Behind the Cherry Tree, A Not-So-Short Story

9. This Is The Moment

We're both breathing heavily, the nervous tension making Mike's hands tremble slightly as he holds the letter before us.

"Mike just open it." I whisper.

A thousand emotions whirl through my mind as we wait. It's here, the moment of truth. The possibility of losing Mike for good is becoming more and more real in my mind- as in, the chances of him leaving, although very high, were far away and almost fairytale to me, now the all important letter is here. In Mike's hand.

He just stands there staring at the crisp white envelope. He looks transfixed, as if he's trying to read the contents of the letter without having to open it.

"Mike?" My voice comes out hoarse.

His glance steals away from the paper and to my face, I meet his eyes and we stand there. Our hearts pounding. Our breaths matching, pant for pant. The same flicker of fear and hope smouldering together in our eyes. We're both scared, but he's afraid of having to stay, I'm afraid of him having to leave me.

Well "having to" implies that he's unwilling. That's not the case at all though, is it? He's more than willing, I'm just a worthless, selfish, clingy girl with a crush on someone she can never have. Someone that he'll forget in uni, throw away like a notepad that has run out of paper. And although I know this, I'm terrified of being proven right.

"Mel." He lets out a shaky breath, "Whatever is in this letter. It won't change anything between us, right?"

The vulnerability in his eyes is almost too much for me to handle. I want to just kiss him and tell him to not open the letter, not make this giant leap. It's like we're standing before a massive chasm, it's deep, impossibly deep, and dark as the blackest part of the sky. There's a huge gap between where we stand now, and where the the other ledge is, the ledge of the future.

I have to gulp to clear my throat of the lump forming there, before I can answer a quiet: "Never."

He closes his eyes, shutting me out. I feel his absence keenly, my heartbeats hurting my chest. Mike shuffles a little and sits down on the grass next to me, I look down at him, his honest eyes looking up to my face, seeking comfort. Doesn't he know how much I want to comfort him? But I'm scared that if I hold him that I'll never let go. 

"Everything is going to change now, isn't it Mel?"

I want to lie. I want to say no, no it really won't, we'll never change, what we have won't change. But instead what comes out of my mouth is totally different.

"Yes. Yes, it is all changing now. The second that envelope is opened, we will change."

I blink and I can see it. Before me. The chasm. Where once there was a field that flowed away from the tree that we sit beneath, there is a jagged edge. Like a knife slashed through skin, the soft green grass had been ripped violently apart, all the way down to the Earth's very core, except the core is dead and cold. I can see the roots, hanging out like lonely arms into the cold, distending as far as their gnarled tips could stretch to try and grasp the other side.

This gash in the Earth is not ten feet from where Mike and I sit. The gap is so huge that noone could ever leap it, or build a bridge over it, or even guess at it's size. The other side is just as the field is normally; lush and green with a soft golden glow dappling the grass blades. The field stretches out endlessly to the end of the world.

I look at Mike and wonder if he can see it. The chasm. He has his head resting on the bark of the solid tree behind us, our childhood, he's resting on our childhood, his eyes closed. He's unknowing but trusting that his future will work out, or maybe he doesn't know that and he's scared to see what's really facing us. He's in denial that this is really the end of the road for us, if that letter has the scholarship in it, I'll never see him again.