St Bartholomew

02.01.1976

14:27

he was enjoyable.

his body was like a gulp of Caribbean air - fulfilling.

she looked at the boy as he entangled himself into her deeper. it was, briefly, in this looking, she was reminded what she wanted from him.

it seemed only to take this realisation for her to resurface from her salacious trance, for her to slap on a floundering expression of doubt. It was then, as he kissed her milky neck harder and caressed her hip, his efforts seem to cause her only to loosen, her lips quivering with a hesitant anxiety, her body slipping from his grasp.

she was undone.

he was undressed.

pushing him away, she collapsed into the snowy comfort of her sheets and whimpered in regret. he wiped her burning cheeks, her eyes swelling slightly, their usual flare somewhere deep in there. he smiled at her. it was a hopeless smile, but he wanted her to smile back.

"we need to stop trying to sleep with each other," she breathed, now smiling back at the rascal that sat in a heap across from her.

"I really like you, Elodie."

he was pretty.

"I would hope so," she laughed, trying to rub away her eyes, scratching away at them. "best friends are meant to."

he wasn't worth it, and yet, she liked lying in bed with him. there was a curious safety and jubilation aroused deep inside her when he was around.

"I guess I'll go," said the skinny boy, leaning over the edge of the bed and picking up his maroon polo shirt that she had picked for him at Gustavia's charity shop two weeks earlier.

he didn't look back at her as he grabbed his skateboard and headed for the door. he had acquired so many  injuries to his fragile soul in that very room, you'd wonder why he ever returned.

"bye Elodie."

"bye Garret."

she sighed as she heard him tumbling down the wooden stairs that connected her little white shed of a bedroom to the rest of the little shack in which her family lived. grabbing her own bralette and leopard print jacket she fell onto the carpet and searched for her belt before standing up and brushing herself off.

pulling the jacket over her shoulders she clipped it at the front and span towards the door. Elodie glanced in the mirror, labelled her hair brushed - or at least wind-swept. Elodie cared to make it seem like she cared about nothing.

( she would want you to know that she delighted in her own company and thoughts more than anybody else's )

grabbing her leather purse and keys she locked the door to her room and made her way down the creaking stairs, past the luxuriously thriving tangle of a garden. being positioned on a hill overlooking the Caribbean Sea only promised for a colourful entwinement of flora and fauna.

after lightly bouncing past 'Ruso', the resident iguana and shooting her beguiling smile at him, she beelined through the empty pastel patchwork kitchen and out into the main road of Corossol. it wasn't busy, never was, and she savoured the silence that embraced the murmur of nature. everything watched her, the sky, the trees, eyes gaping wide at the pretty girl who was walking through the town to one of her favourite spots; the pebbled outcrop near Corossol beach.

everything followed her with their eyes - the villagers, the birds, the trees - she was self absorbed in her youthful feminine perfection.

nature was a contestant to her strange beauty. few touched her. it was a dance with humiliation.

if you tried, your efforts would be rewarded with a week of two of bliss as she joined to frolic, before the dreaded revelation of her boredom, and your fate as her discarded. she yearned for company, but your company was never good enough for her.

she was impossible to satisfy.
she was amaranthine.

the road became shallower now, the warm splendour of a summer in the Southern Hemisphere engulfing her, swallowing each of her features with a grand glow. butterflies, swarming at this time of the year, adorned the sky.

"salut." she said to the two elderly men, Pierre and Maure, who always sat at the edge of the main road down the shambles of Corossol. they smiled back, a twinkle through their wrinkles, and went back to playing their cards. if anything lingered in their minds, as it so often did, the sun couldn't reach it. it was peculiar how much one's skull could obscure.

following down the tributary of a road, careful to not fracture her feet of cotton, Elodie reached the beach, on which she noticed Madeleine and her two small sons playing in the sand. the children radiated oblivion, and seeing them again made her smile.

"comment vas-tu, Madeleine? Marco a-t-il amélioré sa maladie?" she shouted across he beach, ruffling the dog that lay on the fiery cement of the road.

"Ah, oui, il va mieux. Comment vas-tu chéri?" the middle aged woman replied with a shout, before calling impatiently at her younger boy who had waded out into the bubbly blue waters.

"je suis génial," Elodie tossed back as she walked further away, the dog, whom she had named 'paka' ,sniffing at her ankles.

"im sorry, i don't have meat today." she said teasingly at the matted mess of a dog, as it continued to lick at her exposed skin with its bloody stained mouth.

walking further along the shore various hues and magnificently anomalous buildings she passed Colette, a woman who made her little income by sewing wicker baskets.

"salut."

the woman looked up and grumbled. the indigent dog skipped its way over to her.

"bonjour Elodie. Ça va?", she muttered, extending an emaciated arm towards the animal.

"bien."

she looked back down at her craft and Elodie continued, turning onto the edge of the beach. sand oozed between each toe as she neared the rocks. the sun's warmth seeped up through the palms of her feet. it felt good.

Marco and Gabriel, the little boys, watched her in curiosity. their very own mother wouldn't let them on those rocks. oh! how deeply they wished to be her.

beneath her feet a chorus of pebbles rumbled between each crack in the rocks. careful not to fall into the urchin laden crevasses and dark dark holes, Elodie made her way towards the end of the outcrop.

the rock pool waited for her behind a boulder, shimmering, smiling, as it saw her.the water was an opulent blue, that of the virgin's clothes, a blue that glowed just for Elodie.

the red roofed houses bowed down behind her, up on the craggily mountain of the island, St Barths, and the rocks met the arch of her back, cradling each nook in her spine. the sea unfurled before her, for her, sailboats speckling the waves, most coming from St Marten of Antigua for the exclusiveness of the island. it had become relatively popular since Rockefeller bought a property, and now the small hotels and villas were very successful.

her rag tag parents had moved when she was five from Portugal. they were keen travellers, her french mother a fine cook and weaver, her father a bloody American businessman. with their combined perseverance they had made it across the sea to a decrepit little village called Corossol at the bottom of a French island.

when they had arrived her parents set up a restaurant across the island, and Elodie was sent of to the so called 'school' of gustavia. it wasn't here where she had learnt most of what resided her head, but rather in their living room, where she had accumulated a mass of books.

at the school she had met a small american boy and they had become friends. they had bonded over their shared love of grease adorned bacon cheeseburgers, over the fact that they knew no one, that they had been thrown into a foreign pit, that they were too smart for the school, that they were both idiots and that they needed someone to hug. his name was Garrett.

but as time passed, she began to grow out of him. as she hit sixteen she began to realise they couldn't both fit in his bed. the club was more exciting than his board games, and other boys knew how to touch her properly. she had chosen to consciously abandoned her childhood. she had chosen to become what she wished to be. she had begun a pursuit of some sort.

Garret hadn't grown out of her. Perhaps it was because he wasn't close with anyone else, or that he had no yearning for a quicker future. He had let what he knew and what he had lead him, not what he wanted. but really, the reason he had never left her side was because he loved Elodie more than anyone else on the island.

And boy, did he love her.