Chapter7
When Jake finally did force himself to leave, he felt as though he was walking through a fog. He made his way through the town, watching all the locals go about their morning rituals. Some sat in a little coffee shop, others were leaving the corner store with newspapers tucked under their arms. To all of them, it was a normal day. To him, though, it was the darkest day of his life. He tried to focus on anything but the pit of loneliness growing within his stomach.
It was the same feeling that he had felt as a small child, so many years ago, before he met his foster brothers. The pain of it seemed as though it would tear him apart at the seams. When he finally got to his bike, he just started driving like hell. Part of him thought that the pain would ease whenever he crossed the town line.
It didn't, though. The further he got from her, the more the pain tore through him. It was as if the very cells in his body were trying to pull away from him and fly back to her. He pushed the gas pedal the whole way to the floorboards, forcing himself to honor his best intentions and stay away from her.
He never usually drove recklessly. After all, it was his role to fly under the radar. Now, though, it was the only way to pull himself away from her. Part of him hoped that he would wreck and spare himself the loneliness and pain of a life without her. Somehow, though, he made it safely back to the hotel a few towns over where the rest of the guys were waiting for him.
He couldn't bring himself to go in right away. He sat there in the shadow and pictured Savannah's face. The sweet expression on her face after their lovemaking was something that he would hold close to his heart all the days of his life. He knew that he needed to come up with a reason for canceling the job to give to his brothers.
He had never lied to them before, but he wasn't sure that he would share his memories of her with them. They were too private and personal to him. The guys would never understand. They had all had their share of women, of course. A few of them even had steady girls in a few of the towns they through often on the way from one town to another. Mostly, though, they were bartenders and the connections they shared were only physical.
While he couldn't deny the physical aspect to their relationship, she was so much more to him. She was imprinted upon his heart. It wasn't being inside of her that he craved most, though the desire to enter her sweet folds again was intense. What he wanted most, though, was to feel her in his arms, listening to the sweet sound of her heartbeat as she lay sleeping.
He finally forced himself to go in to the hotel and face his brothers. It wasn't because of a desire to reunite with his brothers though. It was the fact that if he stayed on his bike for a moment longer, he knew he would restart the engine and race off towards Savannah. If he did that, though, he was fairly certain he would be unable to leave her again.
“You're back earlier than I thought," his eldest brother Brian said when he entered the room.
"The town is perfect but now isn't the time," he answered, shaking his head as he spoke.
"Not the time?" Peter, the getaway driver of the group, asked in disbelief. Jake understood his skepticism.
In all the years they had been doing this, he had never once recommended postponing a job. They had walked away from a few when he realized the smooth get away they needed wasn't possible, but he had never delayed one. He knew he should have said the town layout wouldn't suite their purposes. Jake couldn't, though, because he needed the possibility of returning in the future. He needed to know that he could return to Savannah one day.
"I got there just as their yearly festival was ending. It would have been the perfect cover," he explained, though his brothers knew him well enough to see that there was something else going on behind his facade.
"Can't we make it work?" Brian asked, always reluctant to walk away from a job they had invested time in.
"I don't think so. I think we need to hold off," he said, plopping down in a chair across from Brian.
"You look like hell," his younger brother Reese said bluntly.
"I didn't get much sleep," he answered, running his hand through his hair and taking a deep breath after he spoke.
"Really? What was her name?" Peter said, a leering smile on his face.
"It wasn't like that," Jake said, feeling himself blushing.
"There was a girl then," Peter said triumphantly.
"Scout, did you fall for a girl?" Brian asked, looking shocked. Jake understood his surprise. He had never cared for a girl before. All those who had come before Savannah were one night stands and quick flings.
"A small town girl?" Reese said, clearly fishing for more details.
"This has nothing to do with her," Jake said defensively.
"Who was she?" Brian asked, knowing Jake wouldn't lie to him.
"Someone special," he answered honestly, unable to find better words to describe who she was to him. He wanted to shout from the roof top that he had found his love, but he knew his brothers would only mock him for that kind of devotion to a girl he had met on one of their jobs.
"Really?" Reese asked, surprised to hear that she was more than a fling.
"But that has nothing to do with this. The recon is done. We just need to wait," he said, doing his best to reassure them that he didn't back away from the job to protect her.
"You don't want to go back and do a little more recon?" Peter said with a deliberate wink.
"Yes, a little more recon will be good for you," Brian said, laughing as he rose from the table. Clearly, his brothers were amused that he had found a woman of real interest to him.
"No," he said, shaking his head and fighting the temptation to return.
"No?" Peter asked in shock.
"If I go back to her, I may never come back," he said, his mind and his heart miles away.
"Was she that special?" Reese asked, looking at him as though he was telling him a fairytale.
"Yes," he said wistfully.
"Then staying away is the best thing you can do," Brian advised, looking concerned.
"Feelings will only get you hurt," Peter said, putting an arm around his shoulder to provide what comfort he could. After all, he was perhaps the only one among them who understood what he was going through. He had left a high school sweetheart behind when they began their life of crime. She went on to marry and have a kid with a boy she met in college and Peter had never quite gotten over it.
"Or worse," Reese said with a smile.
"Arrested," laughed Jake. It was their inside joke. They always said that nothing was worse than being arrested, not even death.
"Where to next?" Jake asked when they had all stopped their chuckling.
"Far away from this girl and everything that she has tumbling around in your brain," Brian said with a knowing look.
"You're right," Jake admitted, telling himself it was for the best.
"Aren't I always?" Brian said as only an older brother could.
"When do we leave?" he asked, knowing that if he didn't put hundreds of miles and a few state lines between him and Savannah, he would lose his ability to stay away from her.
"Dawn," Brian said, leaving no room for debate.
"Where to?" Peter asked.
"Kentucky," Brian answered without hesitation.
"Really? What about Florida?" Reese asked. Still barely more than a kid, he always pushed for the states with a coastline. He loved the ocean.
"No, things are still too hot there for us. That last job didn't go smoothly enough," Brian said, his tone ending all debate.
"Alright, Kentucky it is," Jake said with a nod.
On their way to the next job, Jake ducked in to a little shop while the rest of the boys of the boys went to grab pizza and beers. He told them he needed to go to the pharmacy so that they wouldn't ask questions about him heading off on his own.
There, inside the store, was every kind of stationery a person could imagine. He had never been in such a store before nor had he considered going into one, but he had been serious about his request to write to Savannah. He didn't just want to scribble his words to her o notebook paper stolen from their cheap hotels. He wanted his letters to her to be special in every way possible. He wanted her to know, even before she opened the envelope, that the letter was from him.
The old woman behind the counter looked at him strangely, but soon approached him. "Is there something I can help you with my boy?" she asked, looking at him skeptically.
At first he considered telling her that he needed no assistance, but another glance at the multitude of options left him feeling overwhelmed. "Yes Mam," he said with his brightest smile and most charming voice. "My girl and I are going to be apart for a long while. I want to write to her and I want to do it right."
"Well that might just be the sweetest thing I have ever heard," she gushed as she grinned from ear to ear. "She is a very lucky young lady."
"No Mam, I'm the lucky one. I will never in my life understand what a sweet, wonderful girl like her saw in me, but I plan to make sure she never regrets her decision," he said, meaning every word he said.
"With such a handsome face and such a sweet heart, I don't see how she ever could," the woman said, giving him the knowing look of a woman who had once had a young love of her own.
"I hope not, but distance can do funny things to the heart. I couldn't make her any promises or commitments before I left her. All I could do was swear I would carry her in my heart," he said, thinking sadly make to the moment he had watched Savannah walking away from him.
"Most girls go their whole lives without a promise as sweet as that one," the woman said, placing her hand gently on his arm when she spoke.
"She deserves something more. I wish I had not had to leave her," he answered, his hand clenching at the memory of the pain he caused her.
"How long has she been your girl?" the old woman asked, her eyes gleaming.
"Just a matter of days. I know how strange it sounds, but I loved her the moment I heard her sing," he explained, taking some comfort in being able to discuss his feelings to openly. The guys would never have understood but this woman seemed to understand everything he was sharing with her, though he couldn't understand how.
"Do you see that picture up there?" she asked, gesturing to a faded image, framed on the wall. In it, a beautiful girl, no older than 20, with curly hair and the brightest smile he had ever seen, stood in the arms of a man in a World War II uniform. The man wasn't looking at the camera. He was looking down at the girl as though she was his entire world.
"Yes, Mam," he said, not quite understanding what she was getting at.
"That was taken on the night I met my husband. The very next day, he shipped off for the war. Everyone said I was crazy, holding out for a man I had known for just one day. It didn't matter to me one bit. I knew that Nelson was the one from the minute we danced together. The whole time he was gone, he wrote me letters. I couldn't even begin to tell you how much they meant to me.
By the time he got back, I was even more in love with him than I thought humanly possible. Those letters, you see, kept us connected. We got married the very month after he got back and we were happily married for 60 years before he passed away," she said, tears beginning to form in her eyes.
"I'm so sorry for your loss," Jake said, not sure what else to say. The thought of having that kind of lifetime of love with Savannah was all that he truly wanted in life.
"Don't be sorry. I got to live a lifetime with my best friend and my true love and it all started with those letters. That's why I opened this shop," she said, looking fondly at the picture on the wall and Jake knew that her thoughts were with her husband.
"Thank you for sharing your story with me," he replied.
"And thank you for sharing yours with me. Now, let us find just the right stationary. After all, I want to be a part of the story you tell your grandchildren fifty or sixty years from now," she said, patting his arm encouragingly.
"I promise, I will always remember you when I tell the story of my love for her," he answered.
"Well then, in a way my love story with James will live on through the two of you," she whispered as tears welled in her eyes.
"Yes, Mam," he nodded, overcome with emotion of his own.
It took them nearly an hour to find stationary that they both deemed perfect. It was cream colored and thick. It felt very formal and, according to Esther, it was masculine without trying too hard. She told him it was classic and that it would last a lifetime. The thought of Savannah keeping his letters with her throughout her life, tied with a ribbon as Esther desired herself doing while James was away, was almost too appealing. In the end, that was what sold him on it.
As she was wrapping up his purchase, she pulled a fine pen, made of carved wood, from her display case. "I want you to have this," she said with an encouraging smile.
"I couldn't accept that," he answered, though he appreciated her gracious offer.
"Don't be silly. Take it as a gift," she insisted.
"I couldn't. I'm just a stranger to you," he said.
"My boy, you have given me quite a gift today. You have allowed me to taste again, if only for the afternoon, the sweetness of young love. Let me do this for you," she said as she reached out and took his strong hands in her frail ones.
"Thank you," he said, squeezing her hands and smiling warmly at her.
Esther sent him off with enough stationary to write to Savannah for a year and one very fine pen. The moment he got back to the hotel, he didn't return to his foster brothers. Instead, he found a service ladder that led to the roof. There, as he watched the sunset, he began his first letter to Savannah and the thought of being connected to her again, even if only by ink and paper, warmed his heart.