The Understorey

The team was required to be at the stadium an hour before the game but I got there five minutes late because the traffic was already horrible getting into the stadium parking lot. It looked like at least two thousand people from the nearby towns decided to make the game their Friday night. No pressure Elliott…. On all accounts. I walked into our locker room and saw all my gear piled into a locker with my name printed on a piece of paper tacked to a broken nameplate.



“Thanks for showing up Gray,” Coach Miles said sarcastically.



“I’m sorry Coach. I have no excuse.”



“Lombardi time, Gray! If you’re not fifteen minutes early, you’re late!”



“I know coach. I’m sorry.”



“Well? Don’t just stand there like a bump on a log! Get your gear on!”



Half an hour before the game we prayed as a team and were out on the field warming up. I tossed the ball back and forth with the team manager. The stands were filling up and there was still no sign of Jules. I’m not gonna’ lie, I was starting to get pretty frustrated. I searched row by row, time after time, and nothing. I eventually caught my parents’ eyes on the fifth row toward the middle and we waved to each other. Hi mom. Hi dad. Ohhh, Yup. I see you there. My dad deliberately and dramatically tucked his hands inside the pockets of his sweatshirt. Yup, I’ll keep my hands warm dad. I nodded. Sheesh.



We only had five minutes before the game and I was beginning to give up on Jules coming. I was starting to feel foolish. If she hadn’t found the note it was going to be embarrassing picking her up for our library date the next day because I would have had a heck of a time trying to steal it back. I especially didn’t want to think about how embarrassing it would be if she had found it and decided not to come.



Suddenly I wasn’t so sure of what I had felt earlier that day. That was only a fleeting thought. My subconscious casting shadows on the truth like a flock of birds trying to drown out the sun. It never works. There’s never enough birds to manage the cause, the sun always finds the earth. I knew I’d have to give into the catch twenty-two and just come out and ask her about it before we even traveled to Charleston the next day and I dreaded that conversation. I was wishing I had never put the stupid note in the bag in the first place. I thought I was being so clever. I tried to stop thinking about it. I needed a distraction or I was going to lose the game. I threw on my iPod and started Muse’s ‘Map of the Problematique’. It always pumped me up before a game.



It was working. I was only starting to refocus when I looked up and through the corner of my eye I saw tall a girl with long dark hair floating behind the bleachers.



“Oh my God!” I said out loud, gulping down my shock and dropping my hands to my side.    “Well, she definitely got my note.” Butterflies ensued.



She was walking across the cement underneath the bleachers and I could see her face through the gaps beneath the seats. She finally turned onto the ramp leading into the stands and boy did she ever prove to be the distraction I had asked for. She wasn’t wearing anything close to what she had worn to school that day. My jaw went slack and from the corner of my eye I could see my mom following my stare. When she saw Jules she laughed at me and shook her head but I barely noticed, too absorbed in Jules’ every step.



Her hair was down, as usual, and met her waist but this time it was straight as corn silk, her bangs across her forehead instead of swept to the side. At the top of the ramp the wind caught it and blew it behind her. It brought out the outline of her flawless face. She had done her makeup a tad bit darker for the evening and her lips were a dark red. She had a cashmere sweater dress on that covered almost every inch of her, from the scoop neck that met her collarbone all the way down to her knees but hugged her body like it was painted on. She wore her flat brown moccasins again that met the middle of her shins. If there were any doubts in any of the minds of the guys in the stands that she was drop dead, this outfit would erase them all.



She kept her hands at her side until she reached the bleachers but lifted them slightly to balance herself as she stepped onto the first bleacher raising her hemline slightly and making me forget where I was. It left me wondering how anyone could dress so modestly yet be so astonishingly beautiful. It permanently altered my definition of sexy. Once she sat, she slowly looked across the track separating the field from the bleachers and smiled a devilish smile. You’re in trouble Jacobs, I thought and smiled back.



She blew me a kiss and my heart literally stopped beating. I caught it, to be goofy, and tucked it into a pretend pocket. She laughed and I pointed toward my family a little to her right and up four rows. She smiled and nodded, stood and walked up the bleachers toward my parents.



Each step she took she passed by at least a dozen classmates. I furrowed my brow and took note of all the boys who would be joining Sawyer Tuttle on my enemies list. Tut’s name was now on their twice. You can close your mouth now Tut.



My family stood and I watched as she shook my dad’s hand and hugged both my mom and Maddy before squeezing past them to sit next to my sister. My dad gave me a wink. Please don’t embarrass me dad.



“Done ogling Julia Jacobs?” The team manager asked me.



“Are you?” I joked.



He just smiled and passed the ball back to me. It was time to get my head in the game and now that I had both of my own personal muses, that’s exactly what I did. I was preparing myself for the win that came our team’s way.



When the game was over, the crowd was on their feet and celebrating our first victory. The drum line was doing their finest and it really revved up the team and crowd. I ran off the field over to the fence near Jules and thread my fingers through the chain link.



“Yoko!” I yelled at Jules.



Her back was turned to me but when she heard my voice she turned and smiled before hopping down the stairs to meet me. She bent to sit on her ankles, one knee resting on the concrete and wound her fingers through the fence over mine. I readjusted mine to rest on top of hers and kept them gripped tightly. Our charge lit up the fence like a net of burning ember.



“You did well Gray!” She yelled over the drums.



“Thanks miss Jacobs! I’m really very glad you came tonight!”



“Yeah, well...........I got your note!” She smiled letting it touch the corners of her bright eyes.



“Oh yeah? Huh! Thought we’d need to talk about it but I can feel it won’t be necessary!”



“I don’t think it will Gray! I can tell you feel the same way!”



I smiled.



“The exact same way!”



I jumped onto the concrete barrier that separated the track from the stands and leaned my stomach against the fence. She stood and we met face to face.



I leaned into her ear, “I love you Julia Jacobs.”



I felt her grin against my cheek, electrifying my face.



“I love you Elliott Gray,” she whispered.



I pulled my face from hers and readied myself to kiss her. We both closed our eyes but when I expected to feel her warm lips on mine, instead, I felt a million hands pull me from the fence and carry me off the field. I stared back at her and shrugged my shoulders with a crooked smile. She only laughed. There would be a time for our first kiss and if I had anything to say about it that time would be very soon, like the next day.



I picked Jules up for our study session at the library in Charleston at two o’clock. I was really nervous. I knew her parents but never at a time that I found their daughter to be the most handsome woman I had ever known. Sorta’ added a pressure that hadn’t ever been there before. I tugged on my t-shirt and wrinkled cardigan before bounding up the steps to her front door. I should really invest in an iron. My eyes were tired from the game the night before and I was forced to wear my dark rimmed glasses again which made me incredibly self-conscious despite Jules’ earlier rants. I rang the door bell and looked down at my feet while I waited. Should have cleaned my Converse, I thought right before her dad answered. My blood pressure spiked to an unhealthy level when he signaled for me to step through the door.



“Mr. Jacobs” I said and offered my hand.



He took it and shook it with a firm squeeze. I returned the pressure in kind. My dad had always told me that was the only way a man knew if a new acquaintance was a real man or not.



“Julia!” He yelled down the long hall next to the front door. Jules’ room, I mentally took note. “Elliott Gray is here!” He yelled up the staircase. For Jules’ mom, I assumed. I’m not going to lie, she scared me a little. She was menacing looking with her black hair and pale skin. Jules looked just like her but somehow on Jules it looked fairy tale-like.



“Come. Sit down in here with me,” he said.



He gestured to a little sitting room that faced the dark, wide winding wood stairs. The house had to have been at least a hundred years old, same as mine, same as most of the homes in Bramwell but The Perry House, The Jacobs’ home, was one of the most well preserved. It had all the original dark wood throughout. The sitting room he led me into had a massive cast iron fireplace, probably original as well. I wondered what it must have been like for Jules growing up around the Victorian furniture as uptight as was in that home. It reflected her mother’s personality to an exact point. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful and matched the home perfectly but I would have felt stifled there.



I lived in a farmhouse from the same era but it was a lot more laid back in its architecture as well as my mother’s taste in furniture. I suspect it proved for a lot more comfortable childhood in comparison.



Just to give you an idea, if you went back in time to the late eighteen hundreds to a moment where the first owners of our homes were still about their houses, you’d see a silk clad woman with layers of heavy expensive fabric and a tightly brimmed hat piled high with feathers at Jule’s house and a simple cotton dressed woman with a white apron at mine.



Not much had changed since that era because that was still the difference in social standing between Jules and myself. Jules had jumped the tracks, so to speak. Her father and mother were executives at the company who owned the coal mine my dad worked at and my father was only a miner.



We were from two different worlds, but Jules never acted as such. I knew her mother well enough and I also knew Jules had not gotten that personality trait from her so I reasonably assumed she got it from her father and thus felt very comfortable sitting across from him at that moment.



“Mr. Jacobs, my mom made these for Mrs. Jacobs.”



I handed him the white cardboard box full of homemade cookies my mom had wrapped with a pale blue ribbon. She said that it was impolite to show up to someone’s home you’ve been invited to without a gift. I didn’t know a thing about any of that stuff and really didn’t care but I didn’t argue with my mom. Refusing would have gotten me a slap to the neck.



“Wow!” He said, peeling open the lid. “These look incredible!”



He took one out and began to eat.



“Don’t tell Ann you saw me eating this in here,” he grinned propping his feet up on a very expensive looking coffee table.