks: a handkerchief of green scattered with a couple of trees and bordered by sidewalk. It made a nice refreshing change to the grey of the buildings and asphalt that surrounded us.

He knelt down, putting one knee on the ground and looking up at me. I looked down at him, hesitant. Surely not now.

“Shall we?” He asked me with a slight smile, extending his hand up towards mine. A half sigh of relief washed across my mind. I hoped it wasn’t reflected in my face as I took it, feeling the warmth of his fingers spread into the gaps between mine. I knelt down next to him and joined him on the damp tarmac. He sat there for a moment and then leaned back so that his head too was on the ground. Our hands still laced together, he gave me the tiniest of encouraging squeezes. I followed suit, trying not to think about where we were.

After a long time, he exhaled. And then silence again as we both stared up into the ebony sky above us with its tiny infrequent pinpricks of silver light. It was a rarity to see stars in the city. My body was slowly adjusting to the feeling of the road beneath me, the moisture soaking up into the fabric of my coat. I couldn’t help but wonder why he was doing this, although I knew that if I asked him, he would come up with some bullshit excuse in an attempt to be funny.

I could hear a car in the background. My skin tingled with anticipation as the sound of the engine punctured the sky. On edge, I tried to sit up.

“Shhh, it’s okay.” He whispered, using the hand that wasn’t intertwined with mine to coax me back down. “Different road.”

I remained on edge until I heard the engine die down and fade into the distance away from us. He was right.

After another three or four cars had rumbled across the ground somewhere a few streets along from us, he finally spoke again.

“Do you want to know why I brought you here tonight?” He asked me, his head not even tilting slightly towards mine as he spoke. It was a cloudless night, and the moon was a perfect silver orb hanging in the dark. The few stars that we could see in spite of the light pollution twinkled with secrets that I’d never know.

I said nothing, breathing out and seeing my breath fall in a wispy cloud around my upturned face.

“It’s because I wanted to show you.” He responded to my non-verbal reply. “Because I’ve realised that just telling you isn’t enough. At least, not for me.”

Perplexed, I remained silent, instead choosing to look at him lying next to me. He felt my gaze and turned towards me, blue eyes meeting blue.

“Do you see the way we’re lying?” He questioned, and in order for me to answer this, I had to sit up slightly and turn my head left and right. “We’re on the right hand side of the road. Look at where I’m sitting.”

I was confused. Of course, I could see we were on the right hand side of the road just by sitting up. What was he trying to tell me?

“What do you mean?” I finally said aloud, my voice cracking a little from lack of use.

“I wanted to show you what you mean to me. We are lying in the middle of a well-used road, straight in the path of oncoming traffic. In the middle of one of the busiest cities in the entire country. I lay myself on your left hand side so that any oncoming traffic would hit me first rather than you. And that is how I feel about you.”

Silence again as I let this sink in.

“Even if you were to be hit too, and we were both to be killed instantly, there would still be that fraction of a second in which you would still exist after I’d been hit. Because I wouldn’t want to go for even that long not having you in my life.”

(To be continued…)