Yardley

One Month Later

The letter that’s about to change the trajectory of our lives is clutched tight in his hand. He hasn’t let it out of his sight since he checked the mail this afternoon, reading it over and over, folding it and unfolding it, biting the inside of his lip, staring into the distance, lost in thought.

We knew this was going to happen. I have no right to be shocked at any of this. In fact, we were so sure this day would come that we’d talked about it dozens of times, crafting a plan of action, and reassuring each other that it changed nothing in regards to the way we feel about each other.

I told him I was happy for him earlier, as I fought back the wave of gut-twisting nausea with a smile plastered on my face, but only because it was the right thing to do.

It’s what you do when something good happens to someone you love.

You force yourself to be happy for them, even if it kills you.

A tranquil sea of stars rests above us in a clear night sky, an ironic contradiction to the steady beats of two very frightened hearts.

“You know I don’t want to …” Nevada begins to say, his voice almost breaking as his stare weighed heavy on me. “I don’t want to leave y—”

“—this is your future.” I cut him off. We made a plan. We both agreed to it. Now that it’s real … I can tell he’s having second thoughts and I won’t allow it. “You have to go, Nev.”

My throat strains as I swallow the words I’ll never say. I refuse to soil this moment with reminders that my father offered to pay his way through the local community college if he agreed to work for him.

Nev deserves so much more than being a department manager at a cotton factory for the rest of his life.

I could never do that to him, not when he has other options.

I love him too much to rob him of the bright future he’s worked so hard for.

When he told me about my father’s proposition, I cut him off mid-sentence and told him if he so much as thought about considering it, I would never forgive him.

“It’s just four years,” he says, though I wonder which one of us he’s trying to comfort more. “It’ll be over before we know it and then we can be together again, just like this. We’ll pick up exactly where we left off.”

He rolls to his side in the bed of his truck, the flannel-lined sleeping bag we just christened bunched beneath his arm.

He’s looking at me, but I can’t bring myself to return his gaze without tears filling my eyes. Facing him means facing our harsh reality: in three months, he’ll be gone.

Gone as in, halfway across the country.

Gone as in, meeting new friends and leaving this life behind.

Gone as in, someday all we’re going to have is a bunch of memories and quiet ponders of what might have been.

“I’ll be home for Christmas,” he says. “And summer break. And we can email and text and talk on the phone every day. As much as you want.”

My eyes burn again, so I close them and bring myself to offer a wince of a smile. I might be all of seventeen, but I’m not naïve. He’s going to college on a full basketball scholarship. He’s gorgeous and kind and intelligent, the kind of guy who lights up the darkest of rooms, the guy who’s never met a stranger.

The ultimate catch.

I’m lucky that he loved me first, but it’s unrealistic to believe he’ll be the one to love me last.

People make promises every day without thinking about the reality of keeping them. And when it all boils down to it, we’re just a couple of kids in love, blissfully unaware of the future that awaits them. I want to be optimistic, but it’s impossible to silence that realist voice in my head telling me not to get my hopes up.

“I bet there are a lot of pretty girls at Kenwood,” I say, voice trailing into quietude.

“Jesus, Yardley.” He drags his hand through his thick, dark hair. “I know what you’re getting at, and you need to stop.” Reaching for my face, he cups my chin and directs my sullen gaze to him. “You’re the only girl I ever want to be with, do you understand that?”

I don’t nod. It’s as though I physically can’t.

This isn’t me. At all. But it’s like someone opened the floodgates of self-doubt and I have no idea how to close them.

“And that’s never going to change,” he adds. “I’ll be saying it with my last dying breath.”

“I’m scared, Nev,” I say, releasing my words with a heavy breath. “I believe you. And I know how I feel. And we knew this was coming. But it doesn’t make this any easier.”

“Please. Don’t be scared.” He kisses me.

Nevada is a good man with a pure heart. He’d never intentionally hurt anyone, least of all me. But he’s never set foot outside the tiny, picturesque bubble that is Lambs Grove.

He’s never played basketball in front of tens of thousands of screaming fans with gorgeous cheerleaders winking at him from across a multi-million-dollar basketball court.

He’s never strutted across a campus where everyone treats him like some celebrity, where alcohol flows freely and beautiful girls throw themselves at him in droves.

I don’t even want to think about the rest …

“Yardley,” he says as he takes his mouth off of mine. His palm grazes my cheek as our eyes catch. “Believe me.”

“I want to,” I answer. “But things change. People change. You are going to change. I am going to change.”

Nevada sits, drawing his knees in and resting his elbows on them as he stares into the vacant cornfield.

“You have no idea how much I love you, do you?” He sighs, his hand dragging through his messy hair.

Sitting up and sliding my hand into the crook of his elbow, I press my cheek against his arm. “No, I know.”

“Then why are you being like this?” he asks, words quick and tone frustrated. “You’re not this girl.”

The squeeze in my chest that’s been there most of today begins to throb, and I can’t help but wonder if that’s how it’s going to feel after he’s gone. I wonder if I’m going to get used to it. I wonder if one of these days, I won’t even notice it anymore because it’s become such an embedded part of me.

“I won’t go,” he says, tossing the envelope to the side and marking the first time he’s let it out of his grip all day. “If it means losing you, I won’t do it. You mean more to me than some scholarship.”

“Good things are about to happen for you. Amazing things. Things you’ve worked your whole life for,” I tell him, a wistful break in my words. “I couldn’t live with myself if I kept you from that.”

“Yardley.” He slips his arm around me and pulls me against him. “I know you’re worried and you’re scared, but I promise you, I’m going to finish my four years and I’m going to come straight back here and marry you. I’ll fix up that big farmhouse just off the highway that you always say you love. We’ll have a couple of kids. We’ll be happy. It’ll be you and me, just like we always planned.”

“I’d love that.” I breathe his cologne into my lungs, realizing that it’s my favorite scent in the entire world, more than red roses and line-dried laundry and the warm, lived-in scent of my grandmother’s house that always makes my heart so full. “I’d love that more than anything.”

“We can do this. We can make this work. But you have to be all in.” Nevada pulls me into his lap, his hands resting at my hips and a determined expression painting his handsome face. “I love you. I promise you I’ll never love anyone else. And I’m coming back for you. I swear on everything, Yardley.”

Drawing in a breath of humid June air, I meet him in the middle. “I love you too. And I’ll wait for you.”

“Promise me,” he says, cupping my face. “Promise you’ll wait for me. That you’ll never love anyone else.”

I nod. “I promise.”

I’m not a cynic by nature, but if I had a nickel for every tear one of my friends shed on my pillow after their boyfriends ran off to college and broke every last promise they ever made … let’s just say I’d be driving a shiny new Mercedes right now.

But I want to believe he’s different, that what we have is different.

I want to believe it with every fiber of my being.

Nev cups my face, and the warmth of his lips follows. I could drown in his kisses, each one feeling as new as the first one, sending electric shockwaves throughout my body, igniting the deepest parts of me. His touch breathes life into me, and I can’t help but question what’s going to happen when I won’t have these hands and this mouth at my disposal.

Our kiss ends with a blinding flashlight in our faces.

“Got a call about trespassing.” We glance over to find a local deputy standing on the other side of the truck gate, his pale brown uniform glowing in the moonlight. I hadn’t even heard him pull up. “You two lovebirds know this is private property, right?”

“Sorry, Officer.” Nevada pulls his t-shirt over his head, and I thank my lucky stars that I had the forethought to get dressed the second he climbed off me a little bit ago. He slides out of the truck bed and turns to help me.

My cheeks are on fire, and I can’t bring myself to make eye contact with the cop.

“If I get another call about you from Jerry Tate—” he begins to say.

“We won’t be back,” Nevada says. “You have our word.”

I make my way into the passenger seat and crank the window down, desperate for a cool breeze. Nev gets in a minute later, after respectfully letting the cop finish his lecture.

“Well, shit.” He presses his forehead against the steering wheel before starting the engine. The cop waits for us to leave, his blinding headlights pointed in our direction and glaring through Nev’s dirty windshield.

“It’s okay,” I say, though I can’t hide the disappointment in my voice. “We’ll just have to find someplace else.”

A moment later, Nev’s truck bounces along the knotted and pitted field until we exit through the open gate for the last time and hit our familiar stretch of dusty gravel road. Once we turn onto pavement, the cabin of the truck becomes quiet. All that’s left is all the excess noise in my head. Worry. Doubt. Fear.

But his hand finds mine and he gives it a squeeze, and I remind myself that in this moment, we still have each other.

And this moment is all we have.

The future has yet to be determined.