Quarantined

• Rhiannon Tahnee Kia Ngawari Kereopa, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2021

Ollie held onto her, even though she only appeared in his dreams he gripped to her tightly. He pulled her into a hug, warm and safe just like her smile on cold nights. He was safe to her, a second home. Ollie felt lonely without her, she plagued his mind, her face hidden under his eyelids, her kiss seen every night like the stairs outside his apartment, always leading him down.
He remembers those few days of fun. Their meeting in the bar where she danced on the table, their ride home when the cab driver said he was a gentleman, the day after when they did nothing, she watched tv and he watched her. They may have not been in a romantic movie like the ones that lined her shelf, but her warmth was appealing enough. When they kissed and she took his breath and instead of seeing the white ceiling he saw stars. For some reason, he felt his heart skip a beat.
Even though he doesn’t want to, he lets go of her in his dream. She leaves with a fluttering kiss as if she was really there and then he wakes up. Light rain turning heavy, like the feeling of his heart and shoulders, he sees the stars shine but they don’t compare to her and the chill of his room turns his breath into a fog. He misses her.
On the other side of town, sick of being stuck in her home Wren dreams of him again. He’s holding her right, strong. She feels his warm, minty breath on the nape of her neck and his body feels like an abyss, and there she finds solace. She remembers how he said she was his four-leaf clover, hard to come by lucky to have.
It was just a few days of fun and yet it felt like they have known each other forever, a bond that had never been broken, maybe even in their past lives. She reminisced the fact he loved storms, that he loved holding her close, thinking he would never let go she embraced it. She used to go to all the places he went, hoping she’d bump into him at least once, but unfortunately, that wasn’t how things worked.
Although she didn’t want to, she let him go in her dreams, hoping he’d be able to feel her love again. She wakes up to morning sun and lets its heat flitter across her body, but it’s not as comforting as him. Wren misses him.