by Scott, Emma
Yes, I could. But for me. Not you.
It was wrong and stupid, but I needed to write to Autumn. I needed her, any way I could.
“Drop her a line for me,” Connor said. “News and weather. Tell her I’m thinking about her and I miss her.” He grinned and chucked my arm. “But make it pretty. No harm in that, right?”
“No harm,” I muttered.
Connor beamed, chucked my shoulder again, and headed back to the table.
“All right, boys, what’d I miss? You cheating, Mendez?”
I retrieved a pen and notebook from my footlocker and lay on my back on my bunk. Since email and cell phones weren’t allowed, we had to resort to pen and paper. Which was how I did all my writing anyway. A flow of thoughts and words into the ink and onto the page felt natural to me. Like breathing.
But this is wrong…
I should’ve told Connor to write his own letters. The last time I’d spoken to Autumn on the phone, pretending to be Connor, was months ago when she was in Nebraska, and I’d felt like shit for deceiving her. It was wrong and risky, but I missed her too much. The disgust I’d felt was distant compared to the hunger that gnawed at my insides now. I was starving. No matter how hard I tried to resist, the machine of Boot Camp was hollowing me out. Its job was to strip men down, turn them into war drones who could do the job that needed to be done. To kill if necessary.
Staying connected to Autumn was like holding onto a piece of myself. I needed to indulge in her now; gorge myself on my helpless, hopeless feelings for her, and hate myself for it later.
I’m in love with her.
The truth was bold and stark on the blank page of my heart.
I put my pen to paper and began to write.
Autumn
Fort Jackson
South Carolina
Feb 19th
Autumn,
We are seven weeks in and the physical pain of PT is imbedded in our muscle memory. Sarge’s insults are the music by which we march. Softness. Warmth. Beauty. They’re mirages in the distance, where you are. There is nothing of you here, but what I create in my mind and memory, and that is harder to endure than any physical pain. Not holding you hurts my hands more than having my palms scraped raw on the ropes. Not hearing your voice cuts deeper than any insult. Boot Camp has stripped me down to the bone, where what I feel for you is stark and naked, and the distance between us is longer than the last mile on the last run of the day.
And it hurts so bad.
“Auts,” Ruby said, loudly.
I blinked and looked up from the letter in my hand. “Sorry, what?”
“I said, let’s go to Yancy’s. I need to get out of this apartment. Dress up a little. Drink a lot.”
She’d broken up with Hayes over the Christmas break, while I was in Nebraska visiting my family.
I glanced at the mound of work on my table, ignored in favor of Connor’s latest letter. I’d read it ten times, just like the others. He held nothing back and my eyes—and heart—couldn’t keep from drinking the words in, over and over.
“Give me five minutes,” I told Ruby, my gaze sliding back to the page.
I feel invincible when I think about you. Bottomless. The more you take of my heart, the more I have to give.
“Good lord, woman, I can see the stars in your eyes from here,” Ruby said. “What, is that another letter from Connor?”
“Yes, his tenth.”
“Actual snail mail. I can’t remember the last time I got a real letter.”
“It feels more intimate and personal,” I said. “He was so distracted and stressed about going to Boot Camp but now…”
My gaze was drawn back to the words.
These letters are only placeholders until I see you. A game of words, but I know we’ll suffer if we play it too long…
“He was probably nervous about Basic Training,” Ruby said. “I saw Full Metal Jacket. They’re being called pansy-asses a hundred times a day and being worked to the bone.” Ruby shook her head. “On the plus side, he’s going to come back ripped.”
I smiled a little and set the letter down. “It’s deployment that scares me.”
“Try not to worry. They could be sent anywhere. My friend’s cousin was just deployed. War’s in Syria. They sent him to Japan. And they’re staying together. That’s something.”
“That’s Senator Drake pulling strings.”
Ruby patted my hand. “It’s something.”
I nodded but with every one of Connor’s beautiful letters, I felt my heart linking tighter to his, which made the thought of deployment—anywhere—harder and harder to take…
Ruby reached for her coat. “Come on, let’s get out. I need a stiff one.” She winked. “And a strong drink too.”
At Yancy’s, Ruby ordered a cranberry vodka for herself and a pear cider for me. We set up at a small table near the pool tables and dart boards. Guys were playing at both. None of them were from Connor’s circle of friends. “The Night We Met” by Lord Huron played on the sound system.
“Talk to me, Goose,” Ruby said. “Distract me from my post-Hayes haze.”
“I have too much distraction,” I said. “I haven’t taken one damn step toward my project. My grades are slipping. And when I’m not worrying about Connor and Wes, I’m worrying about the farm. At Christmas, I made Travis tell me the truth about our finances.”
Ruby made a wincing face. “And?”
“We’re in the hole for more than thirty grand, and this year’s harvest isn’t going to be as profitable as last.” I rubbed my eyes. “It feels like everything is falling apart. Even you and Hayes broke up.”
“It was fun while it lasted,” Ruby said. “I never go into anything with expectations, so I don’t feel the burn.”
“Meanwhile, I did the exact opposite. Everything with Connor happened exactly as I feared—and hoped—it would. The intimacy made me invested, and now I’m beyond invested.”
Ruby reached across the table to touch my hand. “Are you falling in love with him?”
I shook my head miserably. “I don’t know what to think. Or feel. For so long, we were up and down. For months, it was like he was afraid to be himself around me without a buffer. But on the phone the night Dad was sick, and now when he writes, I get a purer sense of who Connor is. It sounds cheesy but it’s like looking through a window he keeps shuttered up tight. Looking into his soul. And after Thanksgiving, I know why he keeps that side of him so guarded. His parents and brother refuse to let him be himself. They stifle him. So he covers it up with jokes and smiles.”
Ruby cocked her head. “Is that a yes?”
“I think it might be,” I said, tears filling my eyes. “But I’m scared. A lot. Not only because my heart is on the line, but because there’s actual danger here. Real, life-threatening risk. The stakes are so much higher. Life-changing.”
Or life ending.
I shivered and pulled my hands from my glass.
“And it’s worse, because I could lose Weston too.”
“Wes?” Ruby wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t realize you were close.”
“We have good talks. I like him. I can be myself around him.”
My truest self.
The thought slipped in like a cat through a cracked door. The same way the memory of that damn kissing dream came to me, sometimes bringing along little details like our hands locked on the bakery table, or our private jokes, or the song “Ocean Eyes” that seemed as if it were written about him.
Dreams don’t mean anything. We’re friends. We have history. I can care about him and still love Connor.
The thought felt…wrong somehow. As if it scratched at the truth but wasn’t all of it.
“I can’t be with Connor and not have Wes in my life, too,” I said, shooing the errant thought away. “And I’m scared I could lose them both.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Ruby said. “They’ll come back from Boot Camp and you’ll have some time with Connor. Enjoy it. See what
happens. Take it one day at a time.”
I forced a smile. “I should get back and try to get some sleep. Or some work done. Stay if you want.”
“We just got here,” Ruby said, pouting.
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m not feeling it.”
Ruby pursed her lips again. “I see Lisa Dean over there with some people.” She inclined her head to a booth in the corner. “I can hang with her, since you’re ditching me so cruelly.”
I hid my small sigh of relief in my coat collar. “Are you sure you’re okay? About Hayes?”
She sighed. “Yeah. Stings a little, but it’s not the end of the world.”
“Okay. See you at home.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Once I put some real time into my classwork, I will be.”
“You party animal,” Ruby said. “See you later tonight.”
I slipped off the stool and headed out, speed-walking the entire way to our apartment. Inside, I dumped my coat and purse on the floor and went immediately to my desk where Connor’s letters lay on top of population growth graphs and political science texts.
My heart cries out to you, from behind walls that are years’ deep and stacked tall with old memories that demand I keep quiet. They say I don’t deserve to be heard, and that happiness belongs to those more worthy. I’m scared, Autumn, that they’re right.
Tears blurred my eyes and I held the page to my heart.
“They’re not, love,” I whispered. “I hear you.”
Weston
The brilliant South Carolina sun shone in a clear blue sky, while a cool breeze made standing at attention bearable. Bravo Company stood on the field in block formation with the other graduating battalions and companies. Now that we’d made it to Basic Training graduation, I hardly felt the heat. Nor the itch of the thick wool and polyester of my blue dress uniform. My expression was empty. No more smirks. I’d pushed them all out and left them on this field.
We’d been trained within an inch of our lives—screamed at, berated, worked to exhaustion, yet the Army hadn’t been able to smother Connor’s smile. It lived in his eyes as he nudged my arm with the slightest nod of his head toward the stands. Ma, Paul, my sisters, the Drakes, Ruby and Autumn sat in the front row.
After the drill sergeants were honored, the Lt. Colonel gave a welcome speech. Then the band began its march that would parade us in front of the stands. An officer named off the companies and battalions, and their DIs as we filed past the crowd.
“Bravo Company, led by Drill Sergeant John Denroy.”
“That’s my boy!” Ma cried out among the applause. “Proud of you, baby!”
We were instructed to keep our eyes forward, heads straight while marching in time, but I let my periphery—guided by Ma’s voice—steal a glance at Autumn.
She was on her feet with the rest of our people. Her hair fell over her shoulders in ribbons of red streaked with gold. It was like looking at a beautiful sunrise after ten weeks of Arctic ice and gray.
Before we were released to the field, Sarge addressed us one last time, with respect in his voice this time. He offered his congratulations before informing us our time as Reservists was over before it began.
“Your country needs you,” he said. “And I’m proud to say, you’re ready.”
We were Active Duty now, likely to be deployed straight out of specialty training. In two weeks, we’d fly to Fort Benning, Georgia for that training, then to the Al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar. All further information was classified until arrival.
Which meant combat zone.
“It’s all happening so fast,” Connor said, his smile slipping as we walked to meet our friends and family.
“We’re soldiers now. Soldiers go to war,” I said.
I could’ve wondered at the speed in which our lives had changed direction, if my stomach weren’t so heavy with dread. Connor’s face was pale, too. The pride he’d built in himself during Basic looked shaken.
I nudged his arm. “One weekend a month, my ass.”
He laughed and the tight fear in his eyes loosened.
That’s better, I thought. All my life, Connor’s happiness was my constant. It gave me hope I could find something like it one day. I’d take his fear like a second rucksack on my shoulders if I had to.
Our people drew nearer to us on the field.
“Here they come,” Connor said. “Look at Autumn.”
Like I needed the direction. She wore a cream-colored dress with little blue flowers on it. My heart stuttered at her smile and her sun-burnished hair.
“What do I say?” Connor murmured. “I need something special after being separated for so long. Something to sweep her off her feet.”
“You ask how it’s possible for her to be that beautiful,” I said. “Tell her you have to be dreaming, and if you are dreaming, you hope you never wake up.”
Connor’s heavy hand on my shoulder jolted me. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
He stepped up his pace and Autumn broke into a run. She threw her arms around Connor’s neck. He put his mouth to her ear and said what I’d told him to say. She pulled back to look up at him, then kissed him passionately. Deeply. As if the field weren’t filled with hundreds of people.
“Oh my God, I missed you. And here you are, and you’re perfect,” Autumn was saying as I drew near them. Her small hands held his square jaw, eyes devouring his face. “I can’t stop looking at you.”
“I second that,” Ma said to me. “Your soldier, they said. Go meet your soldier.” She dabbed her eyes and sniffed. “I’ve never been more proud. My God, have you ever seen a more handsome pair of boys in your life? Though I’m not a fan of the haircuts, to be honest.”
Ma’s hand ran over the back of my head and I let her. It was the first soft touch I’d felt in ten weeks.
The second was Autumn’s hug.
With a little whoop, she flung her arms around my shoulders. I hugged back loosely when really I wanted to grab her hard, lift her off her feet. I took a quick inhale of the apple-cinnamon scent of her hair, when I only wanted to bury my face and hands in it.
“Congratulations,” she whispered against my neck. “I’m glad you’re back.” Her lips brushed my cheek, then she let go of me. Moved back to slip under Connor’s arm and let him claim her.
Mrs. Drake hugged Connor and kissed his cheek and Mr. Drake shook his hand, then pulled him in for a hug. Connor’s wide eyes met mine over his dad’s shoulder and shone with unshed tears. In all the years I’d known the Drakes, Connor’s father had never hugged his son. Until today.
Miracles do happen…
“Hey.”
I glanced down to see Ruby in front of me. “Hey.”
She laughed and rolled her eyes, then gave me a hug that I needed more than I thought.
“You did good,” she said and pretended to sock my chin.
“I survived,” I said, with an answering smile.
“All right, Ruby, hands off our brother…”
Felicia and Kimberly took their turns giving me a hug. Both of my sisters had Dad’s dark hair and brown eyes. Kimberly wore tight jeans, a short-waisted jacket, and bright blue eye shadow. Felicia wore no makeup and a baggy Sox sweatshirt. She was already starting to have the same rundown, old-before-her-years look Ma had.
“Damn, Wes,” Kimberly said, stepping back to give me a once-over. “You know what they say about a man in uniform.”
Felicia made a face. “Don’t be gross. He’s our brother.”
“He cleans up good, is all.”
“Agreed, but maybe don’t look at our own flesh and blood like you wanna hit that.”
“Maybe fuck yourself.”
Mebbe fuck ya-self.
Felicia rolled her eyes and smacked a smoky kiss on my cheek. “She’s a perv. You look great, Wes. But I’m with Ma about the haircut.”
“Thanks, Leesh,” I said. Carefully. Another minute in my sisters’ strongly-accented company would pull my own South
ie out of my mouth.
Paul came over, hand outstretched. “Congratulations, Wes,” he said. “I hope it’s not too forward, but I’m proud of you.”
I’m proud of you, son.
I shook his hand but let go quickly. “Thanks.”
The two families joined up and for a moment, we stood in silence under the afternoon sun, exchanging glances. No one wanting to voice the inevitable question, What now?
“Any word on your deployment?” Mr. Drake asked and his wife closed her eyes slowly, then opened them. “When or where?”
“Fort Benning, in two weeks,” Connor said. “Then Qatar. From there, we don’t know yet.”
“To the front? Where the fighting is?” Kimberly asked.
“We don’t know yet,” I repeated, slowly.
“But we have you both for now,” Autumn said. “For two weeks.”
It felt like nothing.
Paul put his arm around Ma. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it? Let’s enjoy the picnic and having these young men home.”
The feeling of dread lodged itself deeper. Not for the combat we might face—I was trained to deal with that. But for the first time, I couldn’t see my future. No track, no writing, no job on Wall Street or even a life in the military. After this two weeks’ of leave, there was nothing but ominous blackness.
“Weston?”
I blinked. The group had begun to walk off the field, but Autumn waited for me. A few steps beyond, Connor waited as well.
“Coming, man?” Connor asked.
“Yep.”
I caught up to them and we walked together, Connor and I, with Autumn in the middle.
At the family picnic, Sergeant Denroy morphed into a different guy. He took off his Drill Instructor personality and set it aside, like a tool he was finished using until his next company of new recruits arrived. He smiled wide and easily as he congratulated Connor and me in front of our families, as if he hadn’t spent the last ten weeks screaming that we were no better than dog shit on the bottom of his shoe.