Cherry Girl (Neil & Elaina 1)

“Right. Her mother, my gran, took care of us, and then me, when Mum died. Yeah…it was pretty awful.” Elaina pulled her hand from the water and leaned back against me again. She was waiting for me to talk about my past and I figured there was no time like the present. Hiding it certainly wouldn’t help anything, and I might as well get on with throwing it all out there with her. I’d want to know if it was the other way ’round.

“When I was ten, my mother and her boyfriend got themselves killed in a car crash driving home drunk from the pub. They ran themselves off the road in a rain storm and into a flooded ditch.”

“Oh, that’s horrible.”

“Mum never really settled down like a typical mother. She had me far too young, and she didn’t really grow up or get over the fact that my father didn’t love her or want anything to do with us. She was only twenty-six when she died. And she had dreadful taste in men, apparently…” I trailed off with my sad story and hoped I didn’t have to talk about it much more. I wanted to enjoy our time here, and not waste it on the uselessness of regret over things I had absolutely no control. Strolls down memory lane didn’t do a bloody thing for me. I had learned to live in the present and for the future. It was the only way.

Elaina rolled over to face me and rested on my chest, looking up. “I didn’t know all that about your family. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“For you, for how scary it must have been for you as a little boy losing your mother and then later on, your grandmother. I knew it was bad for you, but I didn’t know the story. I’m so sorry for your losses.”

I shared more with her because she was so gentle and kind with her feelings, and I could tell she wanted to know about me. For the first time, I actually felt like talking a little about my life because I knew I could trust her.

“Gran was lovely…and if we're being completely honest, she's the one who really raised me. My mum was not ready to have a child and although my memories of her are sweet, we weren't ever like a typical mother and son. It was my gran's dying of cancer, when I was seventeen that dealt the worst blow. It devastated me…and there was so little time to settle things before she passed away.”

“You had to leave Scotland, then?” She found my hand and entwined our fingers together, caressing back and forth with her thumb.

“Yeah. And it was clear I'd have to go with my father as soon as Gran's condition was pronounced terminal. There was nobody else to take me.”

She brought my hand to her lips and held it there.

I kept talking. “Everyone was unhappy about it. I didn't want to leave my home, or for my gran to die, or to go live with a father I'd never met, and who didn’t want me any more than I wanted him.”

She gripped my hand tighter.

“He had a wife who really didn’t want me around—messing up their perfect little family life in England, bringing up questions, destroying the façade of respectability they’d earned. They had a three-year-old son already. Sam—their real son.”

"So, you came to live with your father and that's when we met you?" she asked softly.

"Yeah, but I didn’t make it easy for any of us. As soon as I was delivered to my father’s house and got a good feeling for how things were going to be with my new family, I ran away, sneaking off almost immediately, hitching rides all the way back to Scotland. It took a while, but they found me trying to live in the back of my gran’s garage. My dad sent me off directly to school in London after that mess so I didn’t have to live with them, and since our last names were different, nobody connected us as father and son. I was just a kid dumped at school by people who liked to pretend I didn’t exist.”

Elaina was quiet for a bit, just holding my hand to her lips and absorbing everything I’d told her. When she finally spoke, her voice had a detached ring to it as if she were making a confession. “I always hated your family. I never met them but I hated them just the same for how uncaring they were of you.”

God, I loved her. “I always sort of sensed that from you, Cherry. Just made me love you more though.”

She wasn’t done. “But then I probably shouldn’t hate them, because if they hadn’t been so awful we might never have met you. Ian wouldn’t have befriended you and dragged you home to us.” She leaned up to find my lips for a kiss.

I clung to her as if she were a lifeline. “Your family probably saved my life,” I whispered, holding her face close.

"How did we do that?" I could see tears in her eyes and knew it hurt her to hear all this horrible shit. I hoped it was the last time I ever had to speak of it with her. Elaina was only part of the good things that had happened in my life. She was the light to all that darkness. I was relieved to now know how that all the sorry sad rest of my past just didn’t matter to me anymore.

“By wanting me. You always wanted me, Cherry, and I don’t know why you did, but I do know that it was the thing that saved me. You and your family saved me.”

She nodded and let out a sob. “Always did…and always will.” Her hand started moving, rubbing over the place where my heart beat and the blood was pumped, showing me the truth behind her lovely words.

“But, I don’t want you to dwell on it. Please, for me, don’t think about it anymore because it’s over and just doesn’t matter. I survived because of you, and more importantly, I have you now. You’re mine.” I smiled. “That’s all I care about.” I kissed her for a long time.

I held onto my Cherry Girl. I held her up against my heart, in that little rowboat on the idyllic lake, at the splendid English estate that felt like something out of

a Dickens’ novel, and knew pretty much what complete happiness felt like for the first time in my adult life.

All the sad shit and the fucked up past was well behind us, where it belonged. I figured we only had good in our future to look forward to together.

No words could do justice to what I’d just shared with Elaina in such a very special place. It was that meaningful to me. I certainly couldn’t find the right words to express what it meant to me to know that she’d always loved me and wanted me…just because she did. No other reason, than that the path of her heart led her to me. A miracle. I couldn’t rationalize it and I wouldn’t even attempt to figure out why things played out the way that they did with us.

I made a decision to just believe in fate right then and there. Done. I wouldn’t question the how’s or the why’s of it anymore, but simply accept the gift of fate I’d been given with my Elaina.