If I'd Known

by Paige P. Horne

  “I slept, we listened to the radio, and talked about a future we were surer about now than we had ever been. We’d have a big backyard with a place to build fires. There’d be plenty of chairs for all our friends and his family to come and drink, smoke pot, and just enjoy life.

  “I wanted a front porch swing and flowers I didn’t have to tend to, because God knows I didn’t have a green thumb to be found. We’d have a few cats and a few more dogs. Travis would open his own mechanic shop, and I’d get a job doing accounting somewhere. We’d wake every morning side by side, and we’d go to bed every night wrapped up in each other.

  “Eventually, Mama would get us. She would see how much I loved him and him me, and then she’d get to know Travis for who he really is. We’d have babies and enjoy watching them grow up, while we grew old together. Life was going to be good. We had it all figured out.”

  Chapter Eleven

  September 1973

  Rain falls heavy around us, so thick we can hardly see. The windshield wipers struggle to keep the windshield clear, and thunder booms somewhere in the distance. It’s storming like crazy, but I can’t keep my hands off Travis, not even caring that he could wreck and kill us both.

  I just woke up from a nap in the back seat, and my lips are on his neck as he smokes a joint. He offers it to me, but I decline and continue kissing him and rubbing my hands across his bare chest. He is shirtless and in a pair of jeans. He hits the joint again before putting it out in the ashtray and leaving it there.

  He turns his blinker on, carefully getting over. I hardly pay attention as he stops the car and presses the flashers on. I move back, wondering what he is doing before he moves the steering wheel up and turns, grabbing me and climbing into the back seat.

  I breathe in, seeing his expression is self-possessed as he lifts my dress up. He undoes his jeans in a hurried, desperate rush and presses his lips to mine, gripping onto my thigh as he settles between my legs. I melt, breathing in love. Cars cruise past us, but the rain is still too heavy for them to see what is going on. For all they know, we just can’t drive in this. The windows fog up, and Travis grabs onto the back seat as he kisses my neck and lifts my hips. I close my eyes as he loves me, knowing I’ll never forget this––sheets of rain, the feeling of forever, and Travis Cole’s desperate love mixed with mine.

  ––––

  It’s late when we cross the Virginia welcome sign, so we drive a little farther into town in search of a hotel with plans to go to Travis’ uncle’s house tomorrow. We pull into this dump of a place, and I look over at Travis with slight concern.

  “It’ll have to do,” he says with a shrug. “Come on.”

  After we check in, I head straight for the shower. There are water stains and rust around the knobs, but it smells like bleach, so I guess it’s clean.

  I slide my nightgown over my head as I walk out of the bathroom, noticing Travis sitting on the bed with his ankles crossed watching me towel dry my hair. He offers me the joint in his hand. Hanging the towel over a chair, I walk over and lie stomach down across the bed, and this time I take it from his fingers. I’ve never smoked before, but I’ve seen him do it enough times to know how. What I didn’t know is how bad it would make me cough the first time I hit it. I give it back to him and roll over onto my back.

  “Jesus!” I sputter.

  He chuckles and says, “You’ll be bent now.”

  I blow my hair out of my face as a feeling of pure calmness takes over my body, and I sigh contently.

  “I want you to meet my dad,” he says.

  “Your dad?” I ask, looking back at him. “Do you know where he is?”

  “I’m pretty sure I can find him.” He stands up and slides his wallet into his back pocket. “He hangs out at this joint a few miles from here.”

  “You’re leaving now?” I ask.

  “Yeah, we gotta get going in the morning, so we won’t have time. I’ll be back.” He leans down and gives me a kiss, grabbing a handful of my backside as he picks up the keys off the table. “Lock the door behind me,” he says, walking over to it. “And put some clothes on.”

  About thirty minutes later, my high has worn off, and a man who kind of looks like Travis walks in the door along with his son. I’m in jeans and a flowy shirt with flowers on it. No shoes and damp hair.

  “Charlotte, this is my dad. Dad, this is Charlotte.”

  “Good to meet you,” the man says to me.

  “You, too,” I reply as I shut the door behind them. Travis’ dad walks over to the table and takes a seat.

  “Can I get you a beer?” I ask, walking over to the small fridge.

  “That’d be nice,” he replies. The two pop tops and smoke a few cigarettes as they catch up, and I listen. We share some laughs, and by the time Travis’ dad leaves, I’m pretty sure Travis is feeling right, so I offer to drive his dad back to wherever Travis got him from.

  We go to bed when we get back, and the next morning we head over to his uncle’s, excited and ready to get the ball rolling on our new planned-out future.

  ––––

  The lonely roads of Virginia twist in front of us, and I stare out the window as we pass by changing leaves. Spring is my favorite time of the year. I like to see the flowers bloom, not die, but right now, we could be in the middle of a blizzard and I’d still be happy.

  I look over at my troublemaker with a smile on my face. He stares ahead with his elbow hanging out the window and a smoke between his fingers. He looks over at me and only gives a small smirk. He’s clearly stoked about all of this, even though he doesn’t show it.

  Travis turns down a small road no two cars could fit on, and with another turn, we pull up to a house that looks like it’s seen better days. The front porch is leaning, and the screen door is wide open. The shudders are crooked and hanging, the roof looks worn from rain, but the land around it is beautiful.

  “This is it,” he says to me as he kills the engine. “I’m psyched for you to meet everyone.” That was one thing about Travis Cole—he always wanted me to meet everyone he cared about, and he always wanted everyone he cared about to meet me.

  I get out of the car, and he takes one last hit of his smoke before he tosses it and puts my hand in his. I look over to the left of us and see a big pen with chickens, and around it stands a few goats eating grass.

  The front door opens as we walk up the steps, and a big grizzly looking man with suspenders and a full gray beard says in a deep tone, “Travis Cole, you going to jail, boy. You better call Harold Taylor.” My heart starts slamming against my rib cage. Jail?

  See, I told you this wasn’t a good idea, my conscience butts in.

  Shit, my heart replies.

  Shit is right, I agree.

  “Why do I need to call my stepdad?” Travis asks, pulling me on up the steps. Did he not hear the word jail?

  “You two got everybody looking for you. Get in here and get on that phone.”

  Travis looks back at me, but his face shows no concern. I, on the other hand, am scared shitless.

  A woman stands in the kitchen at the stove, flipping pancakes, and she turns her head to look at us. “Come on and get y’all some breakfast,” she says.

  Travis looks at me. “You hungry?”

  “No, thank you,” I reply because my stomach is in knots. He squeezes my hand, and we take a seat on the couch. Travis reaches over and picks up the phone and dials a number. I don’t hear the other end, but I listen to his reply.

  “We haven’t done anything wrong,” Travis says to his stepdad. “Her mom won’t let us be together, so we came here.” Travis listens to whatever his stepdad is telling him, and afterward he says, “This is bullshit.” He hangs up the phone. With a heavy sigh, he says, “Call your mama. They’re threatening to take me to jail.”

  ––––

  “Take him to jail?” Cynthia asks. “Why would he go to jail?”

  I chuckle. “They said because Travis took me across state lines, and I
was only seventeen, it was considered kidnapping.” I roll my eyes. “The thing is, he was seventeen, too, so it was all bullshit to scare us into coming home. But we were young and naïve.”

  “What did y’all do?” she asks, looking over at me as she slides her glasses up onto her head.

  “I called my mama, and boy was she pissed. I got an earful from her and more threats about sending Travis to jail if we didn’t come home. My real mom, Beverly, lived in Indiana with her daughter and husband, and after several different phone calls back and forth and arguments, we told them we would drive there. They wanted to pick us up, but I remember Travis saying, ‘That’s stupid. We have a car. We can drive ourselves,’ so we did.”

  –––

  September 1973

  I sit in the car as Travis fills it up. It’s a cool morning in Virginia, and I stare out the open window as people come in and out of the small store. A man walks out packing a box of cigarettes against the palm of his hand, and another comes out with a cup of steaming coffee. They’re off to work. It’s just a normal day for them, but my world is crashing in around me. Just yesterday we had it all figured out, and now… Well, now I’m wondering how we’ll ever be together. Why can’t we be older? Why can’t they accept that we love each other and leave us the hell alone?

  Travis opens the door, pulling me from my thoughts. I sigh and roll my window up as he pats his box of smokes against his hand. Pulling one out with his teeth, he tosses the box onto the dash and lights it before pressing the clutch. The car rumbles to life, and we don’t say anything as he shifts it into first and pulls out onto the road.

  I look out at the trees, all various colors of orange, red, and brown. The sky is gray, matching my mood, and the clouds shift leisurely above us. Some tunes play from the radio speakers, and Travis slows the car as we come up to a four-way. He unhurriedly rolls to a stop, and I look both ways noticing we are the only ones on the road. I turn to look at him as he sits soundlessly, resting one hand on the bottom of the wheel and the other on the gear shifter with a smoke between two of his fingers. I don’t say anything, clearly seeing the wheels in his head turning. He hits his nicotine and looks at me. His golden brown eyes dance between mine, and he bends his brow.

  “I love you, Charlotte. No matter what happens, know that. Okay?”

  “O…kay,” I say apprehensively.

  He turns his head to look in front of him as a stream of smoke drifts upward from the cigarette.

  “We can go straight.” He points his smoke toward the windshield. “We’ll be at Beverly’s in a few hours.” I see his chest rise as he inhales a deep breath. “We can do what they all say and hopefully be together one day.” He clenches the steering wheel with his hand, his knuckles turning white as he brings the smoke to his lips and takes a drag. Blowing it out the window, he looks down the road. “Or, we can turn left here,” he counters as he looks back at me. “And say fuck ’em all.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “I often wonder about that day, daydreaming on how my life would be now if we would have turned left.” I exhale and rub under my chin as my pig timer goes off. “I’m baking a cake. I’ve got to go check on it,” I tell Cynthia as I lift myself out of the chair. I see her grab her bag, then stand, too.

  “Did you tell him no?” Cynthia asks as she walks beside me.

  “I did.” I nod. “I was too worried about the consequences, and I know somewhere in the back of my mind I didn’t want to hurt Mama more than I already had.

  “Surprisingly, though, when we got to Indiana, Beverly was very welcoming, more so than any of my other family. Maybe it was a guilty conscience for the decisions she made earlier in life. Maybe she was still a rebel and wanted to go against her mom, or maybe she saw that we loved each other and that was enough,” I say, shrugging. “Beverly told us they would buy us a trailer. We could live at the end of the property out by the creek at the foot of the mountain, and she would sign for us to get married as soon as Travis turned eighteen. It felt too good to be true.”

  “Was it?” Cynthia asks.

  “Aren’t most things?” I say. “Later that day, I got a phone call from my older sister, who was technically my aunt, and boy that phone call changed everything. She lit me up like I was a firecracker on the Fourth of July.”

  ––––

  September 1973

  “You should be ashamed of yourself,” Natalie says to me. “Mama has done everything for you! She raised you as her own. What has Beverly done? Nothing,” she barks. “I can’t believe you’re going to stay there with him.”

  “I love him, Natalie.”

  She huffs, “You’re only seventeen, Charlotte. What do you know about love? You need to come home. You have stressed Mama out enough. I don’t know how you could feel okay about any of this.” She talks more, but her voice fades out, and my thoughts run wild.

  I know Mama has done everything for me. There’s no telling where I would be right now if she wouldn’t have kept me. I would have never met Travis. I stare ahead at the door as she rambles on and on about how I should feel terrible and how much pain I have caused our mama.

  Her words crawl inside my skin, twisting along my veins, traveling their way straight to my heart and conscience. I blink tears away, because I know this is the point where I must choose. It’s Travis or my family.

  “Let me talk to Mama,” I say, cutting her off. I don’t need to hear this crap anymore. I wipe fallen tears away from my cheeks and sniff as Natalie gives Mama the phone.

  “Charlotte,” she says.

  “Mama, I love him. I don’t want to have to choose.” I cry, begging her to understand.

  She’s silent for a moment, and then she says, “You don’t have to.”

  “Huh?” I say in shock.

  “You come back to Florida, and I will let you two date.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I just want you home.”

  A smile bigger than Texas spreads across my lips, and I take a deep breath. “Okay.”

  ––––

  “She actually let you two be together?” Cynthia asks skeptically.

  “Well, that’s what she said,” I reply. “But she also made us agree to drive on to Indiana where my real mom lived. There, we would wait until she could get off work and could take us home.”

  “Why not just drive back to Florida?”

  “They didn’t trust us to. But I wanted that side of my family to meet Travis anyway, so it worked out.”

  A knock sounds on my front door, and Cynthia turns her head from the counter she’s now seated on.

  “It’s Maggie,” she says, jumping down.

  “There you two are!” she says, bursting in once Cynthia opens the door. She’s got a margarita in her hand with black glittery leggings on and a black shirt long enough to cover her ass that has little white poodles all over it.

  “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she says.

  “Really?” I question. “Was this your last thought?”

  I dart my eyes over to Cynthia who smirks.

  “Oh, Charlotte. I’ve come to invite you out, and this is how you treat me?” she huffs and pulls a chair out from the kitchen table. Flopping down in it, she says, “There’s a huge party going on at the clubhouse, and I need my girls. Frank will be there.”

  “Why do you need us?”

  “I’m mad at him.”

  “Then why are you going?”

  “Because I’m mad at him! Get with it, Charlotte.”

  Cynthia looks over at me with a smirk.

  “Well, what are you two standing there for? Come on,” she says, getting on her feet. “I’m just starting to get a buzz, and I don’t want to lose it.”

  ––––

  I’d normally argue with Maggie about going out, except for Travis’ birthday celebration, but after all that deep talk, it didn’t sound like such a bad idea. Who am I kidding? I’m doing this because a certain inspiring journalist is making
me feel young again. I’m hoping we can talk about her a little more now that her notebook and pen are back at my house.

  She dances with Maggie on the black and white tile squares out in the middle of the spacious room. Disco lights twirl above them, shining glitter on the walls and across their smiling faces. I sit at a tall table people-watching as I babysit my piña colada. Pieces of our conversation from earlier cross my mind, and a deep longing settles heavy in my chest. How I wish he were here with me.

  I slide down from the stool, taking my drink with me, walking past people to make my way toward the enormous wall of French bay doors that are all open, letting in the fresh salty air. Outdoor lights droop between the poles of the wraparound porch, and I spot a few vacant rocking chairs that look out toward the docked boats.

  The breeze is warm, and the water is calm. The evening air reminds me of campfires down at Taylor Creek Bridge, and for a small moment, I can feel his fingers slide between mine.

  The smell of nicotine drifts in the air, reminding me of him, and I look down the porch and see a woman sharing a smoke with her friend. I turn back to the rocking boats and close my eyes, envisioning leaves rustling from the wind and chatter from our friends below us as we sit on Taylor Creek Bridge. Sighing, I open my eyes and lightly kick my foot off the porch to rock.

  There were many other times we sat around a fire pit and talked. We used to visit his family a lot when we were older, and I think about those videos I watch on his birthday…

  Kids are running around us, and his sister walks out to their brother to help with the grill. His niece sits in a plastic chair across from us, as her cousin sits beside her.

  “Uncle Travis, have you ever built a porch?” she asks him.

  “Yes, several,” he replies.

  “Have you ever got arrested?” she asks. He looks over at me with a small smirk, still as handsome as he was when we were teenagers. He will always, always take my breath away.