If I lit a candle for every time I thought of you,
I’d set the world on fire.

She sat next to him on the lounge chair watching his green eyes as he followed the birds in the sky. She traced her fingers on his lips stained with strawberries and he looked at her.

The Sad Boy asked the Sad Girl what she wanted. She told him she wanted a memory. She told him which one and he smiled and gave it to her.

The Sad Boy never forgot. It was a thing they did. He would whisper in her ear “Do you remember…” and together they always did.

The Sad Girl was happy. She had ruined the Sad Boy for all other women. It would only be her name that he called. Her face that he would see, her memory that he would recall.

And he had ruined her too.

…In her dreams the Sad Girl could see. The happiness, the sadness, but she couldn’t see the end. Maybe because there wouldn’t be an end.

She could taste his strengths. She inhaled his weaknesses. With every touch, every kiss. And he had done the same.

The Sad Boy was no Prince Charming. He was an avenging Angel sent to guard the Sad Girl. And she, the Sad Girl was there to mend and guard his heart. He needed her and she needed him. What he didn’t have, she had. And what she didn’t have, he had.

Apart they had holes. Together, the Sad Boy and the Sad Girl were whole.

When she awoke, she knew that everything was as it was supposed to be.

She went outside in her pajamas to fetch her clothes from the line. The Sad Boy was there, just like he said he would be, talking and waiting for the Sad Girl. She smiled and held up a finger. She would only be a moment. And she was only a moment.

There was a threat of stormy weather in the August morning as they picked up the new day as if it was a continuation of the day before.

They wanted forever. Not because it was the wisest thing to do but because it was the only thing to do. And they were both bold enough to take it.

They drove along the coast and ended up on top of a mountain in a cul-de-sac that overlooked Vesuvius. It was the same spot that Pliny had sat many centuries before recording the great spectacle of the destruction of Pompeii.

As it began to downpour, they laughed and found shelter in the car to wait out the storm.

By the time the storm was through, the Sad Boy knew that there would be no breaching the castle walls that held the Sad Girl. If the Sad Girl had not succumbed to his charms, the Sad Boy knew that she had not succumbed to anyone else’s either. And he knew he could trust her with his heart, because she was like no other.

Goldilocks