By the Light of a Blue Moon (1,230 views)

Grey sweatshirt || Cliff’s Pants/Boots/Bag

X

Cliff had taken tonight of all nights to have a casual camping trip rather than a hiking one. For this trip he was in jeans and his boots, laced up and tied securely. He wore a warm sweatshirt over a graphic tee to keep warm. Right now Cliff was lying down in a field by his lonesome, enjoying the music radiating from the speakers of his phone. It was some modern country, played at such a low volume that it didn’t at all mask the sounds of nature around him. It was just background music as he lied down by his tent and stared at the stars, counting them, daydreaming in them. Most of his daydreams involved his father, or himself becoming like his father. Sometimes he’d dream of his father if he’d never died – if they still lived in Maine and they were in the lush, coastal forest instead of some California woods that couldn’t compare to what had been left behind. Tonight, From the Ground Up by Dan and Shay began playing and he was instead lost in dreams about his own family. He always pictured himself with a wife and two kids, one boy one girl, and a dog that looked like Elvis trotting at their heels. His mother wasn’t present in this daydream, though she was a fleeting thought in photographs he saw in his mind’s eye of him and his own family. Jonathan and Annabelle were pointedly not a part of the fantasy.

The song faded to silence, leaving Cliff alone with the bugs. He didn’t mind and went to pick up his phone to change the song when he heard a rustling not too far away. Immediately Cliff snapped out of his comfort zone and jumped up to his feet, his knees bent as he instinctively went for his bow and arrow. Cliff didn’t trust people – they had to earn that. So even if this was some person approaching him, how did he know they didn’t mean to hurt him? Murders happened. And Cliff knew he’d never be caught unprepared if that was the case.

He positioned his arrow and slunk through the brush, leaving his tent a few columns of trees behind him. This was the same clearing that Cliff had taken Cleo to earlier, when he showed her around the woods. The sentimentality was lost on him as he entered the clearing, expecting to see some jerks smoking pot. Usually when he found those types, launching an arrow a little too close for their comfort got them to leave. It was risky, but the adrenaline rush Cliff always felt when he pulled the bow back was always worth it.

Instead of some jerks smoking pot, though, Cliff lowered his arrow on the hunched over figure of a girl. She looked like a mess and her breathing was coming in labored pants. She didn’t look dressed to be out here, in a dress and shoes that had seen better days with her hair a mess. ”uhhh....” Cliff said, lowering his guard because what jerk pointed an arrow at a crying girl? He wished it was ome jerk smoking pot so he could shoot at him.

But, instead, he figured he should help this girl out of the woods. By the looks of it, she was lost. He’d be a decent person and help a lost girl back to her dorm if he had to... otherwise her crying would totally ruin the scenic experience he was after.

”Are you –“ But she shifted, and he got a look at her face in the moonlight and his eyes widened. His heart skipped a beat when he saw Cleo wiping tears from her face and he took another step closer, kneeling down to look at her. ”Cleo?! What the heck’re you doing out here dressed like that?”

As he knelt down and looked over at Cleo, he could see the crying definitely was the blotchy, gross kind of crying that he knew from experience sucked. He felt bad for Cleo – he didn’t know why she was out here so late or what had upset her, but he felt bad for her. She was obviously not lost... since she’d come out here with the express purpose of losing herself and hiding away from people. Her mom?

Cliff never liked being told what he would and wouldn’t understand, and would have refuted Cleo’s comment rather harshly had what she said not struck a chord with him. He blinked, and shut his mouth, listening to Cleo stutter out something that reminded him of how he felt about his own mother. It wasn’t right for her to move it. It wasn’t right for her to never talk about Rhett and act like he had never existed, like he had never been twice the husband and father Jonathan would ever be.

”Moms are stupid. My mom’s the same way. I get it. She doesn’t care about my dad anymore, even though he’s the most important person in the world to me.” He agreed, making a face when Cleo wiped her face with her dirty hand. Normally he didn’t care about dirty faces and whatever, but it made her look weird. He was about to wipe her face when he remembered she said she had a no face thing and he retracted his hand, straightened up, and offered her his hand. ”I got a tent over there. You can uh... stay in the tent. You’re gonna attract wild animals if you make noises like that.”

Her question made Cliff frown slightly, but nod in confirmation. No use lying, right? He only talked about him in the present tense when he was in the woods with Cleo because he didn’t want to play the sympathy game. It wasn’t out of some noble reason to not get attention on himself, but he was used to all of the dialogue people said. ”I’m sorry for your loss”, ”he must have been great”, ”I’m sorry”, ”sorry”, blah blah blah! Cliff didn’t want to hear any of that. People could be sorry all they wanted, but that didn’t bring his father back.

But here, with Cleo talking about her dead dad and the fact her mom was just as dumb as his was about it, he felt like he could say it. It wasn’t trying to play the sympathy card or get her to be quiet. It was so that she knew he could relate even if he didn’t mention anything else about his dad for the rest of the night.

He watched as she unbuckled her shoes, looking at the once too-fancy things held between her fingers. When she held his hand with her other hand, Cliff tugged her along through the trees maybe a little too fast given than she was shoe-less now, until he came to a stop in front of his tent. There was a spot in the grass cleared out from where he’d been lying down to appreciate the stars from.

”I don’t care. You can stay in the tent if you want. Or out here until you fall asleep.” he said, finally turning back to look at Cleo. She looked like a total mess and he was gonna say that, but then he remembered most girls didn’t like being told they looked like messes. ”It’s more interesting to be with somebody even if they don’t say much. It’s better than you getting lost in the night right?”

”Well, that just means you should go in the woods knowing what to expect. Do you have a compass? You won’t get lost if you have a compass.” Cliff said. Well, she wouldn’t get lost if she knew how to read the compass, anyway. He didn’t know how much skill she had with that but if she’d taken it upon herself to run away and come out here in that puffy garb... she was probably not really well acquainted with compasses and stuff. Just ‘cause if he was running out to the woods to avoid something he’d at least bring hiking boots. Her saying that she was thankful for him being there made Cliff thankful it was dark so she couldn’t see his blush as he turned around towards his tent. Jees! She was the one who should be flustered, not him. He had no business getting flustered when Cleo was just... the one who’d run out here upset.

When she talked about her mom moving on, Cliff shook his head.

”Nut-uh. Your mom’s just stupid. What the heck is she going off to a concert for? She reminds me of my mom. My mom went off and married some jerk and never even thinks about my dad anymore. So I don’t really like them both. If I could, I’d just live out here and far away from them, forever.” He didn’t’ know if Cleo actually, genuinely, didn’t like her mother of this guy but whatever. She could understand right? Or at least, she could understand his anger. He watched her as she nestled herself in the tent, and furrowed his brows at how silly it looked. He snorted and pushed aside the flap, to look at Cleo’s tearstained face framed by her hair. ”...you’re not eve all the way in the tent. Aren’t you cold?”

Cliff watched Cleo as she shivered and tried to curl up more in the tent, looking really weird and out of place for a camping trip. She should have come with a sweatshirt and a tee shirt and jeans not three layers of skirt and shoes that got all ruined in the dirt. He wished that Cleo had maybe texted him earlier, asking if he minded camping with her, then he could have made sure she was in the proper garb. But no – here he was, with her alone in the woods. Over the sounds of Cleo’s tears there was silence in the woods. Like everything was listening to the conversation the two of them were having.

Cliff only brought on sleeping bag and could suggest for Cleo to get nuzzled up in it, but that meant opening it and a lot of other complicated stuff Cliff didn’t want to go through. So he shifted and unzipped the baggy hoodie he was wearing, and tossed the thick material inside the tent at Cleo’s tear-filled lap.

”I’m not even cold.” He half-lied, chilling with his face turned away from Cleo and up towards the stars. He was still listening to her, but he wasn’t looking at her. ”I don’t think you’ll forget about your dad. I mean I think that too sometimes. That I’ll forget him. But then I just do stuff he liked to do. I come out here, I hunt, I use his bow and arrow... I got pictures too. But mom never looks at any of them.“ he slumped back and lied on the ground in front of the tent, peering in through the folds to look at Cleo again. ”How old were you when he died? I was 9. When my dad died, anyway.”

Cliff listened to Cleo as she talked, relating so much to what she was saying – painfully so – and to distract himself he tried to think about how his hoodie would probably be returned to him covered in tears. But, somehow, that thought was just as depressing to him as thinking about her father’s story was. He’d gone out to get something and had gotten in a car accident. That kind of made Cliff think about how when he was a kid, his father had been out in the line of duty, and got killed.

”Death is stupid.” Cliff said. At least he believed it was. He believed that there were certain people – like his dad, and like Cleo’s dad – who shouldn’t die. Especially not when their kid was as young as 5 like Cleo was. That must really suck. He couldn’t imagine having lost his dad so young. As of right now his memories were starting to fade. If he had only been 5, would he even have memories left? Or would he be just like Cleo? He thought her mom she keep doing that. That was what he wished his mom would do. But she didn’t. Cliff brought his legs up to his chest, wrapped his arms around his knees, and rested his chin on the area where his knees met. He snorted in response to her question, though it wasn’t an amused snort. It was more like a sad sound, because what else was he supposed to do in response to that question?

”No time. Maybe like, 4 weeks. Tops. After my dad died, she told me we were moving. We left Maine and came here and I was miserable. Then she met him,” Cliff felt a fresh surge of hatred when he spoke the pronoun, fueled by his anger and sorrow at hearing Cleo’s story that related painfully to his own. ”And they started to date. And then she got married. And now she has some other kid, some other family that she cares about way more than she ever cared about the one she had with dad and me. Moms just don’t get it. They’re dumb and they don’t get it and they just think then can move on whenever they want, but they forget about us. I come out to the woods to get away from my mom and her stupid new family, and to be with my dad, and with nature. Did your dad like nature?”

Cliff felt a sense of relief he didn’t know he needed when Cleo was angry with him, and nodded to what she said. He didn’t really like to talk about it but when he did, he tended to get angry easily. Usually he found that saying this about his mother concerned people. Some said he was being too harsh and that he just wasn’t seeing his mother’s side of things. But what was there on her side he didn’t know about? Obviously she didn’t miss his father, her late husband. She was too busy being married to Johnathan and raising her new baby.

”I know. And she wonders why I don’t like her replacement family.” Cliff said, and though he wanted to make his tone angry it came out sadder than he’d wanted it to. He stayed there and listen to her talk about how her dad apparently took her mom on picnics when they were together. ”It sounds like he did. So it’s kind of like if you know what he liked to do, you can learn to like it too, and that’s how you’re connected. That’s what I do anyways. That’s why I like nature so much.”

He shivered as a breeze rolled by and realized how chilly the weather was when he didn’t have his sweatshirt. At Cleo’s offer, he blinked and turned to look inside the tent. She offered to move to the side and Cliff cleared his throat. He’d not shared his tent with anyone in years, and that was back when his dad took him camping. Would the two of them really fit? ”I’m not that cold. Uh. I don’t know if we’d both fit either way, because it’s a small tent, you don’t have to move if you don’t want to.”

He saw her smile, and gave her a tentative one back, feeling his cheeks warm for some reason.

Dads were so cool. Cliff stared up at the sky and watched as the wind rustled the trees and blocked out the stars.

”Do you get to go back to the farm a lot? I mean, if he loved it that much you can make new memories there when you go. Except it won’t be the same, because he won’t be there with you. But then when I think about the woods, I think my dad has a lot of memories before I was born of spending time there, so even if I make new memories in the woods without him, he’s still there.” He said, unsure if he was making proper sense. It wasn’t exactly the same, because this forest was one Rhett had ever explored in his lifetime. But the principal was still there.

When Cleo moved aside Cliff turned towards her, blinked, and shrugged. ”Well... I guess...” He said, unable to really refuse her when she looked at him like that. He didn’t exactly know what it was about the look, he just knew he couldn’t stomach not agreeing. So, he backed up into the tent and immediately it was warm. He was enveloped in Cleo’s scent and all he could hear the sounds of her sniffling. He glanced over at her, nestled up in his sweatshirt, and he smiled lightly. ”Uhh... okay. We’re both in we just can’t move a lot. I guess.”

Life wasn’t fair. How was it fair to take someone away from the person wh they loved most in the world, their dad? Cliff glanced at Cleo as she explained she was too young to really have many memories with him and Cliff could understand the fear of not having any memories with his father but he did have memories with his father. Plenty of them. He watched as she cried again, a few tears dripping down her face as he moved to sit down. He just gave her a sympathetic look in response, knowing his words would just be more of what he’d been preaching before, either complaining about his own mother or reminding her that she didn’t have as much time with her father as he did.

”Maybe it’s sad for you, but it’s not pathetic. It’s not like you chose to get rid of any memories.” He said, not commenting on the irony of all she remembered being how her father said goodbye. He was sure she knew it already and commenting on it would just make him a jerk (and probably make her cry again).

When Cleo moved to take off part of her dress Cliff barely had any warning. ”Uh, uh,” He said, quickly turning around and hiding his face with his hands to obscure his vision. Why hadn’t she done this before he’d come into the tent and gotten comfortable? She could have easily changed and then invited him in! Before he knew what he was doing he was peeking out through his fingertips, watching as Cleo slid her petticoat down over her legs, which he caught a generous view of back dropped by the moon. They were more slender than Cliff ever thought they’d be. His eyes widened behind his hands and he hastily tried to make it look like he’d done nothing wrong. His face was flustered as she finally finished and she laughed slightly. It was still a somber sound, but it was an effort, and that was what stopped Cliff from complaining about her timing for removing her petticoat. He didn’t want to upset her. He tried to will the blush away.

”Why do you have a pillow underneath your dress anyways?” He asked, unaware of the purpose of a petticoat except for it being one more useless layer of clothing between human skin and the breeze.

”I guess, but don’t most of the people who wear them not need them for practical reasons?” he asked. Most of those weird dress-things tended to be worn to make people look fancy right? He couldn’t think of an instance where a girl wearing a petticoat was actually on a camping trip or something and found use for it... until now.

He blinked over at her, watching her scratch her dress underneath his sweatshirt. She looked comfortable, snuggled up in it. He sat back and stared at the stars beyond the folds of his tent.

”Are you okay? You look a little stuffy.” he asked, though he probably shouldn’t tell a girl she looked stuffy... whatever. Cliff had never been much good with girls.

Cliff still didn’t see the practicality – or really understand why Cleo was defending petticoats. But she owned one, he guessed, so that was answer enough right? Though it did look like it made a good pillow, Cliff would be perfectly fine with the one in his sleeping bag. No way was he gonna put his head on anything that had been wrapped around Cleo’s waist earlier!

Her confusion at his question made Cliff blush slightly. He probably shouldn’t have pointed it out. Now she was more uncomfortable and he could offer no real solution to fix it. ”Uh I mean, OK, I guess.”He said, not really knowing anything else to do. He glanced at his knees. ”How long were you planning to stay out here before, just sitting there in the woods?”

”Okay okay! Jeez!” Cliff said as she ran her mouth at him. He didn’t know what he said to bother her but whatever it was apparently it sucked. He needed to get better at talking to girls, didn’t he? When she apologized and his her face Cliff shrugged and looked away. He felt bad for her, then, because he probably made her feel dumb too. She was usually so nice and happy. It took a special kind of butt face to make her feel bad.

”I mean, I didn’t mean it as a bad thing. When my dad died, one time I spent a whole night out in the woods. I killed a squirrel on accident. Then I felt really crappy. I think that going to the woods can help. So I didn’t mean it as a bad thing,” he said. ”I was just gonna stay out here with you. because you don’t want to get eaten by a bear or something. And I know this place like the back of my hand.”

Cliff shrugged at her apology. ”It’s okay. I mean, I’d be pissed too if I were you,” he said. The whole reason she was out here in the first place was because her mom was a jerk. He didn’t need to be a jerk, too. Cliff shifted where he sat. ”I mean you were crying so loud I probably would have found you anyway,” he said. Now that, he was pretty sure, wasn’t a compliment or a good thing but it was true. In his opinion anyway.

When she asked if he could help her, Cliff blinked at her and wondered what she would need. Whatever it was, though, seemed to be lifting the cloud around her and it made him want to help. ”Depends what?” he asked, ”I mean, sure, I don’t see why not.”

Un....unzip?”

Cliff stared, with wide eyes, at the nape of Cleo’s neck as he realized she was trying to get the dress off. He blinked at the exposed skin of her neck – which was inflamed, warm, and had her fingers ghosting across it. He glanced at her eyes, which were looking at him expectantly. She didn’t mean anything by this except for him to unzip the dress but how far did the zipper go? It was just them out here, wasn’t it? Why would she ask for him – a guy – to unzip her dress out here?! He felt his cheeks darkening and grumbled, but when he saw the redness of her still-wet eyes he turned it into some kind of affirmative response.

He reached forward and grabbed the zipper between his forefinger and thumb and slowly slid it down her back – conscious of the way her shoulders and skin moved and felt beneath his fingertips. He didn’t exactly know how far to unzip her, and he came to a stop when instead of feeling skin underneath his fingertips he could feel another material. Glancing at it, he realized it was her bra, and his cheeks darkened more.

”Th—there,” he muttered. "That good enough?"