Outside

10

"She was called Nyree" Van's soft voice speaks as we sit ourselves on a little patch of grass below a tree, little Mary sitting in my lap. "She's the one I wrote hourglass for" he adds with a sigh, sadness and regret in his voice as he tilts his head back against the tree and closes his eyes lightly before opening them again and turning to face me, "we broke up in June an' she just hasn't left me alone"

Stroking the fluffy back of Van's dog, i furrow my brows, not quite understanding what he was trying to get at, until he coughs his low, pained voice away and starts to speak again. His voice much clearer and composed now.

"Larry just refuses to believe that I'm over her, still thinks I'm talkin' to her" he adds to his little story, I don't even know whether or not to believe him; the gloomy expressions he's been wearing don't exactly convince me that he is over this girl, whoever she is. "I'm not though love, I cut her off completely when I met you-" he begins to explain himself when he sees the slight disbelief in my eyes, but quickly cuts himself off when he realises something else.

"What?" I ask, curiosity lacing my words, not understanding why he randomly went silent and tensed up. Not understanding the redness slowly forming in his cheeks as his eyes widen and he turns away from me, picking at the blades of grass beneath him with trembling fingers.

Deciding that pushing him to tell me why he was acting weird would be a bad idea, I just stay silent and carry on caressing the softness of Mary on my lap, enjoying the quite relaxing silence surrounding us, watching the leaves falling from the trees in ones and twos. It was still cold, much colder than before anyway. The sky was much darker than before too, it wasn't even 9pm yet and it felt way later.

The silence wasn't broken for a long while, the occasional sound of a phone buzz from a notification, the sound of birds flying overhead, the sound of Mary breathing heavily onto my fishnet-covered legs, they were the only sounds we could hear, well until one of us interrupted it all.

"You hungry?" Van asks, leaning back on his hands as he stretches his long legs in front of him.

Repositioning Mary so that she's more comfortable on my lap, I reply "a little, why?" and I turn to see him grinning somewhat mischievously.

Before saying anything else, he lifts himself from the ground and into his feet, brushing off the dirt from the back of his trousers before holding his hand out for me to take.

Van seems to have thought of somewhere else to go as he speeds in front of me, turning around occasionally probably to check if I'm still following him, I don't know why he had to check though, it wasn't like I'd stay here with his dog and let him walk off alone.

"Van slow the fuck down!" I shout, trying to run to catch up to him but Mary dragging me back so that I could keep up with her little legs. He wasn't too far in front, probably the distance from one side of a main road to the other, so at least I could still slightly see his shadow in the hazy lack of light.

I hear his childish laughter echo through the woods before his lighter flickering and the second-long spark of light in front of him, making the silhouette of his fluffy hair more visible in the darkness. He stops for a moment to light what I'm guessing is a cigarette, before he turns around and finally waits for me to catch up to him. When I eventually do, I shoot him a sarcastic glare and he takes the lead from my hand, taking full control of his own pet for once.  I'm not complaining about it though, it was nice walking something that wasn't my own vicious monster of a dog.

"Sorry but you're dead slow and I want my ice cream" Van laughs, leaning in closer to close the gap between us, his body heat radiates onto my and I suddenly warm up, not just on the outside of my body.