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Back when we were still changin' for the better
Wanting was enough
For me, it was enough
To live for the hope of it all
~`~
Lily stared out at the water, the dark sea, the waves crashing and roaring in front of her. She had thought that seventeen would be different, that she would feel different, and maybe she was supposed to. Maybe seventeen was supposed to be this wonderful and amazing thing, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t anything.
Or maybe it was just August, hot and sweltering, bright and unforgiving, the end of the summer and her time….so close to…to him. Oh how she loved him, everything about him drew her in, and it wasn’t fair.
Nothing was fair when it came to James Fleamont Potter.
Lily fell down to her knees and put her hands into the warm sand. She loved the heat, the sand, the water, summer. She was a winter baby always reaching for the heat of summer, for August in all of it’s glory. She was a winter baby in need of the sun, wanting it to touch her skin and make her feel alive.
She laid back into the sand and heat and let the sun soak into her skin while trying not to think about him, about James. She could see him in her head, his wild dark curls, his wire framed glasses hiding his beautiful hazel eyes, his big easy-going smile, and his wonderfully warm tan skin. He was so beautiful and kind, his arms were always open to anyone and his hands always ready grab someone and hold on tight. He was so wonderfully sweet and open, so wonderfully kind and lovely. He was James, with his wild always wind-blown curls and easy smile, with his warm eyes and long thin fingers. He was James and she loved him.
Wanting was enough, he was enough, and she needed him.
“You’ll get burned out here.”
Lily opened her eyes and looked up at his warm brown skin and even warmer brown eyes. He was giving her, her favorite James smile, easy and kind and able to make her heart flutter.
She couldn’t breathe, the very sight of him with his sleeves rolled up his arms and his shorts soaked from when his friends threw him in the ocean, the sun like a halo around his head, it was enough to make anyone breathless. It was enough to make her heart beat out of her chest, enough to make her heart constrict and race at the same time, to make the blood rush so loud and fast in her ears that she could barely hear him.
“I’m not afraid of freckles.”
It was a joke that they had kept up for the last few years, anytime that the sun grew hot and kissed her skin red instead of gold.
James rolled his eyes and laid down beside her, his arm brushing against her own and their hands finding each other, their fingers twisting together. Lily felt heavy and warm, love drunk as they held hands, so close and yet….
They were lost in a moment of time.
Lily turned the same time that James did, both of them facing each other, green eyes finding hazel, shoulders touching and foreheads nearly pressing together as they breathed in the same air. She would be horribly sunburn in the morning, or even worse, once the sun went down. Her skin would clash with her hair and the freckles would appear in the days after, blooming across her damaged skin.
“I don’t know if freckles are very becoming of you, Lily.”
Lily rolled her eyes and breathed in the warm scent of his skin and breath, sunbaked and salty, briny from the ocean but comforting because it was James. She knew that his mouth would taste like salt and the beer they bought for this trip, his lips would be soft and warm against her own, and his arm would tighten around her waist in the most perfect and comforting way.
She knew all of this, and yet she couldn’t move to make it a reality. They were lost in wanting, in hope, and in the almost change that was looming over them.
They really were lost in a moment of time, stuck in the bottom of a bottle, a letter out in sea, surely lost to everyone, especially the sender. Hope was all they had, to make it to another distant land, to another place.
Hope was a four letter word that meant more than even love, and that was all she wanted. Love and hope and them.
“James,” whispered Lily, feeling the heat of the sun, or maybe the heat of her blush coloring her cheeks becoming too much. She was hot, the heat of August in full effect, summer was coming to a close, and they would be shipped away to another year of school. Stuck together with their feelings, festering in the darkness of winter and the cold of the castle.
Lily sat up and shook the sand out of her hair, untangling herself from James and pulling her shirt off. She could hear his breath catching in his throat as she neatly folded her t-shirt and pushed her shorts down her legs, feeling his eyes on her exposed skin. This trip was meant to be a getaway, to be away from home, her mother and sister, the sadness that still loomed over them with her father’s passing. It was all supposed to be for her and her friends, one last carefree day before they went back to school, went and shut themselves away in a land of magic and war.
She stepped out of her shoes and walked straight into the ocean, letting the cold surround her and swallow her. When she was little, she had wanted to be a mermaid, but now she was a witch and mermaids weren’t the beautiful girlish creatures she had once imagined them to be.
She let the waves crash into her, the sharp opposite of the heat the sun she had been enjoying before. She couldn’t kiss James, she couldn’t let her desires win her over, she had to be smarter about her heart.
Wanting was enough, it had to be enough.
Lily felt a pair of arms wrap around her waist, warm despite the chill of the water, the fingers long and thin and familiar. James looked younger without his glasses, but his eyes were the same with or without the frames.
“Lily.”
She rested her one hand on his chest, right over his heart, and the other on his forearm. She could feel the change in the air, better for the pair of them, better for her.
“Are you sure?” she whispered, thinking of later, of the pair of them under the stars, the heat of August dying as the sun went down around them. “I’ve never-“
“Why wouldn’t I be with you?” asked James, before his mouth met hers. They were the letter in a bottle, bobbing up and down with the waves, getting lost out in the sea of each other.
There was a change in the air, a chill in their bodies, and a heat that couldn’t keep them away from one another. The crashing of the waves, the laughter of their friends, none of it mattered.
None of it mattered as James Potter kissed Lily Evans. His arm wrapped tight around her waist, while his other hand cupped her cheek. Her own body pressed close to his, her fingers tangled into his wet curls, keeping him as close to her as she could keep him.
They were still changing for the better.
“James?” whispered Lily as they both stared up at the stars above them, the rest of their friends already asleep where they were camped out around the bonfire they had set up ages ago. She couldn’t keep her hands off of him, and she knew he didn’t want her to let go of him. Maybe this was it, the briefest of summer flings, just as hot and sudden as the heat that swirled around them all day.
“Yes, Lily.”
“I love you.”
She would hold onto this moment, this needy and consuming and wanting love, James with his easy smile and warm hands and his eyes that betrayed all of his secrets to her as they always had. She saw endless moments in time; her in a white dress with flowers and a veil in her hair; James smiling at her as she held her round stomach; a toddler on shaky legs walking from his arms to hers, all three of them laughing. She saw a lifetime of love and happiness, an endless summer of heat and freckles and so many more Augusts.
“You are the love of my life.”
Lily let out the breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding in, watching as James eyes fluttered from the warmth of her breath. She moved closer in the impossible space between them and kissed him, letting herself be fully consumed by him and his arms and hands and body. She was lost in a single moment of time, lost in the man she loved with hazel eyes and warm brown skin and a smile that made her weak at the knees.
This would be the moment she remembered when it all went wrong. This small piece of heaven, of endless summer, of them together, back when they were still changing for the better. Her and James, together forever, lost in the hope of it all.
The last true August of their lives.