Autumn
Fort Jackson
South Carolina
Feb 19th
Autumn,
We are seven weeks in and the physical pain of PT is imbedded in our muscle memory. Sarge’s insults are the music by which we march. Softness. Warmth. Beauty. They’re mirages in the distance, where you are. There is nothing of you here, but what I create in my mind and memory, and that is harder to endure than any physical pain. Not holding you hurts my hands more than having my palms scraped raw on the ropes. Not hearing your voice cuts deeper than any insult. Boot Camp has stripped me down to the bone, where what I feel for you is stark and naked, and the distance between us is longer than the last mile on the last run of the day.
And it hurts so bad.
“Auts,” Ruby said, loudly.
I blinked and looked up from the letter in my hand. “Sorry, what?”
“I said, let’s go to Yancy’s. I need to get out of this apartment. Dress up a little. Drink a lot.”
She’d broken up with Hayes over the Christmas break, while I was in Nebraska visiting my family.
I glanced at the mound of work on my table, ignored in favor of Connor’s latest letter. I’d read it ten times, just like the others. He held nothing back and my eyes—and heart—couldn’t keep from drinking the words in, over and over.
“Give me five minutes,” I told Ruby, my gaze sliding back to the page.
I feel invincible when I think about you. Bottomless. The more you take of my heart, the more I have to give.
“Good lord, woman, I can see the stars in your eyes from here,” Ruby said. “What, is that another letter from Connor?”
“Yes, his tenth.”
“Actual snail mail. I can’t remember the last time I got a real letter.”
“It feels more intimate and personal,” I said. “He was so distracted and stressed about going to Boot Camp but now…”
My gaze was drawn back to the words.
These letters are only placeholders until I see you. A game of words, but I know we’ll suffer if we play it too long…
“He was probably nervous about Basic Training,” Ruby said. “I saw Full Metal Jacket. They’re being called pansy-asses a hundred times a day and being worked to the bone.” Ruby shook her head. “On the plus side, he’s going to come back ripped.”
I smiled a little and set the letter down. “It’s deployment that scares me.”
“Try not to worry. They could be sent anywhere. My friend’s cousin was just deployed. War’s in Syria. They sent him to Japan. And they’re staying together. That’s something.”
“That’s Senator Drake pulling strings.”
Ruby patted my hand. “It’s something.”
I nodded but with every one of Connor’s beautiful letters, I felt my heart linking tighter to his, which made the thought of deployment—anywhere—harder and harder to take…
Ruby reached for her coat. “Come on, let’s get out. I need a stiff one.” She winked. “And a strong drink too.”
At Yancy’s, Ruby ordered a cranberry vodka for herself and a pear cider for me. We set up at a small table near the pool tables and dart boards. Guys were playing at both. None of them were from Connor’s circle of friends. “The Night We Met” by Lord Huron played on the sound system.
“Talk to me, Goose,” Ruby said. “Distract me from my post-Hayes haze.”
“I have too much distraction,” I said. “I haven’t taken one damn step toward my project. My grades are slipping. And when I’m not worrying about Connor and Wes, I’m worrying about the farm. At Christmas, I made Travis tell me the truth about our finances.”
Ruby made a wincing face. “And?”
“We’re in the hole for more than thirty grand, and this year’s harvest isn’t going to be as profitable as last.” I rubbed my eyes. “It feels like everything is falling apart. Even you and Hayes broke up.”
“It was fun while it lasted,” Ruby said. “I never go into anything with expectations, so I don’t feel the burn.”
“Meanwhile, I did the exact opposite. Everything with Connor happened exactly as I feared—and hoped—it would. The intimacy made me invested, and now I’m beyond invested.”
Ruby reached across the table to touch my hand. “Are you falling in love with him?”
I shook my head miserably. “I don’t know what to think. Or feel. For so long, we were up and down. For months, it was like he was afraid to be himself around me without a buffer. But on the phone the night Dad was sick, and now when he writes, I get a purer sense of who Connor is. It sounds cheesy but it’s like looking through a window he keeps shuttered up tight. Looking into his soul. And after Thanksgiving, I know why he keeps that side of him so guarded. His parents and brother refuse to let him be himself. They stifle him. So he covers it up with jokes and smiles.”
Ruby cocked her head. “Is that a yes?”
“I think it might be,” I said, tears filling my eyes. “But I’m scared. A lot. Not only because my heart is on the line, but because there’s actual danger here. Real, life-threatening risk. The stakes are so much higher. Life-changing.”
Or life ending.
I shivered and pulled my hands from my glass.
“And it’s worse, because I could lose Weston too.”
“Wes?” Ruby wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t realize you were close.”
“We have good talks. I like him. I can be myself around him.”
My truest self.
The thought slipped in like a cat through a cracked door. The same way the memory of that damn kissing dream came to me, sometimes bringing along little details like our hands locked on the bakery table, or our private jokes, or the song “Ocean Eyes” that seemed as if it were written about him.
Dreams don’t mean anything. We’re friends. We have history. I can care about him and still love Connor.
The thought felt…wrong somehow. As if it scratched at the truth but wasn’t all of it.
“I can’t be with Connor and not have Wes in my life, too,” I said, shooing the errant thought away. “And I’m scared I could lose them both.”
“It’s going to be okay,” Ruby said. “They’ll come back from Boot Camp and you’ll have some time with Connor. Enjoy it. See what happens. Take it one day at a time.”
I forced a smile. “I should get back and try to get some sleep. Or some work done. Stay if you want.”
“We just got here,” Ruby said, pouting.
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m not feeling it.”
Ruby pursed her lips again. “I see Lisa Dean over there with some people.” She inclined her head to a booth in the corner. “I can hang with her, since you’re ditching me so cruelly.”
I hid my small sigh of relief in my coat collar. “Are you sure you’re okay? About Hayes?”
She sighed. “Yeah. Stings a little, but it’s not the end of the world.”
“Okay. See you at home.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“Once I put some real time into my classwork, I will be.”
“You party animal,” Ruby said. “See you later tonight.”
I slipped off the stool and headed out, speed-walking the entire way to our apartment. Inside, I dumped my coat and purse on the floor and went immediately to my desk where Connor’s letters lay on top of population growth graphs and political science texts.
My heart cries out to you, from behind walls that are years’ deep and stacked tall with old memories that demand I keep quiet. They say I don’t deserve to be heard, and that happiness belongs to those more worthy. I’m scared, Autumn, that they’re right.
Tears blurred my eyes and I held the page to my heart.
“They’re not, love,” I whispered. “I hear you.”