by Scott, Emma
Autumn’s hand looked welded to Connor’s, and every time I snuck a glance at her—which was often—she was gazing up at him.
I managed to peel him from our group, and we watched our people eat and drink and talk.
“Listen, Autumn might mention the letters.”
“What letters?”
“The ones I wrote to her. I mean, wrote for you. To her.”
He shrugged. “Okay.”
“I’m just saying, she’s probably going to bring them up.”
He frowned. “Okay,” he said again, drawing the word out. “How many did you write?”
“A few.”
“How many is a few? Like, once a week?”
“More or less.” I coughed. “Or more.”
Connor’s eyes widened. “Every day?”
“Not every day.”
“Well shit, Wes, what did you say? How did you have so much to say?”
“Calm down,” I said. “I wrote what you told me to write. News and weather. And… sometimes I got in the groove and kept going. I needed the outlet after all that damn PT.”
Connor scratched his chin. “What else? Anything in there I’ll need for reference?”
Only that her happiness is the ultimate measure of yours. No big deal.
“You care about her, right?”
“Of course I do,” he said. “She stood up for me at Thanksgiving. I stood up for me at Thanksgiving. And now here we are, made it through fucking Army Basic Training, man. My dad hugged me. We’re going to serve our country and I have a girl like Autumn, waiting for me at home.”
He inclined his head to Autumn, who sat at one end of a picnic table, speaking animatedly to Mr. and Mrs. Drake who listened with warmer interest than at Thanksgiving.
“For the first time, my parents are taking me seriously,” Connor said. “And goddammit, I’ve earned it.”
“Yep, you have,” I said. “And I’ve been right there with you to see it, and that’s what I wrote about. It’s all there, stretched out over a few letters.”
A metric shit-ton of letters.
“You’re sort of like my interpreter.” Connor slugged my shoulder. “And you’re the fucking best, Wes. For real.”
He pulled me in tight, and I hugged him back.
“Look at the…what do they call ‘em? BFFs,” Ma called from the other side of the table. “For life.”
For life.
Connor rejoined the group, but I hung back to lean on the fence and stare out at the parade grounds.
Autumn joined me a few minutes later. Every muscle in my body tightened at her nearness, fighting the magnetic pull that wanted to touch her again. Hug her again, and kiss her, and that kiss would be my confession. Every word I’d written to her was hanging in the air between us; a fog only I could see. But if I kissed her, the truth of who authored those letters would come pouring out, and she would know it had been me then… that it had been me all along.
Right. And ruin Connor in front of everyone. No dice, Sock Boy.
“It’s strange, isn’t it?” she asked, her eyes on the grounds.
“What is?”
“This graduation ceremony. We’re celebrating that you’re back, and trained enough to go away again.” Her hazel eyes were crushed emeralds and gold over chocolate brown. “Two weeks. It’s so short.”
I opened my mouth to ask her how she was. Or how her father and the farm were doing. But that black hole in my gut sucked all my words away.
Or maybe I’d given them all to her already.
“Feels like everything is slipping away so fast,” she said. She glanced up at me. “You didn’t have to do this. You did it for him.”
“I did it for me too. To pay for college.”
Autumn shook her head. “You could’ve found another way. But you stuck by him.”
“He’s my best friend.”
I’d die for him.
She craned up on her toes and kissed my cheek. Cinnamon and the softness of her lips suffused me. “Most definitely not an asshole, Weston Turner.”
No, just a liar and a fraud who loves you.
Two days later, we were back at Amherst. I dropped my bags in our apartment, traded my uniform for running clothes and took off while Connor made a pit stop at Autumn’s place. I didn’t want to think about how they were celebrating our homecoming, but my imagination helpfully offered scenario after scenario; her dress being torn off, buttons clattering, kisses that were full of moans, and his hands on her body, touching her everywhere…
I ran up Pleasant Drive, toward the Amherst campus, pushing myself faster and faster, until—mercifully—the visions of my imagination burnt up. Thanks to Basic, I was in the best shape of my life. Olympic level-speed and fitness. I didn’t need a stopwatch to tell me I’d destroy all of my old times in every race, if I had the chance.
But that door was closed. I’d shut and locked it, and handed the key to the United States Army.
Sir Sly’s “&Run” played in my earbuds.
Heavy as the setting sun…
The sun sank in a cold, leaden sky as I ran along paths that wound through the green expanses of grass between buildings. Frost bearded the lawns, turning them silver, and my breath puffed in front of me like a locomotive. I sped past students on their way to class, hunched into their coats. I didn’t recognize any faces, since I never bothered to make friends. Except for Matt Decker. And Connor. I never needed more.
I count all the numbers between zero and one…
At the Creative Arts Building, I shut off the music and leaned against the wall to catch my breath. I was hardly winded, but my lungs ached with scratchy regret. I’d chosen this path, and now I was so far down it, I couldn’t turn back. My throat and chest burned with the realization that the path I’d been on, the one I questioned and sidestepped and denied for years, was where I belonged all along.
I didn’t expect Professor Ondiwuje to be around. Maybe he was teaching a class, or maybe he’d taken the semester off for sabbatical. I knocked on his office door anyway.
“Come in.”
I took off my knit cap and opened the door.
“Weston Turner,” he said, leaning back in his chair, a smile breaking over his face. “Or is it Private Turner, now?”
“Wes is fine,” I said. “Though I’ve been known to answer to Einstein, maggot, and shit stain.”
Professor O laughed. “Boot Camp must be exactly as I imagine it.”
“The movies make it look easy.”
“But you persevered. Please. Have a seat.”
“Thank you, sir.” I sat stiffly, my cap in my hands.
“When do you ship out?”
“Next week. To Fort Benning. Military Occupational Specialty training.”
“What division?”
“11B, Infantrymen. My drill sergeant said they’re the backbone of the Army.”
The professor nodded. “Infantry bears the heaviest burdens of war.”
I smiled faintly, imagining myself on a dust-choked road in unbearable heat, fighting a regime that gassed its own people. But I couldn’t see beyond the flight with our unit that would take us to Fort Benning, never mind Qatar.
Professor Ondiwuje folded his hands on his desk. His dreadlocks brushed the collar of his navy blue suit. Like Autumn, he was always dressed impeccably. His brown eyes met mine warmly, eyebrows raised.
“The last I heard from you was news of your enlistment and putting your education on hold,” he said.
“Had to. Got called up a little faster than anticipated.”
“I’d say so.” The professor wore a thin-lipped smile. “You never turned in your last assignment, the Object of Devotion poem. I was looking forward to reading it.”
“My circumstances changed, sir.”
“Quite drastically,” he said. “And I’m not sir. I’m not your commanding officer, only a poet. Like you.”
“I’m not a poet,” I said. “Not anymore.”
“That’s the
worst tragedy I’ve heard all year. Did you never even start my assignment?”
“I started it and can’t stop. I’ve been writing it since you assigned it. Stanza after stanza, crossing them out, erasing them, starting over, again and again and again. I could write it forever.”
“Stop writing it,” Professor O said, “and give it to her.”
I glanced up sharply. “Her?”
“Or him. The person you’re in love with.” He pursed his lips and cocked his head. “You think a man can look as miserable as you right now for any other reason besides love?”
“I can’t give it to her.”
“Why not?”
“She doesn’t belong to me.”
“Ah.” Professor O leaned back, his hands resting on his chest now, fingers interlaced. “Unrequited love. The most painful kind.”
Once upon a time, I’d tell him it wasn’t any such thing. But today, now, on the brink of shipping off to a future I couldn’t see, I was honest. With my idol poet. With myself. Out loud.
“Yeah, I love her,” I said. “I don’t know how it happened, or why, but I do. Something in me connects to something in her. I’ve felt it since the day we met.”
Professor Ondiwuje smiled like a satisfied cat. “That’s beautiful.”
“Hardly,” I said dryly. “She loves my best friend. Because of me.”
The professor raised his eyebrows. “How so?”
The old me would’ve evaded the question, but I’d already admitted out loud I loved Autumn. Everything after that was easy, so I told him everything.
Professor O leaned back in his chair when I was finished. “I see. You gave your gifts to your best friend. Why?”
“Because I love him,” I said. “And I want him to be happy.”
“What of your happiness? Does it have any role in this drama? Or are you still sitting in the audience, ready to sneak out the back when it’s over?”
“It’s easier for him to be happy than me,” I said. “I didn’t want to subject Autumn to my shit. My anger. My stupid baggage that makes it so that I…”
“Live every life but the one you want.”
I scrubbed my face with my hands. “I don’t know.”
“I do. A writer who chooses an economics major. A runner who ignores his gift. A poet’s heart now encased in a warrior’s armor.”
Professor O hitched forward to lean over his desk, arms folded on the mahogany. “Wes, I’m going to ask you a personal question, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You ready?”
I snorted a small laugh. “Ready.”
“What happened that made you feel you don’t deserve anything good for yourself?”
A car screeching away, my mother’s curses turning to wailing cries. And me, running down the street. My legs pumping hard and fast, even though I knew I’d never catch him. Even though he was long gone.
“Good feels out of reach,” I murmured. “I’ve had good before and I lost it.”
“So now you only reach for that which doesn’t hurt to lose.”
This introspection was growing painful, like a knife prying into my guts and heart and mind.
The heart hides itself behind the mind.
“You have one life, Wes,” Professor O said into my silence. “What you put in it is entirely up to you. I suggest you put in what you want. Especially now.”
“It’s too late,” I said.
“Is it? You’re sitting right in front of me, flesh and bone, pumping blood and breathing life. That doesn’t look like too late to me.”
We stood together, and he offered his hand.
“Be safe. My prayers will be with you.”
“Thanks.”
“Finish the poem. For your own sake. Put your heart on the page and your signature at the bottom.”
He gripped my hand tighter, his eyes holding mine intently.
“Own this love, Wes. It’s not just hers. It’s yours too.”
Autumn
Icy rain had fallen the night before and the Uber driver was cautious on the roads. Too cautious for my liking. I held Connor’s hand tight and it was all I could do to keep from pressing it between my legs as I kissed his mouth. Ravenous for all of the words he’d written to me over the last ten weeks, wanting to lick, taste, and consume them into the marrow of my bones.
“Where’s Ruby?” Connor said hoarsely, once we were inside my apartment.
“Out,” I said, leaning back on the slammed-shut door and pulling him against me. “Indefinitely.”
“God, baby, I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Need you so bad,” I said, tugging at his shirt, then tearing at it.
Connor’s mouth crushed mine. I surrendered to his urgency, letting him tear off my dress. Shocking myself by pushing him to his knees and pulling his head between my legs, needing his mouth there. Letting out a Ruby-esque moan as he brought me to a quick, skillful orgasm.
Connor rose shakily to his feet. He picked me up and carried me down the hall. “Yours?” he said at Ruby’s bedroom.
“Next one.”
He lay me down on my bed and we went at each other, crazed. No words but yes, and fuck and so good. My hands seized and grabbed at him, now all hard, defined muscle and brutal, blind need.
Finally, his body locked up tight and then imploded, and he buried his face in my neck. He panted, heaving gasps that slowly morphed into laughter as he rolled away, forearm across his face.
“Welcome home, soldier,” I said, curling into his side.
“Holy shit, that felt good.”
“I missed you.”
“I missed you, too. I missed this. Ten weeks is a long time.”
“Was it hell?”
“Nah.” Connor chuckled. “Well, that damn four-thirty reveille every day was hell. Talk about torture.”
I smiled faintly. Words from one of his letters—that I had memorized—came back to me.
There is nothing of you here…and that is harder to endure than any physical pain.
I let them go. He’d had to endure physical and mental exertion I couldn’t fathom. Not every part of his ordeal had to do with me, and yet the longing for him to express himself as he had in those letters was there, on the surface of my heart.
“I hate that you have to leave again,” I said.
“Me too. But in a weird way, I’m looking forward to it. To doing something meaningful, I mean.”
“You are. You will.”
I felt him nod. “For the first time, my parents are treating me with respect. My father…the way he looks at me. It’s different now. He hugged me. And it’s partially thanks to you. A lot thanks to you.”
“No, it’s all you,” I said. “You did this.”
“I’ve never been with a girl like you.” He cupped my cheek with his hand. “I’ve never felt this way about a girl either. I never thought something …real could be mine.”
I pressed my lips, then my cheek into his palm. “God, I love hearing this with your own voice.”
I swallowed hard and drew in a slow breath, gathering courage, feeling as if I were there again, at the edge of a cliff, ready to jump even if it meant being dashed on the rocks below. The unknown of that jump scared me, not merely for the fear Connor might betray me, but because he was going to war. The rocks under that cliff were a thousand times more jagged and tearing; a million times more unforgiving. And yet…
“Connor?”
“Yeah, babe.”
I jumped.
“I’m falling in love with you.”
I felt my heartbeat everywhere; in my breath as I lived in that moment with the silence roaring in my ears. The fear of the unknown was vibrant, but I was there, with him, and it was worth everything.
Connor sat up, gently moving me aside. He stared at me, a strange expression in his face—something between nervousness and exhilaration.
“You are?” he whispered.
Tears sprang to my eyes at his naked hope and h
appiness. I sat up, letting the sheet fall away, and pressed my lips against his shoulder.
“You know I didn’t want a relationship,” I said. “I wasn’t looking for anything after Mark, but I loved how easy-going you were. How you brought me into your circle. But then you started showing me parts of you no one else sees. Those deeper thoughts of your heart. Your poetry. And God, Connor, those letters.”
“The letters,” he said, and his fingers tightened in mine.
“I fought so hard to protect myself,” I said, “but your words broke through. You showed me your soul. I couldn’t help but fall for you. With every letter, I fell deeper and deeper.”
“You felt all that from…letters?”
“I first felt it with that poem you wrote about me. Then when we were talking on the phone, when I was in Nebraska. That night… this layer peeled away to reveal your true self. I could feel it. I could feel the real you over the line and it made me feel safe. Then things moved so quickly after Thanksgiving. I thought we’d lost each other. But then the letters started coming. I was weak reading them. All that self-protection I built fell away. You were putting your soul in envelopes and mailing it to me. Every word, I became more and more yours.”
“Mine,” he said, his voice so small against the big frame of his body.
I ran my fingers along his hair, cut short but soft under my skin. “You’re handsome and popular and wealthy. I know you worry people see only those parts of you. But I don’t. I promise you, if you were poor or everyone hated you, I wouldn’t care. I know your soul, Connor, and that’s what I love.”
“My soul,” Connor said slowly, his emerald eyes searching mine. “You’re in love…with my soul?”
“Yes,” I said, letting the word out into the air between us, naked and fragile. “I am.”
We stared a long, silent moment. Connor looked away then. He ran his hands along his head, tugging at hair that wasn’t there. Brows furrowed tight over his eyes and mouth drawn down.
Something’s wrong.
I gathered the sheet around me, my stomach twisting into knots. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he said, still far away. “It’s just…” He shook his head abruptly, and a shadow of his beautiful smile returned. “Nothing. It’s fine.”