It was a rainy morning in Havana.
He looked out of the window over the old city and saw the dark clouds rolling in from the sea.
He felt the cool breeze across his body.
He turned quietly and watched Gabby sleeping.
The sheet rose and fell with each of her breaths.
He was glad she was resting.
“Is she dreaming of the sea, or of me?” he wondered.
Yesterday, they thought they wouldn’t see the light of the new day.
There had been a cut across her cheek and a rip in her jeans as they had struggled hand in hand across the countryside.
They had arrived at the hotel in the middle of the night.
He had taken off her tattered clothes, washed the dirt from her body, and soothed the fear and chaos inside her.
She had done the same for him.
He remembered the look of fearlessness and hopefulness in her face as they journeyed over the land together.
Thatvcomforted him now as he watched her sleep.
He laid down beside her.
The curves of her body reminded him of the gently rolling hills below the mountains where he was born.
She was beautiful like the land, like the flowers he found as he roamed the countryside, like the soil he walked over barefooted as his grandfather turned the earth with donkey and plow, like the leaves of the trees that sparkled green after the rains of the rainy season.
He moved close to her until he felt the breathing of her breath upon his face and the beating of her heart upon his chest.
He closed his eyes.
- trevor scott barton, stories for a brown-eyed girl, 2020
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