the verduous hours - pt2

Green was the rest of that summer, and always would be.

It was the shade of the limes that puckered her mouth while she sucked the juice from the nectar, keeping one ear on him across the porch where he sat between her brothers, their legs dangling over the edge. Jenny and Diana hung nearby, giggling between themselves as surely their eyes were fixed upon the Adonis who had become a normal fixture at their house by then. But while her sisters waited patiently for the opportunity to corner him at the front door when he jogged to their farm every morning, Abigail said nothing.

She was like a specter underfoot—she would catch the icy grey in his stare and it would charge something in her chest that made her heart pump out of rhythm. She would want to run away in those times, not sure whether his eyes indicated that he was the Devil or an angel.

Until she could figure it out, she would keep her distance.


Green was the long walks she would take, alone, so that she may sing to the trees, caressing the tall grass as she began to long for grey. She would think about him, about the perfume that radiated naturally from his skin, and she would begin to wonder what it would mean if she were to speak to him.

Green was the waters of the creek that ran between the loess hills to the west. They were aqua, the shade she imagined the ocean to be. She had never seen the ocean, but she was confident that it took on the same color as the sky when the storms were about to come.

Green was still on her mind when he was suddenly behind her, eclipsing the late afternoon sun that was beginning to turn neon pink. She turned to him in a startled silence, wondering how long he had been standing there and if he had been listening to her thinking about him. Her heart stammered in her chest as she began to back away from him, but he approached her at the same time, and the icy grey of his eyes melted to reflect her face in the pales of his irises.

He smiled, and made a comment on the sky.

She turned briefly to look up at the cobalt expanse behind her -— somewhere, trapped there in his stare, she had missed the sun as it began to bleed that hot pink to stain the few stitches of clouds nearby.

He sat down at the edge of the trickling waters, his towering height folding into a position that was somehow less threatening. His eyes traced her bare legs until they reached the hem of her denim shorts, then they skipped the rest, sweeping upwards to her face. She was staring at him intently, not realizing that her mouth was agape, although she had not said anything.

He had smirked at her, so dumbstruck in his presence. In hindsight, her admiration must have been obvious. He must have seen that she was so mesmerized, because he had patted the overgrown grass beside him, inviting her to sit.

She cautiously sank down to the seat on his left, and there was not much space between them. At this level, she had an easier line of sight to his face, and she followed the movement of his thick lips as he started to talk about how he had always loved to watched sunsets -— he shared one of her deepest passions.

He continued to talk, explaining his childhood, sometimes using words that she didn’t even understand. Yet, in the spirit of this older man confiding in her —- even her brothers did not find her to be worthy of their confidence —- she dared not ask any questions, lest he realize that she was just a kid and take back all of these secrets that she believed he told to no one else.


But that was ages ago. That day no longer had meaning; she tried to convince herself of this as she stared straight ahead, not daring to look beyond the glass of the window, lest the memories return with a vengeance…
But no matter what she did, she could not make them go away.


Green was like the pastures she had never seen before, as they ventured farther beyond the hill at the edge of her family’s farm than she had gone before. They were inseparable by then -- she would sometimes meet him on top of that hill, just so that her brothers would not see him and hog his attention to themselves. Sebastian understood how precious their time spent together had become —- she was sure he felt it too —- and Abigail knew that it was love, this new feeling that gave new meaning to her chorus amongst the trees.

She came to miss him, even when he sat across the back porch from her, catching her attention with his eyes for a slice of lime. Their fingers would graze as she would pass him the slippery wedge, pale green citrus dripping down her palm. He would stuff this wedge down the neck of his beer bottle, and she would watch the juice drip down and spread throughout the pale amber ale like a cloud of smoke.
She would save the next wedge for her lips, the bright green peel concealing her teeth and gums as she sucked in a symphony of trickling juice down her chin and throat. He would watch her just as intently as she watched him in those moments, those grey eyes clouding over and entranced.


He became a constant fixture during those long strolls she formerly took with just nature and the wind. There came a time when the trees longed for her song again, but she was too distracted by the sound of his voice floating down from above her to sing.

Green was the color of new fields she had never even known were there. Green was the two of them venturing off alone. Green was the invisible stain of lime as the summer was left in their trail, but their hands remained clasped together when they were out of sight.


But green would soon become something ugly, now that she could watch all of it on a reel of film from her past.


Sebastian had a lot of green shirts —- mostly tee shirts, but also the button down he wore to church that first time:

It was him and his mother and father, and they approached as Jameson and Walker hopped out of the flatbed, leaving Abigail to fend for herself. She paid little attention to their conversation as she struggled over the rim of the trunk, but she could feel those grey eyes on her back. Sebastian's shirt was like the color of spearmint that day, and there were far more wrinkles ironed in to it than had been ironed out. Noticing her distress, he approached, that spearmint growing larger in her peripheral vision, and he extended his hand to her.

That had been one of the first times they had ever touched.


Green was the wrapping paper on the gift that he must have wrapped himself, showing up late and unexpected to her twelfth birthday party. He joined her brothers towards the back of the kitchen while Jenny and Diana were fussing over the cake they had spent all afternoon baking. Her mother and father and a few neighbors were milling all through the kitchen and living room, but she sat at the head of the kitchen table, silently patient, and she caught his stare. He smiled at her.

He gave her the present later —- it was small enough to fit in his back pocket all through dinner and the opening of her other gifts. While Jenny and Diana bickered about how to tackle the chores in the kitchen; while Jameson and Walker were temporarily distracted in the shed with their father; while her mother took the baby upstairs for bed, Sebastian excused himself under the pretense of heading home.

He waited for her just on the other side of the hill, and she ran as fast as she could across the cornfields to meet him. The sky was bright pink with dusk, and she hoped the others would miss her shadow splashing across the fields and out of sight behind the house.

She saw only his shadow at first, and his broad shoulders.

When she arrived at the bottom of the hill, her eyes surely danced at the sight of his surprisingly light eyes against his dark features, framed with the halo of the sunset. He offered her the little green box with dented corners from an evening cooped up in his jeans.

“Happy Birthday,” he smiled, and her young heart felt strange, pattering out of synch and stealing her breath.

Perhaps that was the moment —- when she could not see green at all because the sunset cast shadows over everything except the lightness of his eyes -— she fell in love with him.

Maybe her love for him had nothing to do with green at all.


She peeled back the wrapping paper -— glittering green -— with the utmost care, wanting him to see that she folded it then stuck it into the pocket of her shorts. She held the little cardboard box in her hands for a moment, her breath catching in her throat as she wondered if he was asking her to marry him. Raising her eyes to his, she detected a discomfort there that she had never seen. She thought to question it, but he encouraged her to continue with an impatiently eager smile.

“I wasn’t sure if… it’s the right size… but… I saw it… and I thought that… maybe you would like it…” he stammered, then settled on smiling at her, hands jammed in his pockets.

At this mild explanation, she opened the lid to see what was inside, and all was revealed with a gust of wind that bandied her raven waves of hair in every direction, although the showmanship may have all been in her imagination.

It was green, the stone that sat so complacently in a silver setting. She was awestruck to silence, not having the heart to agree with him on the fact that it was indeed too small. Even as her hair whipped over her face, freed from her perpetual ponytail somehow during her sprint to meet him, she was focused solely on the silver ring that finally slipped over the pinky finger of her left hand. She stared at it for a long time, almost forgetting that he was even there, although she was thinking about him the whole time.

“It’s okay if you hate it… I just thought that it would look nice on your little hand,” he finally conceded with a charming shrug.

Her eyebrow furrowed at the thought that she had somehow expressed displeasure without meaning to. She felt the panicked urge to assure him that she adored his gift as much as she adored him —- for as long as she wore his ring, she would be his. She stared up into his eyes and she promised, in her speechless gaze, that she wanted to be his forever. She searched her mind, combing through the pages of encyclopedia stored up there, for the right words to say, something that did not make her sound so dumb, so childish, as she feared she did when in his presence. She searched for the perfect piece of gratitude that she could offer, like a thank-you card, and she spoke before she could run her words past her brain.

“I love you, Sebastian,” she said, clapping her hands over her mouth almost instantly, but it was too late.


He had flinched, having been startled by the first confidently definitive statement to ever come out of her mouth in his presence. She was not sure if she had wanted to take it back at the time; she had searched his eyes for any indication that she had been wrong to express herself so candidly, then, realizing her futility, she held her breath and tried to decipher his reaction.

Without warning, he was upon her, his head dipped low as her gripped both of her wrists in one hand and tugged her close. His mouth fell against hers, causing her hazel eyes to go wide and take in the fireworks of pink and orange and a tiny rim of green exploding in the western corner of the sky behind him. She nearly gasped against the slimy sensation of his tongue, realizing that the concept of kissing him had previously been far too much of a fantasy for her to have prepared herself for it in any real kind of way. His pillowy lips that hung like a pout were enveloping her own, and the shadow of facial hair along his chin and jaw was sandpaper against her soft cheeks. Her hands were losing their feeling with his grip, which tightened with the intensity of his squirming tongue, but she did not try to free them from his fist because his fist was the only thing that stopped her from collapsing over her weak knees.

When he pulled back from her, the sky was just indigo. She swore upon the first star she spotted that night that she would be his forever.


Green was the bittersweet bite of that first love, because with that first gamble, she should have known that her heart was forever at risk of being broken.

Green was exactly how he broke her heart.