Laura Miller - Butterfly Weeds

I stared down the tall, athletic boy in front of me, my green eyes bright and suspecting of mischief.

“Will Stephens, what did you say to him?” I asked, scolding him playfully.

“I told him his truck lights were on,” Will said, grinning and taking a seat beside me on the log where the lanky boy had just been sitting.

“Are they?” I asked, somehow feeling as though I already knew the answer.

“No,” he mumbled, grinning softly into the fire’s flames.

A smile grew on my face as I caught Will’s fierce blue eyes. He was boyishly handsome — that I could admit easily. He wore his usual — worn-in jeans and tee shirt — seemingly unfazed by the night’s chill. He stood six-foot-four, had a medium build and a golden tan. His short, russet, slightly curly hair had been bleached by the sun to make the ends just a little lighter than the roots. It made him look like he belonged on a beach in Southern California, instead of in an old corn field in eastern Missouri. Though, his true origin was unmistakable. He spoke in that perfect Midwestern inflection — the kind where the words flowed faster than a Southern drawl, slower than a Northeastern accent — recognizable mostly by the way he drew out his short a .

“When are you going to say yes ?” Will asked, without skipping a beat, causing my stare on him to break.

I turned my gaze back toward the flames.

“Depends on what the question is,” I said slowly, with a coy smile, allowing my eyes to eventually meet his again by the time I was finished with my sentence.

“Same question,” he echoed back — almost bashfully this time.

I paused for an instant.

“Then, same answer,” I said softly, locking my eyes on his. My green irises screamed that I was serious, but I still had a smile planted on my face.

“Come on, Jules,” he protested. “I know you like me. And you’re gonna love me, someday,” he added in a playful, persistent affirmation.

My eyes grew big, just as the corners of my mouth turned up a little more.

“Love?” I asked. My voice held a natural surprise to match the rest of my physical state.

“Jules, just let me take you to Donna’s,” he implored — effortlessly resilient.

I laughed softly and shook my head.

“That sounds like a date, Will,” I said, stuffing my hands into the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt to ward off the night’s chill.

“Yeah, it kind of does,” he admitted, smiling and nodding his head.

I paused to catch the side of his face that the fire was illuminating. His eyes were on the flames. His expression was happy but thoughtful.

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” I asked, keeping my stare on him, just in case he cracked.

His eyes cast down, but his smile remained. I watched him tug at a loose piece of bark on the log beneath us and finally pry it free and toss it into the fire’s flames.

“Jules, I was always serious,” he said, his expression never wavering.

I still stared at him, intent on beating him in his on game, though. I didn’t know Will to be serious.

“Will, you threw rocks at me in third grade,” I reminded him.

He glanced up at me for a moment and then quickly returned his eyes to the ground. I could see his even, white teeth through spurts of the dancing flames. I could tell he was grinning.

“It was out of love, I promise,” he assured me, while meeting my eyes. “You could think of it like Cupid’s arrows, only they were rocks.”

I wrinkled my forehead and pursed my lips.

“No?” he asked and stated at the same time as if to echo my expression. “Well, I guess I just had a funny way of showing it back then.”

“Will, you purposely got my favorite volleyball stuck up in the gym’s rafters,” I proceeded.

His eyes flashed sharply toward mine, and his smile widened. He even chuckled a little and shook his head.

“You still remember that?” he asked, with a surprised look on his face.

I glared at him with a callus, yet playful expression.

“It was last week, Will,” I reminded him.

“Can I just take you to Donna’s — to make up for all my past wrong-doings?” he pleaded as his hopeful, baby blue eyes met mine yet again.

Our gaze lasted just long enough for my straight face to unintentionally grow a smile. Yet, I continued to draw out the silent seconds while I tossed his invitation around in my head.

“You know, you kind of owe me,” I admitted softly.

But before I could answer Will further, several girls sprang from the darkness and proceeded to find places on logs on the opposite side of the bonfire. They were giggling, and their eyes were on Will.

“Will, sing us a song,” a bubbly brunette finally commanded from across the flames.

The bubbly brunette was Rachel, my best friend — a self-proclaimed meddler, but loyal as they come. I met her the summer before our freshman year of high school at a volleyball camp. My first real memory of her was in the dorm room at the university where the camp was being held. I remember the light was still on, and I could see through my tired, squinting eyes that Rachel was sitting on her twin-sized bed, wearing what looked like freshly pressed, silk, pink pajamas with tiny, fuchsia bows lining the tops of the pants and collar of the tank top.

“Hey, can you hit the light?” I remember asking her through my narrowed eyes.

“Okay, in a second. Some of my bows are coming untied,” Rachel had replied.

The light was piercing, but my stare was curious.

“You know you’re only going to sleep, right?” I had asked her, somewhat bemused.

“I know, but the ribbons will bother my face, and plus, I have to look cute. You could meet Prince Charming in your dreams, you know,” she had said, remaining confidently unfazed by my comment.

I remember smiling, not even mad, just puzzled by her strange habits and too tired to reply.

We seemed to have been pretty inseparable ever since that night really. Wherever she was, I was. Wherever I was, she was — that kind of thing.

“Rach, I can’t sing,” Will protested bashfully, his head down, searching for another piece of bark to pull off of the log beneath us.

“What?” Rachel asked. Her voice went up in pitch as she said the word, and she pretended to look shocked. “Then why was THIS in your car?” she asked again proudly, picking up an object from the shadows behind her and passing it around the edge of the fire toward Will.

“My car?” Will asked in a deep, velvety voice — unusual for his age — as a six-stringed acoustic guitar became visible in the orange flames.

“Yep, your car,” Rachel said, as if it had been perfectly acceptable for her to have retrieved it.

A surprised expression flashed across Will’s strong features.

“Jules, remind me to lock it next time,” he whispered to me, as his rough hands gripped the guitar that by now had reached him.

I smiled and shrugged my shoulders.

“Play us something,” Rachel continued to demand.

Will, seemingly at a loss for words, found my stare.

“The girls want a song,” I said to him smiling, offering him no escape route. By now, I was curious too.

He looked down at the strings of the guitar and grinned.

“Okay,” he conceded softly, shaking his head back and forth as he began to strum the guitar’s strings, eventually producing a soft, familiar melody.

I recognized the chorus to be the old song that comes to life through my jeep’s speakers every time I turn it on. It surprised me how well he could play it. It was as if I were listening to the song being played on the radio in the jeep or on TV or something. He was good — really good even.

He tickled the guitar’s strings a little bit more, almost as if he were prolonging the part where the words came in. But then, eventually his voice came, and he caught me off-guard yet again. His voice was deep, as usual, but his sultry hum made his usual deep voice sound even more soothing and kind of seductive. Will, seductive? Those were two words I had never put together. In fact, I almost choked on my own thoughts. And most surprising of all, he was good — way too good to be in an old corn field in the middle of nowhere, that’s for sure.