flavour of the day, strawberry shortcake and blueberry cheesecake with whipped cream and fruit
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Kiss the Girl
Rating: G
Challenge: FOTD: omphalos, Strawberry Shortcake #12: kiss the girl, Blueberry Cheesecake #4: stick your neck out
Toppings/Extras: whipped cream, fresh peaches, fresh blueberries, fresh pineapple
Wordcount: 610
Summary: Jacob Graham circumvents the language barrier.
Notes: Return of the Flavour of the Day! Camila is seventeen, Jacob about the same. Omphalos: the central point. Peaches: You may even have a little more clarity about your feelings regarding what your destiny is. Blueberries: Affection is the greatest of human feelings because it is made of respect, of lucidity and light. (Henri Barbusse.) Pineapple: Some people say my love cannot be true/ Please believe me, my love, and I’ll show you. (“N.I.B.”, Black Sabbath.)
It had been a funny couple of weeks since Camila Santos discovered the boy who was using the ground under her father’s shed as temporary storage for smuggled-or stolen, perhaps-goods. Her conscience occasionally tugged at her to turn him in, or to at least alert someone, but she hadn’t quite managed it yet.
He was an odd fellow, it had to be said. A young dogsbody for a crew of pirates, an Englishman, an optimist, a foolhardy attention-seeker. There was a slight language barrier-he was still slogging through Spanish, and her English was only just about passable. She understood roughly a third of what he said. It didn’t seem to matter. He had a smile like the first bite into a slice of brazo gitano. Sweet, if a little messy.
His hygiene left a lot to be desired, but it wasn’t anything she hadn’t witnessed (or smelled) before. St Augustine baked in the summer heat, and she came from a family of farmers.
As usual, there was little comprehendible conversation. Camila was happy to read in the little spare time she had; the initial curiosity and questioning after finding him twelve days ago had worn off, despite the fact there had been few answers given. Few that she could understand, in any case. The dusky glow of evening was pleasant, and still just about light enough for her to be able to see the print.
He was still babbling in English and climbing a nearby tree. It was only an olive tree, hardly a challenge, but he seemed to be making an adventure of it. Just like he made an adventure of fetching water and rolling barrels to and from the appropriated shed. He could never stand still, that boy.
When he clumped back to earth in front of her and kicked up a veritable fog of dust from the sun-dried ground, she raised an eyebrow up at him, unimpressed. He had wild, unruly, matted hair, corkscrew-curly but starting to stick from lack of washing. Unusually for him (woefully unusually, she’d discovered), he’d stopped talking. He did smile, though, bright and unrestrained.
Pirate, she thought, almost fondly, but deliberately abstained from smiling back.
With his customary easygoing invasiveness, he sat down heavily next to her and plucked the book from her hands to glance it over. She wasn’t sure he could read English, let alone Spanish. It wasn’t literature anyway, just a well-worn tome about the growing of tobacco plants. They didn’t, as such, own a great variety of books.
Usually he was the one filling the air with his lolloping English nonsense, so Camila was at a bit of a loss in the quiet that descended. Instead, with a slight tut, she pulled out a handkerchief and started scrubbing at one of the many smears of rusty St Augustine dust that was smeared across his cheek. He fussed like a child and managed to wave her away before plonking his cheek onto her shoulder. He did it often.
It was quite nice, she had to say. He was quite nice.
For a scummy smuggler.
She twisted one of the bronze rings on her finger and hummed slightly. Her mother would probably start wondering where she’d gotten to-or, good grief, Gaspard. Her big brother had seen her hanging around with the young man and already seemed to despise him, and he didn’t even know he was a pirate!
Her mind was still fumbling the English words for ‘I should go’ when Jacob Graham sat up a little, hesitated (there was a first) and then kissed her square on the mouth. And everything but that fell away.