Nadia and Ben sat under a one-hundred-year-old oak tree, the sky light grey, clouds moving rapidly, blue sections of the sky appeared then passing, fine drops of rain fell on the tree, but its leaves protected the pair to some degree as they sat side by side.
“Why am I here? why did you summon me, Ben?” Ben sat, his mind concentrating on an answer, her question and tone although nicely made, forced him to focus inward to recall the reason why.
So he focused back two days ago when his emotions had him tipped over, to the point where he made the decision to call Nadia, and although she didn’t pick up, he held on, leaving a message as her voice prompted then the tone. He went back to those minutes in his mind, while Nadia sipped on her paper cup of green tea patiently waiting, looking up at the branches of the tree towering above them.
When he made that message on her voice mail, a small weight lifted, as it did that feeling was a marker, he had done the correct thing, but he didn’t in the message state his why or what he just asked her to meet him.
“Fear … Nadia … a deep seating fear that I will not get to where I want to go. “ he paused “it’s the fear that I will not get to go where I want in this lifetime” and he sighed and he looked to Nadia at his side.
She could see the weight in his body, the weight hanging in his shoulders, in his arms and back. He put his hands in his long black hair and pressed his spine against the trunk of the tree, the two converging wonderfully as…