Bookishly Ever After

by Sarah Monzon

  “Emory!” A woman ducked from the front flap of her tent, a tired smile on her face. Dirt caked into every crease and crevice of her skin. The wet wipes I’d packed would come in handy to help her feel clean, if only for a while. I used to let the women come to the apartment to take showers, but the super caught me a few too many times and threatened eviction if I kept bringing riffraff around his apartment building.

  Too bad he didn’t recognize riffraff when he stared at it every day in the mirror.

  Sondra stopped a few feet in front of me, but I took those last couple of steps and enveloped her in a hug, careful with the coffee still in my hand. If anyone needed the touch of friendship, it was these people who were shunned every day by those whose situations hadn’t dumped them in the dirt and kicked them when they were down.

  “Here.” I held out the cup holder to her. She wiggled one of the full cups free, and her eyes rolled back in her head at the first sip.

  “Simply heaven.”

  Others exited their makeshift dwellings. Some I knew; some I didn’t. In half a second my hands were lighter, every cup of coffee now cradled between thankful palms.

  It felt good, helping others. It also made me feel guilty. That I had so much when they had so little. That I complained at all when life had practically spit them out.

  Perspective.

  A hacking cough came from a far corner, and I bent to look around Sondra. The Major sat on an overturned crate, his back hunched, shoulders shaking as he coughed into a fist.

  “Been like that a week,” Sondra said, following my line of sight to the middle-aged man who’d given more than fifteen years to his country.

  And this is how we repay him. I had the same thought every time I came down here. We had to do better. For the Major. For all of them.

  I turned back to Sondra. “Has he gone to the clinic?”

  She shook her head. Took another sip of coffee before speaking. “Refuses. Too many bad memories. For some reason clinics and hospitals are triggers for his PTSD.”

  I wanted to haul him up and take him to a doctor. He needed medical attention. Antibiotics. Something. But I knew he wouldn’t go, and there wasn’t anything I could do to get him there.

  But maybe I could get a doctor to come here.

  I watched him, my chest constricting along with every fit his lungs had to rid themselves of the crud inside. “Think he’ll talk to me today?” I asked Sondra. If he’d had an episode in the last two days, he wouldn’t talk to anyone. But even if he didn’t talk, I could sit with him. Maybe my simple presence would be as comforting to the Major as Tate’s had been for me.

  Sondra shrugged. “Only one way to find out.”

  The duffel bag fell from my shoulder, and I knelt on the ground beside it. I took out one Ziplock for the Major and passed the duffel to Sondra. “You know what to do.”

  Sondra had been my first contact among the homeless. The first few times I’d come to hand out food or other supplies, I’d been met with hesitant skepticism. Of course that could have been due to the underlying fear I probably hadn’t done well to hide. Either way, I’d left everything with Sondra, knowing she’d distribute to those most in need. It kind of became our ritual, although now I stopped to visit with the tenants here instead of retreating with a break-neck pulse.

  Reaching for an empty crate, I turned it over and placed it by the Major. “How’re you doing today, sir?”

  He coughed, then tilted his head toward me with a wry grin. “Ain’t dead yet.”

  My lips curved. “Victory is yours.” It was how most of our conversations started.

  The light in his eyes dimmed. “Haven’t felt very victorious lately. Been thinking. A cursed thing, that.” His mouth twisted, part grimace, part humorless smile. “Don’t try it if you don’t have to.”

  I laughed at his deadpan expression. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.” I probably shouldn’t ask. Shouldn’t pry. But I was too curious not to. “What have you been thinking about?”

  The Major didn’t seem offended by my forwardness. He studied the ground as if it had hypnotized him. “Regrets.” He looked up and met my open gaze. “I haven’t always been alone, you know. I once had a girl. Beautiful girl. Loved her the best I knew how.”

  “What happened?”

  “Came to a crossroad, and I had to choose. Career or family. I made the wrong choice.” He blinked and looked away. “Don’t make same mistake I did.”

  I reached over and patted his shoulder. He didn’t need to worry. Not about me anyway. Not about choosing between a career or love.

  “If you love someone, don’t waste a day by not telling them.” His gravelly voice shook with conviction. “You never know when your time may run out.” His chest rattled in a fearful way as he wheezed. “Someone will only wait for you for so long.”

  My heart clenched, afraid that the more pressing time we should be discussing was his own and how long he’d have if he didn’t see a doctor soon. I stood and squeezed his shoulder. “Hang in there, Major. I’m going to see what I can do about getting a doctor out here.”

  He gripped my wrist with surprising strength and turned his face to penetrate my gaze. “Remember what I said.”

  Though I’d pushed his convicting words aside for the moment to focus on the priority of his health, I knew I’d never be able to forget them. They rang loud, resounding and echoing like a bell through a deep valley. They’d come back to me over and over.

  But now wasn’t the time.

  I squeezed his shoulder again and offered him a smile. Once I had a commitment from a trusted doctor in hand for a “house” call, I’d let the echo of his words sink in.

  Then figure out what I was going to do about it.

  I slid my phone out of my pocket and punched in a number. “Beth, I need a favor.”

  Eleven

  If you love someone, don’t waste a day by not telling them. I’d been wrong to think the Major’s words were like an echo. They were more like a ghost dead-set on haunting me. The day had passed, those words hovering around me in a never-ending assault. I’d offered up my weak argument, the one I’d been telling myself for far too long now—Tate and I were just friends.

  But there was a problem. Not even I believed that lie anymore. What I’d been too (okay, yes, fine, I’ll say it) afraid to admit to myself, I couldn’t ignore anymore.

  I loved Tator Tot Woodby.

  And I thought maybe there might be a chance that he had feelings for me too.

  Maybe.

  Possibly.

  Did he?

  I groaned as I set down the bag of Peanut M&M’s. My second package of the night. Talk about stress eating.

  What was I going to do? The way I saw it, I only had two options. I could go on pretending like nothing was different, but then I’d only be kidding myself, and I didn’t think there were enough M&M’s on the planet if I had to make believe we were just friends and watch from the sidelines as he fell in love with another woman. The other option…

  My belly sank like a stone.

  I could talk to him. Which may not sound like a big deal to normal people, but I think my behavior the night before—my shut-down, fetal position, zombie-like state—was proof enough that I was not normal. A simple conversation about feelings would never be simple for me.

  But if I sat around and did nothing, then the best thing that ever happened to me might slip though my fingers. With Tate’s talent, he was going places, and even if I felt like being with him would be a noose around his neck weighing him down, I was selfish enough to want to be that noose.

  Oh, good gravy! I slapped my forehead. After all the books I’d read, a noose was really the best analogy I could come up with? I was hopeless. Hopeless, but desperately full of hope at the same time. Like I’d always been, I wanted to be by his side, cheering him on…I just didn’t want to do it as simply a friend anymore.

  Which brought me back to the point—I had to talk to him. But how? Face to face and
I was bound to clam up. Words as hard to get out as convicts from Alcatraz.

  I leaned my head back and stared up at the ceiling. The door downstairs closed, and muffled voices permeated the walls. I sat up, an idea forming. There were drawbacks to living in an old Victorian home that had been sectioned off and converted to apartments after World War II, when housing options for returning veterans were an issue. Especially one that hadn’t seen a day of renovation since the 1940s, other than the addition of fire escapes. It made it so when the baby downstairs cried all night, she kept everyone in the building awake. There wasn’t much privacy, since if you talked even slightly above a regular register, your neighbors could hear you.

  But could I take this old home and use it for my benefit? I retreated to the small pantry in the kitchen, excitement building and spreading through my limbs. Grabbing the small ladder leaning at an angle against the back wall, I pulled it out, then propped it open. Eyes up, I scooted the ladder until it was directly under the vent in the ceiling. The same vent that connected to the floor of Tate’s apartment.

  I remembered when I was young, probably twelve or thirteen, reading this book about siblings in foster care. Their bedrooms were side by side, and when their foster parents would send them to their rooms as punishment for their mischievous behavior, they’d pass notes to each other through a dead register in their adjoining wall.

  I couldn’t talk to Tate face to face, and an email seemed wrong—texting not much better. There was something romantic about handwritten letters though, right? Right?

  It was what I was going to tell myself even if no one would agree with me.

  I went to the side table by my bed, opened the drawer, and took out a pile of stationary. One of the few things I collected, I had a rather large stack to choose from. I wanted something simple, not too girly. The border of rosebuds was out. So was the teddy bear holding a heart.

  I stopped flipping through the pages when my fingers hit a rougher, more natural paper. It was unadorned, but the texture made it seem old. Vintage. Something my grandparents might have used to write love letters to each other. Perfect. Shoving the discarded options back into the drawer, I used my hip to press it closed and walked back into the living room, paper and pencil in hand.

  What to write? Where to start? How did one go about telling her best friend that she’d fallen in love with him? I sighed and stared at the paper. Adjusted my grip on the pen. Maybe Landon was on to something when he’d brought up Emma. Any chance Tate would be familiar with the classic? Only one way to find out.

  Bending over, I pressed pen to paper and took my time making my natural sloppy handwriting look neat.

  Are you familiar with Austen?

  It was a start. Not a straight-out declaration of love, but wouldn’t sending a note through the floors with only those three life-changing words be a bit of a sucker punch out of nowhere? This was more of a gentle path to a cliff. One I’d either jump off alone or with Tate by my side.

  I folded the note down the middle and mounted the steps of the ladder until I could reach the vent in the ceiling. Fortunately, his register slits were open and the paper slid right through. I waited for the sound of footsteps over my head, but all was silent. He was there. I’d heard him a minute ago. Closing one eye, I peered through the slits and into his apartment but couldn’t make out anything besides his ceiling, the wall, and the window that faced Puget Sound.

  Climbing off the ladder, I picked up my phone from the coffee table and sent Tate a text.

  Emory: Check your floor by the window.

  Tate: ?

  Emory: Just do it.

  Footsteps sounded then, and I stared at the hole that connected us, waiting for the paper to rain back down into my apartment.

  My phone buzzed.

  Tate: As in Texas? And why in the world are you passing me notes through the floor?

  Emory: As in Jane Austen. And play along!

  It took a second, but paper did fly down toward me. Literally. He’d folded it like an airplane. I retrieved the note and unfolded its ends.

  How many guys do you know that are familiar with Jane Austen besides literature professors?

  Point taken. Besides Landon I’d never met a guy interested in books written centuries past that could still touch hearts today. Maybe I should have tried to use Tate’s language—music—instead of my own. Was there a song out there that conveyed everything I wanted to say? I bit my lip and glanced up. I’d already started this awkward exchange, I couldn’t stop now to listen to hours upon hours of music searching for just the right lyrics. And I sure as shootin’ couldn’t write them myself. I bent back over a fresh piece of stationary.

  Jane Austen wrote a book called Emma about a matchmaker who couldn’t see what was right in front of her face. Who had been right there beside her the whole time.

  I folded the note in thirds, climbed the ladder, and slipped it up to Tate’s floor. My foot hit the bottom rung, when the crinkling of paper stopped me. Overhead, footsteps moved away, then back again. The clink of metal on metal and the rotation of screws. Something popped.

  “What are you trying to say, Em? Talk to me.”

  Tate’s voice was close, not muffled. I looked up and saw him hovering above the hole, his floor register gone.

  This was it. Moving back to the table, I got one final piece of stationary and wrote. Plagiarized words spoken by Mr. Knightly to Emma, but ones I felt so deeply they could have been my own.

  “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.” I love you, Tate.

  One simple fold and I pressed the paper to my lips. I took a step up the ladder, then paused. I had to see him. Had to look into his eyes as he learned of my feelings for him. I might not be able to say the words, but I wasn’t ashamed of my heart.

  I grabbed a screwdriver from a drawer in the kitchen, hiked up the ladder’s rungs, and twisted the screws until the vent covering fell into my hands. Tate peered down, his brown eyes warm.

  “Say it,” he urged.

  My throat closed under his gaze as I knew it would, so I lifted the note up. He reached down, our fingers brushing. I stayed rooted in place, feasting on his face, but then he moved out of sight. I took another step up, tried to widen my visibility. Where was he? Where’d he go?

  Seconds passed. Minutes. Like weights, my feet fell down the risers. Gravity pulled my body toward to the couch.

  That was it? No response?

  “Em.” Tate’s voice pulled my head up, my heart lifting as my body rose off the cushions.

  “Here.” A book hovered just below my ceiling and then plopped to the ground.

  Color me confused. And curious. I walked over and picked it up. Turned the book to reveal the cover. Around the World in 80 Days.

  Shut the front door. I confessed I loved him, and he gave me a book? Emotions warred. Uncertainty fogged the equal parts disappointment and expectation. Maybe there was something inside? An inscription or a part highlighted that would shed light on this bizarre twist of events.

  I opened the front flap, and Tate’s handwriting greeted me. Here we go. I licked my lips as my eyes tracked the words.

  I’ll pick you up Sunday at 10:00. Bring a sweater.

  Twelve

  I’d been sitting in my reading chair for the past three hours and still couldn’t get my thoughts and nerves under control. The clock read 9:45, and in fifteen minutes Tate would be knocking on my door. Even without coffee, my knee bounced at the rate of a toddler given an espresso. Don’t get me started on the activity going on in my mind. Women’s brains were like circuit breakers, a central hub of wires that all connected with each other, and information—emotion—traveled at lightning speeds. Right then my brain was a certifiable electrical storm, every wire pushed to max capacity.

  Not even reading had been able to distract me. I’d been staring at the same page, reading the same paragraph I didn’t even know how many times. But the words never penetrated my consciousness. It was l
ike there was a wreck on the nerve highway between my eyes and my brain. Ain’t nothin’ getting’ through that mess.

  And so my thoughts circled.

  I’d told Tate I loved him, and he’d responded with a date, time, and bring a sweater. What did that even mean? Was he blowing off my declaration? Ignoring my feelings, the way I had for so long? Maybe I’d gotten it wrong. Maybe I’d misinterpreted all the things I thought had pointed to him reciprocating my feelings. Even so, one thing was clear. Even if he refused to accept the shift I’d caused in our friendship, I couldn’t take back the words. Couldn’t shut off the flood of warmth that circled my body when he was near. The way my heart filled to near bursting at the tiniest thought of him.

  Whether or not we remained friends was up to him, and I both cringed and sighed with relief at the thought that I’d find out that fate in just fifteen quick and agonizing minutes. But whatever his decision, I knew I’d always love him. Whether I had to do it from far away or by his side.

  My phone buzzed from the armrest of my chair, startling me, and I nearly knocked it to the ground. Beth’s name illuminated on the screen. Picking it up, I tapped the green Accept button and held the phone to my ear. “Hey.” I was glad she’d called. I needed a distraction now more than ever.

  “Hey, Emory. I just wanted to call and give you an update on the Major.”

  I sat up straighter and pressed the phone closer to my ear. I didn’t want to miss any of what she had to say. Though my mind had been wrapped up with Tate, I’d still been concerned about my homeless friend. “How’s he doing?”