When Ursula didn't continue Eloise opened her watery eyes and smiled with trembling lips, afraid that if she started crying again she'd find herself in a pond of her unanswered grief. She wanted to talk about it, finally. She wanted to breach the wall she had built over years.
But she didn't know how. How do you start to get to know grief?
Suddenly a feeling of warm air swirled around them, the smell of bonfires and roasting vegetables. Eloise frowned and straightened looking around.
"The lost souls," Ursula explained with a sleepy smile. At Eloise's look, she waved a hand and said, "I'll explain more later."
Eloise settled back and into the cozy feeling.
"I love how crisp it is. It's like autumn found its heart here," she said instead. The smell of the fire and the ghost of dinner wrapped around them.
"Yeah, it is. I actually thought," her voice paused and she gave her a half smile. "I thought that this place would have been the perfect setting for you and me."
She dipped her head at the words, at hearing that she had thought of her too, and looked down at the grey sleeping form of Casper lying next to her on the couch, his lanky body taking up most of it and his head in her lap. She ran her hand over his head slowly, focusing on the feel of the wiry hair against her fingers while her mind thought of stormy skies and mishandled grief.
"I think I needed to run, and I'm not saying I needed to not have my best friend with me during that painful time, but being around you," she shook her head as one tear escaped and splashed against her hand. "Around the you that wasn't fully you." She closed her eyes tightly and willed the tears back.
"I know," Ursula said.
And that was enough. That was all that Eloise needed. She needed someone toknow. Years, miles, stupidly hot and muggy weather in a tourist-trapped town that had too much damn sunshine and weird animals and arguably the worst drivers in the world, all while she was running and avoiding and filling the emptiness inside of her; what she had needed was someone who had seen her at her darkest to just know.
"I'm sorry I left."
Ursula got up from the chair she was sitting in and sat on the floor in front of Eloise. She leaned her cheek against Eloise's knee. "You needed to. And I needed to figure out on my own that I was only a fraction of myself. And now we're here. I have literally everything I could ever have wanted now."
Eloise's smile was more a smirk as she twirled a piece of Ursula's black hair around her index finger. "And the mountainman who looks at you like you're a baked good is some serious icing on the cake."
"I actually call him Brawny Man," Ursula said cheekily.
"Brawny...like, oh like the paper towels? Holy crap, he really does look like him," she said in awe and a wide smile. "Have you guys," she waggled her eyebrows.
Ursula covered her face with her hands and Eloise knew her porcelain skin would be blooming.
"Come on. I haven't had sex in a while. On a scale of one to ten."
Ursula peeked through her fingers and mumbled, "Twenty-five."
"What was that?" saying loudly and cupping a hand to her ear playfully.
She lowered her hands and sure enough her cheeks were bright pink. "Twenty-five. On a scale of one-to-ten the sex is a twenty-five."
Eloise's mouth dropped open and she grabbed Ursula's face between her hands. "Holy smokes girl! Do you know how rare that is? We read romance novels and collectively gloss over how many orgasms those women get, from men, and here you are at a twenty-five!" She sweetly pinched her bubblegum cheek. "I can't wait to meet him."
"He's coming over tomorrow night with his niece Bess for dinner. He's getting custody of her. It's a whole thing, her mom is an addict, and anyway," she waved her hands through the air, "I'm excited for you to meet them both. Bess is great. She's actually spending the night tomorrow so we should do a girl's movie night."
"Oooh, classic 90's? Notting Hill? You've Got Mail?"
"Oh, Notting Hill. I could use some adorable, slightly awkward Hugh Grant."
The fire popped and sudden sleepiness settled over them both.
Ursula paused at the bottom of the steps to say goodnight and Eloise said, "Can I stay a bit longer?"
Ursula smiled at the line and replied just like Hugh Grant but also in complete honesty, "Stay forever."
Eloise went back to the perfect buttercream-yellow room. But instead of climbing into the cloud-like bed, lamenting that it would not be enough to lull her to sleep, she put on the peach robe that went down to her ankles and grabbed the perfect, thick throw at the end of the bed, and did what she had done for the last year to find sleep; she found a spot in the wide open spaces where she could feel safe and where she could breathe.
4. Snowdrops
