a ball in play (1)

   The sun was a ball in play. Davie sprang out of bed into the day barely able to contain the blood-flood of his living heart. Today would be it, a day of all days. The day he and Catherine flew and flew until they hit their glide. They need never come down. All the promises of the waking world lay before them and he wanted every one. He wanted it all because suddenly it was possible that he could have it. How was it that the very thing he wanted was the thing he could have? Only these little steps this day were needed, for the sun was already afield in the sky. How the heart pumped the muscles to purpose, primed and impatient to be there.

  And there was Catherine as arranged, at the last house before the road left the town into the countryside. He had wanted a sense of occasion, of time and place: noon, the edge of town.
   She was already fidgety and when she saw him approaching started towards him. His face was unconcealed and his smile so toothsome that she slowed a little. The bounce in his walk seemed all wrong. As they came together she winced, thinking that he was about to barge right into her. Instead he heavy-pecked a clumsy kiss on her mouth that tweaked and bruised her upper lip.

“ Ow! “, she stepped back and tested for blood with her hand, “ What’s all this about? Someone might see! I can’t stay long…”

“ Ach, don’t worry! Nobody’s looking or cares. There’s just us and that gamey sky up there. Look at it, it’s an effing beauuuuuuuutyyyy !” He took in the air deeply, closed his eyes and let the sun find his upturned face.

  Catherine started to walk away from him. He was panicking her. She was four houses back into town when he opened his eyes and saw that she wasn’t beside him. He turned and ran after her and this made her quicken her step.
He caught her from behind around the ribcage, picked her off the ground and spun around and around on his heel. Round and round they went. The blur of her against their surroundings as he wove imperfect circles again and again was almost addictive; his giddiness a dynamo. He was freewheeling and in danger of not being able to stop.
  A thought popped up that he’d transcended gravity. An urge to let go and let their momentum take Catherine where it would was almost too great to resist. He wanted to set her free. A sudden spike of fear snagged his throat, he gulped and there was the ground beneath them. He came to his senses and slowed and slowed to a stop and a stagger, as did Catherine finally finding her feet. The world spun and dipped around them and they both fell.

He lay for a while then got up, his head still weaving, but Catherine lay there stationery on the pavement. He was out of breath, feeling stupefied at his incontinent heart. Catherine sprawled there before him was an unsettling sight.
 He knelt beside her and whispered, “ Sorry Catherine, really, I’m … sorry; sorry , sorry .. please: lets just go for a walk the way we’d set out to do. Please..”
His pulse beat in his ears like a kick-drum, he could see the rise and fall of her breathing.
“ You start walking,” she said, “If I catch up I catch up, if no then I’ll just see ye Monday at work.”
 She didn’t look up at him, spoke into the ground that had stopped spinning and become fixed, was hard and solid and rough again.