Timepiece (Hourglass 2)

“I enjoy yours all the time. I just figured I’d give you a chance to enjoy mine.” I gave a little wiggle before I faced her again. “What’s with the socks?”

They were lime green with pink stripes.

“I think what a girl wears under her clothes is just as important as the clothes themselves. And I like a little spice underneath.” She looked directly at me as she peeled off the socks in a striptease fashion, swung them around in a circle, and threw them over her shoulder. One landed on the bookcase, the other in a corner.

“You’re trying to kill me. No, correction, you are going to kill me. And how can you make me laugh like this in the middle of all hell breaking loose?”

“It’s a gift.” Lily scooted to the middle of the bed and sat cross-legged. “I’m ready when you are.”

“I told Abi I wouldn’t let you put yourself at risk, and I meant it. Don’t act like what your grandmother wants doesn’t matter when it does.” Still, I sat down across from her.

“Looking for memories isn’t a risk. It’s my memory,” Lily argued. “If we can do this, you can figure out exactly what to look for with your parents. It should be even easier with them, because the three of you shared most of those emotions and memories.”

I sighed, and then put my hands on her hips and slid her toward me. The movement threw her off balance. She gasped and grabbed my forearms to keep from toppling over. I stared down at her fingers on my skin for a second before meeting her eyes, and then leaned forward to touch my lips to hers.

Our combined heat gathered in my chest and radiated out through my skin. She put her arms around my neck and pulled me closer.

“This isn’t why we came in here,” I whispered.

“I know,” she whispered back. “But it’s a nice side benefit.”

“Are you procrastinating? Changing your mind about letting me inside your soul?”

“No.”

“It’s intense for me when I take emotion. I know it’s not going to be easy on you to give it.” I frowned. “And it’s going to be even more intense this time, because I’ll be concentrating on the memories that go with the emotion, too. What if I do something wrong? What if I hurt you?”

“You won’t.” She touched my cheek. “I’m not afraid of anything when I’m with you.”

This time, I put my hands on her knees instead of her hips.

“Before you do anything, I think the memory you look for needs to be significant.”

“You’ve thought about this.”

She nodded.

“What do you want me to take?”

“The day I left Cuba.”

“Lily. No. What if I can’t give that back to you? And do you really want to relive it, twice more? Because if I take it and give it back, I’m pretty sure you will.”

“I want to relive it.” She bit her lip. “I’ve pushed the memory away for so long. But I think I could do with some remembering. What do I need to do?”

“I guess … focus on that day, the way you felt, anything you can remember about it. I know you were young, but even one specific detail would be good, what you were wearing, the weather, something like that.”

She took a deep breath. “It was sunny, after about a solid week of rain. My mom was always super protective of me, but this day … I was so happy to be outside, free. She was hanging clothes on the line. I stretched out on the grass for a minute, just to feel it against the backs of my legs. Everything after that gets kind of …”

“That’s enough.” I could see the day on her emotional time line. It was a big one. “Promise me you’re sure.”

“Yes.”

I leaned forward, took her face in my hands, and looked into her eyes.

Emotion flooded through my system almost the second I touched her. Visuals I didn’t understand made her feel trapped, and then there was pain. Happiness and a swing set. White clouds and flapping sheets. Worry, anxiety. Shiny black car, feet, the ground. So much fear.

Hope. Hope and a red crayon, a lined piece of paper. Crude drawings and … pain.