Stolen

Night sky, deep purple-blue, the city lights too far to blot out the stars. The moon was slight, just enough. The wind blew better on the balcony, over-looking the houses and the trees and that car parked out front with the washed out paint near the tires. There was a lot of noise from the inside: a mix of human ramble-shouting and the faint beat pounding in the background.

"I like you." Did that really just slip out? It didn't sound right. It sounded a lot better in her head, and it elicited a much much better reaction. Definitely more than him just standing there, his back to the balcony railing, wide-eyes on her, urgent then. "Should I have said it sooner?" He just stood there staring at her. "Should I never have said anything?"

How close to reality am I making this? How much fiction do I get? 

She kissed him, and he kissed back, and it was glorious. What did it matter, the next six days or the next six months. He tasted like Sprite and Crinkles and the nervousness in his breathing kept her heart rate quick. 

The wind blew through the night and the trees and the clouds and the forest floor, all conspiring to make things crack and crumple and snap in the dark. Their coats pulled over them would keep them warm on their way  back to a camp they could barely remember, because his fingers were between her fingers and their ungloved hands clung to each other desperately as heat escaped them and engulfed them. 

Arms wrapped around his waist and shoulders slumped, face pressed lightly to his back as they rode slowly, bareback, to the inn. She swore she could hear him whisper, I always knew. She was tired and she was cold, but when he would occasionally lean back, she would breathe him in, so familiar and so foreign and completely full of promise. She thought he smelled like her future, maybe. What took you so long, she thought he said. 

Bipity, bopity, boo. Pumpkin carriage and powder blue ball gown, long hair in an updo, and heart vicious and ready. He pulled up  in his long white limo just as the fairy dust began to settle, sharp in a crisp midnight blue suit. I found you, he said, his eyes grateful. She shook her head and smiled at him, now snapped into perfection, No, I found you first. One by one, she pulled the pins out of her hair and shook it out, carefully pulling her gloves off finger by finger. She shut her eyes hard enough for the eyeliner-mascara to smudge. You've no idea, my lord, how long I have loved you. 

He stared at her a couple more seconds; in her state, he was worried she didn't know what she was doing. But she knew exactly what she was doing, no matter she was thankful for the excuse. He smiled at her weakly and took her hand and gave it a little squeeze before retreating back into the house, leaving her standing there in the dark and the semi-quiet and the painful sting of suburban housing. 

I get no fiction because life is a bitch.