In Harmony

“Not as fast as Ophelia. I got you all beat.”

A silence.

“You know it’s a Shakespearean tragedy when you’re discussing which character dies the fastest.”

He smiled a little, but I watched it fade as his eyes held mine. I felt the moment thicken between us. It would’ve been nothing for him to bend down and kiss me.

I want him to kiss me.

The thought sent electric shivers dancing down my skin, but tangled my stomach in a knot at the same time. What would happen if he did? Would I freeze up? Would panic grip me, shake me and throw me to the ground? Would the shadowy memory of Xavier’s mouth come through Isaac’s lips?

I turned my head and brushed a lock of hair out of my eyes. “I’m ready to check out this maze.”

“Sure, yeah,” he said, with equal parts relief and regret too. “Let’s go.”

We faced the two entrances to the maze, each heading opposite directions.

“It’s not hard,” he said, “and you can see the center so you can’t get lost.”

Getting lost in a hedge maze with you wouldn’t be the worst thing that could happen today. “Okay, I said. “Race you to the center?”

“I’ll win,” Isaac said. “I’ve lived here my entire life.”

“So you’re scared?”

He laughed. A small one but a real laugh nonetheless. “All right, let’s see what you got. Ready. Set…”

I took off running down my branch of the maze before he could say go.

“Cheater,” he called.

I laughed, feeling the warm sun on my face and the smell of spring coming back all around me. The maze was composed of dried brush, slowly turning green. Bugs chirped and small white butterflies fluttered across my path. It wasn’t a complicated maze, and I kept my bearings by watching the windmill shack in the middle. Isaac, at six-foot-two, should’ve towered over hedges but he was nowhere to be seen.

“No way he’s that fast,” I muttered, reaching the clearing where the little windmill sat. A cutout door faced me, its faded red paint peeling away. Isaac sat on a bench inside, one ankle resting on the knee of his other leg, looking like he’d been there for hours.

“Okay, you win,” I said with a laugh, but it died to see the way he was looking at me. He slowly got to his feet and stepped out of the windmill, his brows together as if he were in pain.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

He kept his hands to his sides as if it were an effort to do so. “Nothing. I can't do this,” he said. “We should go.”

“Go? We just got here.”

“I realize that but it’s not fucking fair to you or to me…” He sighed, dropped his gaze to the ground, shaking his head. “You have no idea how beautiful you are.”

“Isaac…” I swallowed over the pounding of my heart.

“We should go,” he said. “We should… I’m leaving in a few months. I have to. I have to get out of this town for myself and I have to get out to make some money for my dad and Martin and the theater. I’m broke as hell, but maybe if the scouts like me…?”

The desperate hope in his gruff voice broke my heart.

“I know you have to go,” I said. “It’s your dream. The world needs your talent.”

He swallowed hard. I watched his Adam’s apple rise and fall as if he were choking down a jagged lump.

“It needs your talent too,” he said. “Your Ophelia…”

“I don’t know about that, but I need Ophelia. I need this play and I can’t lose that.”