“Redemption”

Smiling, she calmly placed the cell phone in her lap.

“It just might happen,” she breathed, barely able to contain her excitement. Who knows how many nights she had spent awake and staring at her ceiling, praying and wishing that there could be more to the story than had been written so far.

She knew. She had counted them all, painful and frequent, full of doubts and fears, pain and a last bit of hope that she had clung to for two years since she had first seen him…

… That day was so clear, so fresh within her young memory. She was playing in the field with her friends, and lost her balance, only to see him when she looked up once again, his blue, beautiful eyes…

Nothing else had been the same since.

Only two years, one month, and six days ago. It seemed so dramatic and far-flung to count the days as she had, but she was in a state of mind that welcomed fairy tales and surreal ideas.

She had lost sight for a time, yes. A long time. The consequences ran deeper and further than she could even see at the present time. She had cast a lot of things aside at that point in her life, chasing God-knows-what and finding the end of the path, only to see that she was a long way from where she needed to be. But a lot of backtracking, praying, backtracking, crying, and backtracking once again placed her back here, back to this crucial moment when all the world was realigning again, and she could see the sunlight through the thick trees of her mind.

She was back, and he was waiting.

-An exerpt from Redemption, a short story by Sarah Lynae