Waiting For You

by Natalie Ward

  I reach for my wine and take a sip. Evie knows they’ve asked, especially later and especially after the worst disappearance. They didn’t stop with the questions that time, not until she’d come back to me four years later. I know Evie’s going to have a heap of questions for me when she reaches those letters too. And I’m not sure how I’m going to feel, sitting here watching her read those ones, or all the letters that came after that night. It was bad enough hearing what she went through during the four years we spent apart.

  “Ben?” she asks, running her fingers down my arm.

  I exhale, knowing that even though it won’t be fun, I’ll find a way to deal with it. It might not even happen tonight, although knowing Evie, it probably will. I know she won’t be able to stop reading these letters now. It’s one of the things I love about her, the way she commits to something and doesn’t ever let go of it. I’m such a lucky bastard that she made the decision to commit to me. And I know that what we have, we will have forever, no matter what. And even though her reading the other letters will be tough, I’m not going to stop her from knowing all those things either. She’s telling me her stories, I’ll tell her mine.

  “Yeah,” I say, turning to smile at her. “They did ask back then too, and it was tricky,” I admit, laughing a little. “I mean they obviously knew you were my friend, knew I’d been at your party, knew we hung out a lot. I guess they just thought we drifted apart. I don’t know, maybe that boys and girls don’t really stay friends at that age.”

  Evie laughs a little now, elbowing me in the ribs as she says, “You were always my best friend.”

  I grin at her. “I know, just like you were, and are, mine.”

  “More than Paul?” she asks, her chin raised as though she’s challenging me to a best friend-off.

  I laugh. “More than Paul, baby,” I say, kissing her.

  “I’m going to tell him that,” she says, smiling at me.

  I laugh harder. “Oh, I think he knows,” I tell her, stretching my legs onto the coffee table. Evie’s legs are still draped across my lap and I run my hand up her leg, slowly dragging her sweat pants up until I find bare skin. “And besides, I don’t get to do these kinds of things with Paul now, do I?” I whisper, sliding my hand slowly up her thigh. “So there’s no way you’re losing my best friend spot.”

  “I should bloody hope not!” she says, grabbing my hand and stopping its movement. I look at her, my smile gone as I silently ask why she’s stopping me. Evie grins back at me now, raising an eyebrow as she says, “Not yet.”

  “When then?” I ask, practically pouting like a little kid, even as the memories of our shower only an hour ago still linger in my brain.

  Evie tilts her head as though she’s thinking about her answer. She looks adorable and I use this moment of distraction to slide my hand higher. “Wait,” she says, grabbing it again. “You can have this,” she adds, removing my hand from her leg and using it to gesture to her chest. “After you answer all of my questions about each letter.”

  I grin at her. “So let me get this straight. You read a letter, you ask me as many questions as you want about it, I answer them, and then I get you however I want?”

  Evie laughs at me, playfully rolling her eyes as she nods and says, “Yep, that sounds about right.”

  “In that case, baby,” I say, using our joined hands to pull her into my lap so she’s straddling me. “You’re already behind on payments.”

  “What are you talking about?” she says, the letter falling onto the couch as she reaches up to slide her arms around my neck.

  “That’s the second letter,” I say, my eyes still on hers as I tilt my head at it. “And I still haven’t been paid for the first one yet.”

  Evie shakes her head, even though she’s smiling at me. “Cheeky, cheeky boy,” she whispers, leaning in and lightly brushing her lips against mine.

  “Yeah, but you love it, babe,” I say, before pressing my mouth in a hard kiss against hers.

  “Okay,” she eventually says, her breathing finally returning to normal. “That’s for the first and second letters, right?”

  I grin, tightening my arm around her shoulder as she lies against me on the couch, her head on my chest and her warm body pressed against mine. “Uh, pretty sure that just covers the first one actually,” I say, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “But I do have ideas about payment on the second.”

  “Uh huh,” she says, tilting her head so she’s looking up at me. “And would you care to enlighten me?”

  “Well,” I say, grinning down at her. “Do you have any more questions first?”

  Evie stares up at the ceiling as though she’s thinking about what she wants to ask me. I smile down at her; lightly trace her eyebrows with my finger while I wait.

  “So your mum and dad, they just thought we’d stopped being friends then?”

  I tuck her hair, which has now fallen lose around her shoulders, behind her ear. It’s shorter tonight, a lot shorter than yesterday. “They did. I think we probably got lucky that our parents were never really friends, them disappearing and you reappearing with a whole new set would have been a lot harder to explain.”

  “It would,” she says, nodding. “It was a good idea, telling people I was a foster child.”

  “Mmmm,” I admit, knowing that didn’t come until later. To be honest, I never really knew what to say about her changing families at first.

  “So what did you do after you worked out I was gone again?”

  I let out a deep breath as my eyes move to the ceiling. My fingers absently stroke her bare shoulder, making her shiver in my arms. I reach for the blanket that’s thrown over the back of the couch and wrap it around us. It’s warm inside with the radiator on, but it probably wouldn’t hurt on the tiny chance that Lucia wakes up and comes out here. She’s normally a good sleeper and I don’t think it will happen, but just in case.

  “Well, I wrote everything down,” I say, my eyes still on the ceiling. “Exactly as I could remember from that night and from your eighth birthday too. Although it really wasn’t much.”

  “Do you have that as well?” she asks, interrupting me.

  I glance down at her, smiling again. “Turn the letter over, babe.”

  “Huh,” she says, reaching for it on the floor. She lays it on my chest, propping herself up on her elbows as she looks at the words written on the other side of the page.

  * Disappeared when turned 8 and 12

  * Happened overnight, vanished in front of me

  * Family gone too

  * No one remembers her…I remember her.

  “So then what?” she asks.

  “Well, when I finally got up the next morning, after virtually no sleep, I went to school with a plan. This basically involved going to the library and looking up everything I could about disappearing.”

  Evie’s eyes move from the letter to my face. I watch her, smile as her fingers brush the hair back from my face. “You looked it up?” she asks.

  “I did,” I tell her. “Although unsurprisingly, I didn’t find much.”

  “What did you find?” she asks, an amazed look on her face.

  I laugh, leaning up to kiss the end of her nose. “This was in the days before the internet, remember? There wasn’t much to find. Just some science fiction theories on becoming invisible and a couple of old myths about people vanishing. It was all rubbish though, magic and old wives’ tales.”

  “So what did you do next?” she asks, settling herself against my chest again, her chin propped on her hands so she can watch me.

  “I did the only thing I could do,” I tell her. “I hung out with Paul and I waited for you to come back.”

  “It says here you were going to look for me?” she says, holding up the letter again.

  I smile as I take it from her hand, remembering these words even though they are over two decades old. God, what I wouldn’t give to be able to go back and tell my younger self not to give up, no matter how tough th
ings got, never to give up. To tell him that he hadn’t just met his best friend and future girlfriend, but the love of his life too. And I’d tell him not to waste any time either, because every second he got with her was important. Every second had to count.

  “I did look,” I say, still staring at the letter. “As much as I could anyway. I was only fourteen remember, but I’d drag Paul all over the neighbourhood, never telling him what we were really doing, only that I wanted to explore.”

  “He never caught on?”

  I lower the paper and turn back to her. “I think he probably knew I was looking for something,” I say, knowing Paul used to hassle me about Evie all the time when we were kids. The three of us hung out a lot and I guess he figured out pretty quickly that I liked her. It was all in good fun though, but he certainly never let me forget my crush on her. And I knew that when Evie wasn’t around, he wondered where she was just as much as I did. “But he never actually asked what it was about, not then anyway.”

  “Huh,” she says, letting out a slow breath, almost as though she knows we’ll get to that later. “I can’t even begin to imagine how all of this must have felt for you. Trying to work it all out, trying to find me when you had no idea where to even start.”

  “I can’t imagine how waking up in a different house with no memory of the previous day would have felt for you,” I say.

  Evie smiles at me. “It’s funny, I always thought that out of the two of us, I was the one who had it easier. I mean, I didn’t remember, I had no idea what I’d left behind. But you,” she says, pausing to brush the hair back from my face again. “You remembered everything and you were the one who was always left behind to try and explain it all. You were the one who had to come up with reasons for why this all happened to me.”

  “To us,” I say, correcting her.

  Evie smiles at me. “To us,” she repeats.

  I smile back at her. “I guess neither of us had it easy,” I say, staring into her eyes. “We just had it different.”

  “Yeah…” she murmurs, almost lost in thought.

  “So,” I say, grinning as I tighten my arm around her waist. “Any more questions?”

  Evie shakes her head as she smiles back at me. “I don’t think so,” she says.

  “In that case,” I say, eyeing the kitchen. “How about we reacquaint ourselves with the kitchen table and then you can have your next letter?”

  Evie laughs as she leans in and kisses me. “Oh, one more thing,” she says, pausing as she flicks a glance at the letter again.

  “Yes?”

  She smiles now, a cheeky grin on her face as she says, “Baby Ben really was quite adorable.”

  I burst out laughing, sliding my hand to her arse as I murmur, “I’ll show you baby Ben.”

  29 Feb 1992

  Dear Evie,

  It’s been ten minutes since you left and already I miss you. It’s so different this time around because this time everything between us is different. Not just that I knew it was going to happen or that I was with you when it did. But because you’re my girlfriend now, Evie, and…well you know, I really didn’t want you to leave.

  But you have and I have no idea how long it’s going to be before I see you again. Last time it took over a year. This time, I hope you find me quicker. I’ll be looking for you again.

  I guess I should tell you what tonight was like for me. It was different from last time, mainly because you were actually sitting beside me. I could feel your body pressed against mine, could feel your breath on my face, your lips as I bent to kiss you. It was everything I wanted to hold onto, and then I stupidly closed my eyes this time. I closed them because I was kissing you and it seems weird to kiss with eyes open…right? Anyway, when I opened my eyes, you were gone. I knew you would be, because I could no longer feel you, or your lips. One second you were here and the next, you weren’t.

  You know what was left behind though…your clothes. I kind of never expected that, and I’ll admit, I was shocked. Do you wake up naked wherever you end up? Because if you do, I’m kinda bummed I miss that, Evie. But on the plus side, you know what I now have…your underwear :)

  Don’t worry; I’m not going to do anything with it. It’s my secret souvenir, my proof that you are real, my proof that you were once sitting beside me. You’ll be with me again, Evie, I know it. Somehow, and I don’t know how to explain this, but I know we will find each other again.

  We have so far and I think that means something.

  And in the meantime, I’ll wait. I’ll wait for as long as I have to before I get my girlfriend back.

  But hurry up and find me, ok…I miss you already.

  Ben x

  P.S. I really wish I’d said this to you tonight before you left. I don’t know why I didn’t, scared I guess…but…well, here goes… I love you, Evie. A lot.

  8:38 pm - 29 February 2012

  “You kept my underwear?” Evie asks. We’re back sitting on the couch now, both of us wrapped in the blanket, our clothes still in a pile on the floor. The kitchen table is a bit of a mess, this morning’s paper now spread all over the floor after I swept it there when I carried her over to it. “Ben, seriously?” she asks.

  I grin at her, raising my eyebrows as I say, “Yep, still have them too.”

  “You do not!” she says, shocked.

  “Oh yes I do.”

  “Bullshit, prove it,” she says, shoving me off the couch.

  I laugh, shaking my head at her as I stand and pull on my clothes, throwing hers at her so she can do the same. I’m definitely not finished with her yet, and she’s paying for these questions too, but I’m not gonna strut around the living room naked either.

  While Evie gets dressed, I walk back into our bedroom and crouch down next to the bed. Underneath it, I find another shoebox that I’ve stashed under there, this one filled with more than just letters. I wish I’d been smart enough to start all of this earlier, the first time she went.

  When I walk back out to the living room, Evie has grabbed the bottle of wine from the kitchen and refilled our glasses. I watch as her eyes widen when she sees what I’m carrying.

  “Wow, how much stuff have you kept?” she asks, crossing her legs underneath her.

  “A few things,” I say, smiling as I sit down beside her.

  “Such as,” she says, reaching for the box.

  “Uh uh,” I say, gently smacking her hand. She pouts up at me and I can’t help but laugh as I lean in and kiss her. “Wait, Little Miss Impatient. I’ll show you everything when you need to see it.”

  Evie folds her arms across her chest as though she’s not sure whether she should be pissed off because I’m not showing her now, or begging me so that I will. It makes me laugh as I shake my head in a silent no. She glares at me and I stick my tongue out at her now as I lift the corner of the lid to find what I’m looking for, careful to make sure she can’t see what else is inside.

  “Ahhh, here it is,” I say, as I hold up a black pair of knickers and a matching bra for her.

  “Oh my god,” she whispers, snatching them from my hand. “You really kept them?”

  “I really did,” I say, smiling at her. “Never even washed them, either.”

  “Ugh, shit,” she suddenly says, throwing them onto the coffee table. “Ben, seriously?”

  I burst out laughing as I wrap an arm around her shoulder and pull her against me. “I know, it’s kinda gross when you think about it, isn’t it?”

  “It’s kinda pervy, actually,” she says, staring at the offending items on the coffee table.

  I laugh, reaching to grab something else from the box. “What about this, you glad I kept this?” I ask, holding a piece of paper out to her.

  Evie takes it from my hand. I watch as her smile disappears now, the shock returning as she stares at the words scrawled across the page in black marker. They are huge, but I needed to make them that way so she could see what I was asking her that night. She traces her fingers over them, silently
saying the question as she reads it.

  Will you be my girlfriend?

  “Wow,” she says. “I can’t believe you still have this.”

  “I know,” I say, pressing a kiss to the top of her head. “Although to be fair, I kind of found it by accident, I think when I was packing up my stuff to move out. But I figured it was worth keeping so I added it to the collection.”

  Evie stares up at me and I can see the look of amazement on her face. I know she was shocked when I told her about the letters tonight, that maybe she never expected I would do something like this. But I’m pretty sure that shock has only grown now that she’s seen all of this too.

  “What else do you have in there, Ben?” she whispers.

  I grin at her. “You’ll see, baby. I promise.”

  Evie shakes her head at me because she knows I’m not budging on this. “Okay then, tell me what it was like having me disappear right in front of you,” she says. “As opposed to just seeing it happened. Was it different…I mean do I just vanish?”

  I smile at her as I nod my head. “Yeah, pretty much,” I confirm. “It’s basically one second you’re here and the next…you’re not.” I pause, trying to remember exactly how that moment feels. Even though it only happened twenty-four hours ago, the feeling is quick, just like her disappearance. “It feels as though I blink and you’re gone, even if I’m sure I haven’t blinked at all. You just vanish, in a second,” I say, clicking my fingers as Evie’s hand smoothes over my leg, reminding me of how else it feels. “When I’m actually with you though, it’s even more different. I can feel you; feel your body against mine. You’re touching me and I’m touching you, so I know you’re real, I know you’re here with me. Then there’s nothing, like an emptiness that almost doesn’t feel real. The change from you touching me to not touching me is weird. I can’t really describe it, because it happens too quickly to even register it, but if I had to say anything, it’s almost like I feel you being pulled away from me and then you’re gone.”