Midnight Lily(13)

The color of the sky dimmed, and the moon appeared, lighting the small canyon with a muted glow. When I'd almost reached the bottom, the last two stairs fell away. I hopped down and then reached my hands up to Lily. "Here," I said, placing my hands around her waist, "let me lift you down." Something about my hands around her waist felt more intimate than I'd intended and warmth filled me as I lifted her down to the ground and she stood in front of me, looking up into my face. "Okay?" I asked. My voice sounded strange in my ears, hoarse, gravelly.

"Yes, I'm good. But you're still . . ." She looked down to where my hands still rested. I pulled them away quickly.

"Sorry," I breathed, shaking my head. I looked up and around. "What is this place?"

"I'm not sure," Lily said, stepping away from me. "But here, look." She moved to a large rock at the edge of where the rocks met vegetation and pushed some leaves aside. Carved into the rock was a kind of very small room with a window, perfectly square and obviously man-made. And at the top of the window was a carving of some sort. I looked more closely.

"Are those hands?" I asked.

"Yes. They look like they're reaching for each other, the fingertips just barely touching."

"Huh," I said in wonder.

"There's a place several hours from here where ancient people built whole houses under cliffs—right into the rock. It's almost like they just barely started one here and then decided to go somewhere else instead."

"Hmm," I hummed. "I wonder why." I ran my hand along the sill of the window before moving aside and leaning into the small opening, barely big enough for two people to lie down. When I leaned back out, Lily was tracing the carved hands with her finger.

"It's just so strange to think about someone standing here once upon a time carving these hands, thinking whatever he was thinking, maybe worrying about something, maybe annoyed about someone." She smiled softly as she watched her own finger moving around the carving of the hands. There was something sensual about watching her finger move that way, and I almost felt as if I could feel it on my own skin, tracing, exploring . . . I couldn't help the warm shiver that moved through my body.

"Maybe thinking about a girl," I supplied.

She looked at me and her smile grew. "Maybe." She looked back to the window and put her hand on the sill, tilting her head. "Seems so funny that a person, all his thoughts, all his ideas, all his feelings, can be here one minute and just . . . gone the next."

I studied her profile as she continued to stare through the window. And I knew just what she meant. I'd thought the same thing when I'd lost my best friend. How could he be so alive, so vibrant, so filled with all those things that were only him, and then just . . . gone. Where did he go? "I know what you mean, Lily," I said. "I've thought the same thing."

Lily's lips tilted up ever so slightly though she continued to stare ahead. "But you know what's even worse?" She looked over at me, her smile fading, her expression becoming sad. "Leaving nothing behind. No proof that you ever existed, not something like this," she moved her hand on the sill, "and no one to remind the world that you were here, even for a small moment in time. No one who might brush their fingertips against your own and know the feel of you, even in the dark."

I blinked at her, opening my mouth to speak and then closing it again. What she'd said hit me as so very profound. For some reason I felt filled with emotion. That was my job now. My job was to keep my best friend's memory alive, the him that only I knew, the him he didn't show anyone else. His parents were gone; he didn't have any brothers or sisters. I was the only one here on earth who had known the real him. Something about that thought, the responsibility it suggested, both filled me with a sudden surge of joy, and a strange aching sadness, maybe even fear. "I . . . yes," I said, my voice cracking slightly. Lily seemed to come back to the moment, shaking her head slightly.

"I guess this place just makes me sort of introspective." She gave me an embarrassed tilt of her lips "And something about it makes me feel as if I've been here before. A sort of . . . déjà vu maybe. Isn't that strange?"

I looked at the small rock space, thinking that maybe I felt the same way, too. There was something about the width of the sill beneath my hand that had felt familiar somehow, as if my skin knew every bump and groove before I'd really even felt it. No, not entirely strange. "Maybe we have been here before," I teased. "Maybe you were an Indian princess and I was a . . . chief. Maybe we met in another lifetime." I grinned at her, leaning my hip against the rock.

She laughed, the sound of it echoing into the cavernous space in which we were standing. "How come when people imagine their past lives, they always cast themselves as someone famous or important?" She tilted her head. "Everyone is Elvis or Cleopatra or Einstein. Why wasn't anyone ever Joe Green, a mechanic from Long Beach in a past life?"

I chuckled. "When it comes to other lives, I say dream big or go home."

She laughed as she shook her head, raising her delicate eyebrows. "I'd rather be someone simple, with a simple life, simple problems." She looked around. "Not a princess. Maybe just a gatherer. I'd walk the forest all day looking for roots, flowers, and herbs, and I'd be happy. It would be enough." She shot me a smile. And I had to agree with her, because I'd had all the fancy things, the best that money could buy, and yet, in this quiet place, there was . . . happiness? Peacefulness? The very antithesis of everything else in my life: simplicity. Surrounded by nothing but trees and sky, in the middle of the forest, with this girl felt . . . right. We were looking at each other seriously now, a current of some kind flowing between us. Something I wasn't entirely sure I understood, because it seemed like so much, so soon. Lily looked away first, just as I caught the first tinge of blush in her cheeks.