Hold On You - M. S. Brannon Page 0,4

the car, the woman quickly turns around and looks at me with surprise.

Her headlights are shining in her face while strands of her hair dance and move in the light. She is bewildered at first, trying in her drunk haze to figure out why the music is no longer playing. I keep myself crouched, waiting for a good time to make myself visible. Again, if I startle her, she will likely fall, and all my efforts of being her one-time hero will have been pointless.

“Who’s … Who’s there?” she asks, holding her hand up to block the light as she tries to wrangle her wild hair.

Come on, lady, just move a few feet away from the ledge.

I have to expose myself. She needs to know I am here. Then maybe she will walk away, come over, and punch me or something. Either way, at least she won’t be standing at the edge of her life.

“I was just up here and saw how close you are to the edge. I … I need you to move away,” I plead, hoping my words come through.

“Why? Why do you care, anyway?” Her words slur together as she struggles to maintain her balance on the edge.

“I … I don’t want you to fall. Please, just move away from the ledge. It can’t be that bad.” That’s a lie. It was that bad for me ten minutes ago.

“What do you know of it, asshole?” She is still holding her hand up, trying to shield her eyes, continuing to make it hard to see her clearly. “You couldn’t possibly understand what I’m going through, so shut the hell up and leave!”

When she steps closer to me, my goal has been met, but I now see the woman’s face completely. It looks like Maddie. Impossible. It can’t be her. It can’t be the woman I once loved and wanted to marry. I must be losing it because, if my eyes are staring at Maddie Stone’s, then I am looking directly at the woman who chose another life over me, someone who chose New York City over our small town way of life. I am looking at the person who broke my heart and led me down the ten year path of emptiness and into the arms of a woman who is the very reason I ended up on this cliff to begin with.

My head is fucking with me. That can’t be Maddie. She would never come back to this place. Hell, she didn’t come back for her own father’s funeral. Since that night a year ago today, I have been living in the past every damn day. Maddie has been the only person on my mind, and that is why I see her now. It’s all in my head.

She staggers even closer, the wind completely gone and her face exposed as she walks to me. I shake my head, knowing I am looking at a ghost. Before I can confirm anything, though, she falls hard over a gathering of large rocks collected by her feet.

Fearing she fell close to the edge of the cliff, I run around the car and look down at the broken, sad woman on the ground. She is lying on her side, balled up in the fetal position and nursing her abdomen as she sobs into her hands.

She trembles from the sensation of her bare skin against the grass. Her skin has been scraped from the jagged cliff rocks, and blood is running down her legs. My emotions are in overdrive as I fall next to her, landing on my knees and looking down at this woman. Breathing heavily, I hear the pounding of my heart in my ears, drowning out any other thought except fear.

Is this Madison? The smell of her sweet perfume shoves me back to a time when I was never angry, a time when life was full of hope and promise.

Several seconds go by before I can get my breathing back to normal. She is still lying on her side, crying into her hands. Her shoulders bob up and down as she pours out her relief.

I lean up on my elbows, immediately feeling my gut burning with pain. As the adrenaline leaves my body, the agony starts to set in, although I am familiar with this feeling. It happens seven days a week for me.

I look over to the sad girl, still reeling from my earlier thought of who she is, and I finally confirm my dreaded thoughts. I