She had to get out of there. She loved Isabel and Tess had been driving her crazy. Evidently her words about Michael at the mall the other afternoon had done nothing to satiate the two girls cravings for deeply personal information concerning Maria’s soul. So here she was, for the first time since the night of the Prom, back at the Creek. Maria had always loved the Creek. It was her special place. She went there whenever things got too much for her, whenever the emotions she was feeling at the time, whether happy or sad, became more than she could hide behind a witty comment and pixie smile. The others knew about the Creek of course, they had to, it was their meeting place, but the Creek was special to Maria alone. It was her place, and now it was hers and Michael’s, which was why she hadn’t been back since that night. She hadn’t been ready to face it, the memories, herself…but now she was. She was ready to confront it now, and all she needed was a little quiet and she could. Her quiet was broken by the sound of a twig snapping behind her. Maria whipped around, her heart in her throat. “Who’s there?” she whispered in a voice she barely heard herself. Her breathing quickened as nothing but silence met her almost silent question. It wasn’t registering that what to her had sounded like a yelled demand had really been like a mouse’s whisper. “Jesus Christ,” she yelled for real, “don’t do that to me.” Michael looked at her oddly when he stepped out of the shadows. What the hell was she all bent out of shape about? He took in her wide eyes and shallow breath and began to laugh as the realization hit him. He’d scared the shit out of Maria Deluca, the same girl that had taken pride in making his and Alex’s Boy Scout troupe pee on themselves in fifth grade with Isabel and Tess. Maria’s eyes narrowed at his laughter and she slapped him soundly upside the head. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, sneaking up on me like that?” She demanded, her eyes still narrowed. “And why are you here of all places?” “I needed to think so I went for a walk,” Michael said as he rubbed the side of his head. “Kyle and Alex were at my house, so I left.” “Gotcha,” Maria said with a nod, “Isabel and Tess were at mine. I had to get out on my own for a minute…to think,” she added as a softer afterthought. She sat down on the stone bench someone had placed on the slight incline that overlooked the Creek. Michael sat beside her after a moment, and the two of them fell silent, each wondering what it was that the other had to think about. Finally neither of them could handle the silence any longer, “What are we?” They both demanded of the other in identical annoyed tones. Michael turned to stare at her and noticed that she looked a lot like she had minutes earlier, like she was scared for her life and was going to run. Considering that he felt the same way, he did the only thing he knew would calm him down. He leaned over and kissed her gently on the forehead, something that he’d never done before in his life. “We are whatever you want us to be Maria,” he sighed as he pulled her close. “I can’t handle this anymore. Whatever you want, it is yours, I promise, just as long as there is an us.” “I can’t stand it anymore either,” Maria whispered into his chest. “But I’m scared,” she added in a timid voice. Michael leaned back to look at her in alarm, “I’m not scared of you,” she clarified. “I’m scared of me. I have problems dealing with my own emotions Michael. I don’t know how good I’ll be at handling yours too. And the more we’re together…” “The more we become one soul,” Michael finished for her. “I never thought of it that way,” he said softly. And it was true, he hadn’t. He thought that she had run from him because it was him, not because it was her. “I guess I didn’t think about that part of it.” “How could you not?” Maria asked him as she searched his gaze. “That night, here, everything that happened was two-fold because it was both of us combined. It’s scary to have all that you make me feel inside of me coupled with all that I make you feel too.” “That’s why you avoided me like the plague after Prom night?” Michael asked her even more seriously. She snorted at him. “Not at first,” she told him with a glare. Her temper was rising at the renewed memory of Prom night, “at first I ignored you for your own good. At first I wanted you dead.” Michael paled at the serious tone in her voice. She meant that, he could tell. “What did you expect Michael?” She was yelling at him now. “Me to be all happy go lucky that I woke the next morning right over there,” she stood and pointed at the small clearing on the left of the Creek, “without you there? You just left me naked in a clearing.” ““What the hell was I supposed to do?” Michael asked as he stood up and towered over her and backed her up against the stone, his body pressing angrily into hers. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting the girl who broke my nose in middle school to be my soulmate once reached high school. I freaked OK?” “Yeah well,” Maria told him just as loudly, “you shouldn’t have freaked at that moment. A girl does not want to wake up the next morning to find that the guy she just lost her virginity to has ditched her…in a field. A field Michael, you left me as naked as a jaybird in a field. God anyone could have come along and seen me.” This time Michael snorted. “Please, no one comes near these woods except us founders. And no one but you ever comes out to the Creek unless there’s a ceremony. No one would have seen you there. And I had to leave. I needed time to think. Which I did.” “Well you took too long,” Maria told him. “Cause by the time you finished thinking, I’d started thinking myself.” She shoved him away from her and began to walk toward the Creek. “And the more I thought the more I started to realize just what it all could possibly mean and I got scared. I can’t run away, not like I wanted to, so I did the next best thing. I pretended that nothing at all happened, I went back to toying with Doug, and above all else I avoided you at all costs.” “Maria,” Michael said from right behind her, he put a trembling hand on her shoulder and turned her back to face him. “I don’t want you to avoid me anymore, I don’t want you toying with Doug, and I definitely don’t want you toying with me like you did this morning at school. All I want is you, any way that I can get you.” “I…” her voice trailed off as she fell into his amber gaze. “You’ve got me Michael. You always have, you and nobody else. I didn’t…” her voice ended as his lips claimed hers. She fell into the kiss just like she had that night back in April. The connection was made instantly and her mind was open for him to see into, just as his was open to her. He saw how upset she had been after the Prom during his weeks of silence and then how miserable she had been without him to argue with. She saw why he had kept quiet for those first weeks. He’d been afraid of what had happened between the two of them, the way that she made him loose control so easily. The fact that she could make him loose control amazed her. Then she saw and felt his despair when he had come to terms with everything, when he had realized that he needed her, that he loved her more than anything else in his world and had come to her only to find that she hated him and ignored his very existence. And lastly they both saw what the other had felt in their anger earlier…elation at being somewhat with each other again, fear at not knowing what to say to make up for the mistakes both had made, and the underlying desire for each of them to just run to the other and bury themselves in the other’s soul. Michael and Maria were one again, and as one they fell to the ground. In the back of their consciousness, they knew that the others were waiting for them at their respective houses, but they didn’t care. All they cared about was each other. All they cared about was the Michael/Maria being that they had become. Michael managed, in one last moment of individual thought to pull away to look at her. “What are we?” he repeated the question from earlier. “We ARE,” Maria said as she pulled him back down to her. The rest of her thought was finished inside his mind, as their mouths were too busy for words. “That’s our definition Michael,” she sent to him telepathically, or rather she sent to them, as they were one entity now. “From here on we are just we, Michael and Maria. No one else, together…you are me and I am you. There’s no turning back now, it’s too late.” “That’s all I ever wanted,” Michael sent back. Then their minds were even silent as all semblance of thought left them. All they had now were the emotions and colors that made their universe theirs alone. That was all they needed anyway. TBC

Part 12