The Gravity of Love (24 page)

A smile widened upon Molly's lips.
"Those times were great too."

"We sure did have a great childhood
together, despite all the problems we suffered through."

She snuggled closer to him. "Very
true."

"Tell you what...we're getting a lot
of work done on that barn. So how about we let our blisters rest tomorrow and
take the day off? Play in the snow."

Molly's eyes lit up. "I love the
morning after a good snow."

Harrison looked over in to her eyes.
"I know."

_______________________________________________________________________

"When will you just believe me and
stop asking?" Molly said with a laugh.

"Well, I want to know. For real."

She rolled her eyes. "Harry, I did not
hook up with any man at the dance. I didn't find any of them attractive enough to
draw my eye and I didn't like a single one enough to date."

"You do know you have to run all the
men through me, the Ohsowise One, before committing to a man, right? Even
just dating."

"I always do!"

"Correction!" Harrison exclaimed,
pointing a finger at her. "You do not. You didn't with Ephram. And look at
how that ended up. Can you remind me how it ended again, Molly?"

She groaned. "He ended up going back
to his fiancée. Okay, so I messed up once. But I'm not going to again!"

"You only actually dated once in your
adult life, so that number is really a big deal!"

"What is it going to take to prove to
you that I am not interested, nor am I dating, anyone from that party?"

A glimmer appeared deep within his eyes
that actually caught her off her guard for a moment. If she didn't know better,
she would have said that it was the look of pure lust. Now that was just silly,
coming from Harrison. She slid on her coat as she waited for him to answer. But
he didn't. He zipped his coat and slid on his gloves, adding an orange and
yellow knit hat with ear flaps, then headed towards the door.

Molly didn't follow. "Well? Answer the
question."

His smoldering look glanced her way again,
his mouth opening, then quickly closing as he hurried out the door.

She pulled on her leather black gloves and
a red hat with a pom pom at the top before running out to follow.

A snow ball hit her square on the chest as
soon as she walked on to the porch. "Oh, so it's a snowball fight you ask
for? Silly, silly boy. Do you not remember anything of our childhood? Where I
stomped you on every fight? I reign victory!"

Before she could continue her monologue,
her mouth tasted another snow ball.

She took off of the porch, grabbing snow
and flinging it at Harrison, how was running all around the yard, energy packed
in his body, begging to be released. Fortunate for her, it was the same with
her body.

After getting hit five more times, she
abandoned the snow balls and snuck up on him, then jumped upon his back. In his
surprise, he lost his balance and went crashing in to a snow drift, soaking him
entirely in wet snow. A growl erupted from the body beneath her before she was
flung off his back and he got up and wrestled her in to the mound that had his
impression it to it. As she felt the wetness leak through her clothes, she
pushed him hard, but his grasp upon her was strong. Losing balance again, he
fell over and started to tumble down the hill, taking her right along with him.

"Ugmph." Harrison groaned when
they finally stopped at the bottom, Molly's body sprawled fully on top of his.

Her back was sore and she was sure she had
stretched a few muscles. She started to get up stiffly, looking down at
Harrison's face directly below her. During the fight, his eyes had been full of
childish excitement. They were now smoldering again, hot enough to melt the
snow around them.

She looked at him in curiosity, trying to
figure him out. Could that look actually be meant for her? No, with her luck he
was just thinking about how fun it would be to do this with his next girl
friend or something. She rolled off of him and fell in to the snow again,
waving her arms and legs.

"Help me up." She told him,
noticing he hadn't gotten up yet. But upon her command, he stood, walked to her
and carefully avoided stepping in her new snow angel as he picked her up by the
hands.

"We should go sledding." She
whispered at the exciting thought.

He snorted. "You don't think what we
just did was sledding enough?"

"Nope. That was romping down a
hill."

His eyes glowed that deep, lusty glow. She
instantly turned around and walked in the direction of the sleds. She didn't
want to keep facing him when he gave her that look. It scared her at the
thought that he might be really meaning her. And it scared her more that her
heart raced wildly at the thought.

_______________________________________________________________________

"Silly rabbit! Trix are for
kids!" Molly giggled as she was handed a bowl of cereal.

"After what we spent yesterday doing,
I do believe we qualify." Harrison said with a chuckle, sitting across
from her on the little round, wooden table that was drilled down in the middle
of the barn.

"We might want to get a table cloth
for this. You know, something cute to add."

"Why? It looks nice rustic."

"It looks nice and full of splinters
is what you mean."

He shrugged. "If you want. I mean,
hey, we already got curtains for the windows. Might as well add a table
cloth."

"That's the spirit!"

Harrison looked around the large room that
was just about finished. "I can't believe we're going back to Nevada soon.
This whole trip has been pretty surreal. Like a trip back to the past. Soon
enough, within days, we have to go back to being adults. Paying bills...working
a job...maybe I should just get a substitute after all and stay longer."
He side glanced over at her as he took a big bite of cereal.

She met his gaze with curiosity. "I
don't know." She said honestly. She wasn't quite sure how she felt staying
here.

The phone call from Marty started to ring
in her ears. It seemed that things were changing in Harry. Not that she
understood or could even name what it was, but she was noticing changes and was
scared to look at what she was feeling. Perhaps going home would be better. But
just maybe, she'd discover something big by staying. "I don't know."
She repeated, more to herself than to him.

_______________________________________________________________________

Harrison groaned. "This is so
boring!" He roared, throwing down his paint brush and making the paint
splatter around him.

Molly rolled her eyes. "It's
fun."

"For women. They like this part.
There's no hammering or cutting those are the fun parts."

She shook her head and kept going with her
roller.

"Now, you know what would be
fun?" He went on. "I think this room would look really good with
a...splatter effect."

Before she could react, she felt the hit of
paint on her hip. He had just thrown light green paint against her, which hit a
large spot of the white wall as well.

She looked over at him in shock. "You
just threw paint at me."

He shrugged. "So? Whatcha gonna do
about it, Radcliffe?"

That childish, playful look was back in his
eyes and smile. He wanted her to join him. It was a look he got all too rarely.
Why not indulge? She looked back at the green splattered haphazardly against
the wall and actually liked the look of it. Dropping the roller, she picked up
the paint brush, dipped it in her green paint that she was using to make a
boarder around the ceiling, and threw it at Harrison, hitting his right
shoulder.

"Yes! Good shot!" He said with a
few small jumps before plopping his whole hand in the canister and whipping the
excess towards her. He picked up the whole thing and carried it to get closer.
She kicked hers to move away, making more paint dump out all over her shoes and
bottom of her jeans.

"Ugh!" She exclaimed when she saw
the mess she had made against herself. "Fine. This is war."Two normal
skin toned hands dipped in the can, two green hands resurfaced. She whipped the
paint at him at the same time he was to her.

This carried on for minutes at a time,
trying new tactics and seeing who could do the most damage. Until finally, they
were worked up enough to start putting a finale in to play.

Molly, her shirt and pants covered in green
as well as her hair, dripped her hands and arms in to the rest of the paint in
her can, then charged at Harrison.

She wiped her hands down his face. In
through his hair. Down his long, muscled arms.

Instead of fighting back, his body went
slack and allowed her to do it. She took some paint from his shirt and kept
going, starting to get carried away with it. Forgetting she was supposed to be
attacking him. She made lines and shapes on his cheeks and forehead. Decorated
the edges of his lips to look like liner. She continued down his neck, making
little stars. His arms got squiggly lines. His fingers got straight lines, like
bones. She was just looking for more skin to cover when he finally grabbed her
arms and pushed her up against the wall. She thought he was going to cover her
in paint. Her backside and her hair were now drenched in green from his action.
But instead of painting her, he sandwiched her between the wall and his body
against hers, then impulsively kissed her, hard.

And it suddenly occurred to her that in
twenty-five years, they never kissed like this. Sure, they'd been each other's
first clumsy kiss. An awkward puckering up and squinting, a few second lip
touching and done. They'd been what, thirteen? At the moment, she couldn't
really remember what age. Or anything. All the memories she was trying to go
through vanished like sand through her hands.

And she realized that not only had she
never experienced this with Harrison, she never kissed any man like this. Not
this deeply, with so much wild abandon and passion.

Her fingers were running through the ends
of his dark hair again, only this time it wasn't with intention to paint.

Her brain started to scramble, unsure of
what to pay attention to the most this urgent lips slamming against hers, his
hard chest pressed tightly against hers so much she could barely breath, or his
fingers that were digging in to her right shoulder and left hip.

So this was what Candy Grey had gone on
about.

This was Harrison.

A whimper escaped her throat when her head
started to feel cloudlike. Light, not really there. While, in contrast, her
heart pounded away, making her blood rush to every part of her body, heating
her up and making her feel wild. Surely, heaven could not top this.

This. A kiss, with Harrison. If she was in
her right mind, she'd be shocked in to speechlessness. But she was quite
speechless at the moment even without the help of that fact.

And then it was over. Harrison stopped kissing
her. He pulled away, releasing the pressure he had put on her body. He stared
straight in to his eyes. Hers looked somewhere between wild with lust and sated
at the thought that it had started at all, whereas his looked wide and round.
Shocked. Unbelieving at what he had just did.

He backed away a few more steps, leaving
her to lean against the wall. Was she capable of walking still? She didn't
trust her legs, which seemed to have turned in to jello. Red jello. She was
quite sure everything on her was red at the moment.

She'd ask him what he was thinking, why he
looked so strange, but her throat was too constricted to allow audible speech
to escape past it.

"I...I...I just remembered that I got
to go." Harrison stuttered as he tried to run his hand through his hair
but failed from the drying green stuff plastered throughout it.

He turned on his heel and fled out of the
barn, leaving her to try and put the pieces together of what the hell just
happened. And why she was still grinning like an idiot after he had left her
without an explanation.

_______________________________________________________________________

Molly had cleaned up the barn the best she
could by herself as she calmed down. It was surprising, how long it took to
calm her throbbing heart and racing blood. She couldn't remember a time in her
history that she ever felt similar to this. No, never.

She headed outside, which helped to cool
her off. She couldn't return to her home drenched in paint, so she headed to
the Redford's.

Mrs. Redford opened the door and ushered
her inside without a mind of how messy she was. Her home was welcomed to
messes.

"I...I need a shower."

"You sure do! Come up with me, I'll
put on a bath and get you some tea. You look like you could use it. Have you been
in the cold long? Your cheeks are rosy."

She blushed deeper. The woman who she had
always thought of as her real mother handed her a large towel for her to drape
herself in until the bath was ready. Hurrying in to a spare bedroom, she took
off all her clothes, then wrapped the towel around herself and carried her
clothes to the washer. Inside, she saw a pair of clothes that were stained
green already there.