Millie

Chapter Eighteen - The talk

We were silent as I started the jeep, and as we drove up my grandmothers street and away from the family...we stayed that way.

The silence lasted five minutes, the longest five minutes I've ever had to endure. It wasn't because we had nothing to say... I think it was rather that there was everything to say and neither of us knew where to start.

Millie's perfume, mixed with the scent of her skin, ufff, inhaling it in such proximity sent me on a journey through my mind, of memories that I couldn't escape.

It was only when she reached between us and turned down the music that I dared look her way.

"Wren, are you okay" she asked unsure. "We don't have to talk yet... if you don't want to. I hope you know that"

I shook my head "It's not that" I return quickly. I didn't want her to think my silence was my uncertainty... because I wasn't uncertain about anything when it came to Millie, most definitely not the way I felt about her or the future I hoped we had.

"Then?" She questioned. "Is it because you're afraid to hurt me...because it's okay if what you have to say... isn't what I want to hear. I promise I will be okay... if you don't want me around anymore, and if you don't love me...or you are seeing someone else"

"What?" I ask a little agitatedly "no" I shoot back "no that's not... Millie why would you think...how could you think that...I" and I'm all a muddle, realising in my silence that Millie had come to her own conclusions... which of course were mostly negative endings to this journey of 'us'. I pulled into the nearest parking lot which happened to be on the beach.

I parked the jeep in a vacant space, the nose of the vehicle touching the sand in front of us. The waves crash in the distance, sounding like a freshly poured soda fizzing through the open windows.

I turn in my seat so that I'm facing her, she takes my lead and does the same. She removes her sun glasses and folds them over the top of her white sleeveless shirt. They force the slit in the material to lower down her chest, revealing the soft skin between her breasts. I look away, not wanting to take that trip down memory lane at this exact moment in time. It's not lost on me though, how delicate the buttons on that shirt look, or how they would be scattered over the floor of this jeep right now if this moment was six months previously. It's not hard to concentrate though, once my eyes meet hers, light brown eyes that looked back at me with so much affection. The crease however, above the bridge of her nose, it let me know she wasn't quite sure if it was returned.

I take my sun glasses off too, and place them on my lap so that she can see what I am seeing, a reflection of her in my eyes... and an affection that can't be masked "I didn't stop loving you just because we broke up" I explain.

Her eyebrows arch upward as she opposed what I said "I didn't break up with you"

"Yes you did" I return.

"We were meant to be on a break" she reminds me.

"Well, to me... we were broken up" I explain. "A break seemed to me to be the same thing. We weren't speaking, weren't in each other lives, and both of us left alone that night...for the foreseeable"

She takes a deep breath and releases it "I see what you mean... but, I never intended that break to be forever. Broken sounds like we are unrepairable and won't ever be fixed... but a break... a break can be healed and fixed and return to it's working form"

I reach over and brush a speck of something from her cheek. She closes her eyes the instant my finger tips touch her, her hand coming up and holding me there against her skin. "I missed the way you explain things" I whisper.