uhm...well, this is just a little short story i did for a friend, she wanted me to write something about love, ssooo...here it is:

its called "The Black Sneakers":

“Well, is it time?” She asked, absentmindedly scuffing the toe of her well-worn sneaker on the pavement. Those shoes were glorious and soft—rubber molded gently to the shape of her soles and once-black canvas lightened by salty sea air and city dust. Even dressed as she was in lace and white, the shoes remained on her feet. They were firmly planted, like her heart, in the streets where she grew up.

It had been October when she met him; the autumn colors were just beginning to peek out from summery-green trees. Her hair was long and wild and fiery and it danced in the breeze as she skipped down the street, a tiny flame against the crisp, clear sky. The boy watched her from his porch, listening to the soft thump-thump of her black-sneakered feet against the shoddily paved road. The steps matched his heartbeat.
He was fourteen, all stretched-out limbs and red-spotted face, confident despite his awkwardness. She was a free spirit and a dreamer, too lost in her fantasies to see him in front of her. Eyes shut tight, she ran through the leaves, breath freezing in a halo of tiny white clouds. The bright white lace of her brand new left sneaker came undone, but if she noticed at all, she surely didn’t care. The run was too intense; her lungs were burning, her eyes shot wide open. It was sunset, and the light shone orange on the boy’s face a split second before they collided. They were a tangled mess from the start, fallen in what had once been a neatly raked pile of red and gold. The girl stood, dusting off her grass-stained jeans, while the boy lay motionless in the leaves. She’d broken his wrist—what a first impression! —Yet somehow she still had him mesmerized. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she half-carried him to his house, black sneakers tucked beneath the porch swing. It wasn’t until his mother came home that she finally left, leaving behind nothing but the glow of her eyes and a trail of dead leaves.

A year passed, and the unlikely pair became the best of friends. The girl blossomed; her tomboyish figure filled out into feminine curves, yet still she wore her faithful pair of black sneakers. They were ragged, sure, and more faded, but they fit her feet and she loved them dearly.
The boy’s face scabbed and oozed, and eventually healed, revealing a handsome set of deep brown eyes and a captivating smile. He grew to fit his limbs—five feet, eleven inches tall with a shock of dark hair. Despite the many girls who lusted after him, he was faithful to his oblivious lover. He had eyes for only one, the angel who had broken his arm and his heart.
They strolled together down the streets on long December nights, counting the stars, the girl’s sneakers kicking up the powdery snow. Tiny flakes danced in their hair and on their eyelashes, little crystals in the moonlight.
What a couple they were, never one seen without the other. The boy loved her so, yet she was blind, her green eyes glued to the sky and the future it beheld her. She didn’t understand love, nor did she want to. All she needed was the gentle thudding of her old black sneakers on the pavement, the rapid inhale-exhale of her own lungs as she plodded on through the snow. The boy had told her something wonderful, something terrible, something she couldn’t possibly believe. She pushed onward through the darkness, weathered shoes fading away, blending in with the velvety night.


The next spring brought unexpected pain. She stood in her black sneakers, hugging the boy’s shoulder as his mother’s casket was lowered into the ground. It had been a year of suffering, for all of them, and as she looked at the tears streaming down his face, she thought she truly understood love for the first time. It was back in the boy’s room, as she gathered up her things, that she grabbed his hands and held them close. There was so much pity in her emerald eyes, a single shining tear on her face. His breath warmed her cheeks; her breath warmed his heart. The boy had lost his first love so early, it was true, but on that night, love of another sort began. Young lips met for the first time, hesitant and sweet and electric and pure. The skies wept for them both, a gentle lullaby against the siding that sang the boy to sleep.
It wasn’t until his breathing was heavy that the girl snuck out the window, back to her own house. Those soft, waterlogged sneakers carried her silently back into her own room, leaving only the slightest footprints in his garden, where she’d jumped.

In a flurry of caps and gowns, summer came, bringing parties and tears or joy. High school seemed but a blink of an eye, lost forever in a tidal wave of vacation plans and final flings. The girl grinned widely for the photographs, black shoes smiling wearily beneath the silky graduation costume. Her smile lasted all through the holiday, as the boy led the girl to a sunny beach resort. They were as one, a single mind and body, joined awkwardly beneath the shade of a palm tree on the hottest July afternoon. He was five hundred shades of wonderful, smelling of sweat and sea and sand. Gentle, nervous hands traced her back slowly and carefully and lovingly. Her own fingers and tongue replied with eager. To him, she was an angel. To her, he was a god. The coveted black sneakers lay feet away in the tide, momentarily forgotten as she fully let the boy inside.


The bells rang; it was time. Putting one sneakered foot in front of the other, the girl shakily made her way down the aisle. Her hair, like the first day she’d met him, was long and wild, her eyes sparkling with fear and excitement. He was waiting for her, there on the porch, same as every other morning, but somehow today was different…his hair was a little neater, his back a little straighter, his eyes full to the brim with pure love.
It took merely a glance, and she knew that he was The One. That awkward boy had been with her, like the old black shoes, from the very start. She ran up the street as she had so often before, launching herself into her new husband’s arms, a husband with whom she knew she would spend the rest of her life. Because he’d know even before she knew…he’d loved that beautiful girl right from the start.