My True Love Story

He’ll Be Somewhere in the World

Day 1,972ish

I’m travelling home from college, but I’m not really behind the steering wheel of my car. Really I’m travelling through the years of my life. Most of the roads have nothing but golden fields on both sides, and few other cars to distract me so there’s nothing but time for quiet contemplation, for my life’s soundtrack to pour out of the speakers, for questions about what the future holds.
My mind flashes back to a week ago, to a conversation that could change the past and the future. It was a conversation bigger than, “Who was that guy you were with?” Bigger than “Will you write to me?” Bigger than “Can you forgive me?”

It’s another weekend of shuffling around dates with two boys back home. I spend a sunny Saturday with Ryan, still amazed at how his apparent sincerity is holding up. In the back of my mind, I keep waiting for him to blow me off for some other girl. I steel myself against it, making sure the walls are strong enough that it won’t hurt much if he does it.
“Aim, there’s something I need to tell you about.”
“Okay.”
His voice has an anxious quality to it. It’s different than I’ve ever heard from him. I can’t quite predict what’s coming, but my caution meter is in the red zone.
“You know how when you’re getting your mission papers ready, you have to go in for a physical?”
“Yes…”
“Well… they found something unusual when I went in for mine. There was an abnormality and there’s… well, there’s a possibility that it could be cancer.”
This is not what I expected. This isn’t even in the realm of anything I could’ve predicted. Ryan’s too strong for fear, too untouchable for sickness. My eyes grow small, the world grows too big in an instant, and my heart grows tight in my chest.
“Don’t worry! It’s gonna be just fine. It’s in a place where they can operate. There’s a surgery scheduled and uh, they’re just gonna get rid of it.”
“Get rid of it? But they don’t know that it’s cancer?”
“No, they can’t really know until they remove it and test it.”
“Ryan…”
“I don’t see any way around explaining it to you. I mean, you need to know, but it’s kind of a forbidden topic.” He sucks in a breath, an almost embarrassed breath, and I find I’m blushing a little and don’t know why.
He says, “They suspect… testicular cancer. Do you know what I mean?”
“Oh man. In my family we don’t even say the word ‘cancer’. We call it ‘the C-word’ when we’re forced to talk about it at all, and now here we are putting the C-word and the T-word together,” I force out a quiet, nervous laugh.
“I know that this is awkward,” he says. “I know that we don’t normally discuss anatomy and you may not be familiar with my unmentionables, but… they’re pretty familiar with you.” Okay. Now he’s being shocking and funny and now I really am blushing.
“Oh! Ryan. Don’t deflect right now. Please do not deflect right now! I’m worried about you!”
“I know. That’s why I’m deflecting,” he says with a confident smile.
“What does- Is- is your family okay with all of this?” I ask.
He’s quiet too long before he says, “Yeah, they’re fine. The doctors are gonna take care of this.”

I pressed for more information after that. I was able to coax him into admitting that his family is worried. That his Mom has shed some tears. Moms can’t avoid tears when they think of their babies and the C-word. Families can’t avoid falling to their knees and sending up desperate and fervent pleas when they think of their loved ones and the C-word.
I’ve been sending up some careful requests since then, myself. Ryan has been the subject of my prayers for a long time. Somewhere around 1,972ish days. First I was a young, foolish girl, trying to get some sort of reassurance that he was my future husband. Then I was a heartbroken girl, pleading that I could get through one day and then the next. And then of course, there was a time when I bitterly forced myself to pray for my enemies, to find some forgiveness for the boy who spitefully used me and persecuted me. A little dramatic, but totally the way I felt. Now, no sooner have we come to a tenuous truce, a cautious understanding, than I’m on my knees again, pleading for his health, for his safety, for his life.
It’s almost dark when I pull into home’s driveway. I go inside and greet my parents, call Ryan to tell him I’m here.
“I’ll walk over and meet you,” he says. The plan is for us to watch a movie at his house tonight.
I don’t ask about the surgery yet. It took place a couple of days ago and I still don’t know the outcome. That’s how distant I’m still keeping things between us. I’m torn between being this supportive person that, maybe, he needs, and being this jaded girl that doesn’t plan on ever getting hurt again.
I catch up with my parents for a few more minutes and then tell them goodbye and head out to meet Ryan. I get to the front lawn when I see his dark figure, drawn up straight, but limping just a bit as he nears. The supportive person that, maybe, he needs comes out in me and I run up to him and throw my arms around him. He stiffens in my embrace and I pull away to find an almost hidden grimace of pain at the corner of his mouth, followed by an attempt at an appreciative smile.
“Ryan,” I breathe, my concern stealing my voice away, “You’re in a lot of pain.”
“Nah. Not too much.”
He turns for us to start walking back to his house, but now I can really see how carefully he’s walking.
“Are you even supposed to be out of bed?” I ask.
“I wanted to walk over here and meet you,” he says.
“That didn’t answer my question,” I say, leaning toward his waist and wrapping my arm around it for support. The pain must be really bad because he accepts the help by wrapping an arm around my shoulder and leaning some of his weight on me as he walks.
I’m more afraid now than I’ve been since I heard about the possibility that he might have cancer. Now I see that he’s masterful at hiding things to protect the people he cares about from worry. Now I see that sometimes it’s so bad that he can’t hide it. Now I see that he can be vulnerable.
So as we walk carefully down the lamp lit street, I start pelting him with anxious questions. “How did the surgery go? Did everything go as it should?”
I see anger darken his eyes as he practically spits out the words, “Oh yeah, the surgery went great if worthless surgeries are the goal of the medical world.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they found out that it wasn’t cancer, and I’m going through all of this for nothing.”
I balance my relief with sympathy and I cast my next words out to him the way he casts out the line when he’s fly fishing. “Isn’t it a blessing that it wasn’t cancer? That you’re going to be okay? I know I’m really happy to hear it…”
His anger dissipates, leaving him to respond in the right way, but with deflated words. “Yeah, of course. It could be a lot worse. My family is extremely relieved that it wasn’t cancer.”
I smile. “I bet your Mom has been pampering the heck out of you.”
That coaxes a genuine smile from him in response. “Almost enough to make it worth it,” he says. “She cooks me anything that sounds good, I have a supply of my favorite candy, and she has a cushy bed all made up for me on the family room floor in front of the TV. Right now it’s really calling my name.”
“Well then let’s get you back to it,” I say, helping him up the stairs of his front porch.
Once we have him leaned back against a plethora of overstuffed pillows and covered in soft, colorful quilts, hand quilted with lots of love by his Mom, I cuddle in next to him and we start the movie.
I’m not watching it though. I’m sneaking looks at him, still so shocked that any of this is happening. I realize that even when I was trying hard to forget all about Ryan, it was still so good knowing that he was somewhere out there in the world. That he was out there making people laugh, delivering the perfect line, being enthusiastic about a football game, feeling passionate about a book, believing in himself like nobody else I know can do. I’m realizing how empty the world would be if he left it. If we don’t end up together, if we marry other people, if he spends the next two years in… in… Cambodia for crying out loud- at least I get to know that he’s out there somewhere making this world a brighter place.
He looks over at me then. “If you keep looking at me like that, your promise to green lid guy is going the way of my recent cancer scare,” he says.
I giggle. “I don’t have any more promises to keep,” I say, “The next two years are going to be absolutely promise free.”
It’s abrupt the way he turns his face toward me and his expression holds a little bit of a question and a lot of a purpose. I look back at him. “I talked to him,” I say. “We’re still seeing each other, but no more promises. I can’t do the next two years with the pressure of promises.”
Then Ryan’s hand is at the back of my head, his lips are pressing against mine, and the world is turning into a brighter place indeed.
The kiss is something new. It’s got a drop of familiarity, but it’s got loads of new excitement, new possibilities, fear and thrill and passion and caution and restraint. Restraint. Ryan pulls back, blinking the heat out of his eyes and taking a deep breath. He looks at me and nods, like his mind is listing reasons to end the kiss right there. Then he deflects one last time. “Well, my unmentionables still recognize you, so I guess the doctors didn’t ruin me completely.”
I gasp, and my cheeks heat up like a furnace. I smack him in the shoulder and he laughs.
“Hey!” he says, “Be careful! I’m delicate!”
“Please, you haven’t been delicate a day in your life,” I laugh, and after that, it’s safest if I stop watching him and watch the movie instead.

My True Love Story

Fishing

Day 1,958ish

The very next weekend, I find myself on that date with Ryan. He packs a picnic lunch, picks me up at my door, and drives in the direction of the mountains. We pass fields of wildflowers and forests of dense pine trees as the road gets thinner and rockier, but I hardly notice the view. He’s asking me questions and listening with genuine interest, his blue eyes alight when he sneaks a glance at me from the driver’s seat, the corner of his mouth turned up in amusement at what I’m saying.
We stop at a stream and I watch him cast a fishing line in and reel it back, slowly. The fish don’t seem to be fooled this morning. There’s a difference between bait and the real thing. I stand further back on the bank and watch. He turns often to get a look at me and send me a smile. There’s a softness around his eyes that hasn’t been there for a long time. It lands on me as gently as glistening wings would land on the surface of the water, sending a gentle ripple over my surface, but not alerting my insides to any danger.
After a few attempts with no bites, he shakes his head and laughs. He shows no frustration over the failed fly fishing, it isn’t the real reason he’s here.
He leads me back to the truck, and takes me to a glassy lake that looks like the sky came down to the ground for the day so that we could sit beside it. He spreads a blanket on the bank and we eat sandwiches and drink sodas. He casts another line into the water and props the pole up on a rock. I walk along the field beside the lake and gather wildflowers of purple and yellow and bright orange. I sit on the blanket, braiding long stems and weaving the flowers into them. I form them into a circle and place them on top of my head, like a halo.
“What do you think,” I say; laughter about to bubble up from underneath my smile, because I’m sure my hair accessory doesn’t look anything like the fair maidens’ from the story books.
“You look pretty enough to make me sneeze,” Ryan says.
I pretend to be offended, grab an extra bloom of bright orange Indian paintbrush and tickle him under the nose with it before he can stop me. He grabs my wrist, laughing, and we scuffle around a little. My laughter dies off and I grow still when I notice he’s frozen over me, pinning one of my wrists to the blanket and looking into my eyes with that same patient, gentle, un-alarming look. I grow stiff, my face closed off. He good-naturedly releases my arm and rolls into a sitting position. I sit up too, my shoulder just brushing his, and make an awkward attempt at explaining myself.
“I’m sorry… I,” I take a deep breath. What if he wasn’t even going to kiss me? And how weird is it to apologize out loud for not letting someone kiss you? And how quadruple weird is it to apologize and explain the reason when the reason you have is the reason I happen to have? Nevertheless, I’ve started the sentence and so I plow forward. “I… promised him that I wouldn’t kiss you.” We both know I’m referring to green lid guy.
Ryan sputters and chokes a little like he’s been dunked into the cold lake unexpectedly. “You pr- you promised him? Him?”
I rush into more explanations. “I’ve been seeing him for awhile, and he’s never done anything to hurt me.”
“That doesn’t make him good enough for you.”
“Whoa. That’s harsh. What better criterion is there than he’s never hurt me?”
“Plenty.” He tosses his head down and away for a second, and then relaxes his body, leans back on an elbow, seeming to calm himself. “Amie, I’m fine with not kissing you. Really. I’m having a great time just being with you, but someone ‘not hurting you’ is not a qualifier for staying in a relationship with them.”
“Convenient opinion coming from the guy who has hurt me repeatedly,” I say.
“You need somebody who challenges you, who respects your opinion but isn’t afraid to disagree with it. You need somebody who can tell you when you’re acting crazy and who is confident enough to take it when you tell him he’s being an idiot.”
Those things sound pretty good to me, but so does not ever being hurt… or not having to forgive and learn to trust again. “Well,” I say, “I guess that’s what the next two years are for. I’ve got awhile to figure out what qualities I really need in a person.”
“So you will write to me? You didn’t promise anyone that you wouldn’t?” He smiles a teasing smile and looks at me from the corner of his eyes.
“Yes, I’ll write to you. I really want to write to you, but listen- I’m not making any promises. We need to have an understanding that I’ll be dating people, having relationships, whatever I feel like doing as if you weren’t even there. I have to figure out what’s right for me.”
“Yeah, I get that. I think it’s a good idea, but uh- I think it’s best if you don’t write to me about the dating part of your life in those letters. I think… it would be a distraction to read about it.”
I’m more than happy to agree to this addendum. I don’t want to pour details of my dates with other guys into my letters to Ryan. “Okay,” I say, “So I don’t have to feel like I’m being dishonest with you. You will know I’m going to date with no promises made to you, and I’ll be doing you a favor by not confessing all about it in my letters.”
“Confessing? There’s a nice, calming word.”
I giggle. “Sorry. Just trying to understand our arrangement.”
“I think we’ve got it mostly figured out,” Ryan says, and then dons a mischievous look. “Maybe we should seal it with a kiss.”
This is Ryan. He doesn’t intend to get me to break my promise, but he doesn’t intend to tuck his tail between his legs like a scolded puppy either. He doesn’t intend to back down.
I won’t outwardly break any promises today, but already it’s disconcerting trying to shuffle boys and feelings. I can promise not to kiss someone. I can promise to write a letter, but my heart can’t make promises about the way it will feel. Someone is going to get hurt, and it makes me jittery and sick when I think of it. Yet if there was ever a time for me to be selfish, it’s now.
Oh fish, swimming deep in the lake, what a dangerous little game you play when you nibble the cheese on the end of a line. I feel a little like you right now, afraid, confused, and unsure of what to try and what to stay away from. Only there’s one big difference. My biggest fear is getting thrown back.

A Little Piece of My Own Personal Heaven

I have a place where I learned about friendship. A place where I had birthday parties. A place where sometimes my bike was a horse and I loved feeling the wind blow through my hair. A place where sometimes my scooter was a car,and the sidewalks around the church were streets that led to imaginary stores and gas stations. A place where a shed was the "Laugh and Play Fun House". A place where the trees were a thousand different mystical worlds.

I have a place where I learned about tradition. Where I participated in track meets and came home with my chest covered in blue and red ribbons. A place where, on the last day of school, kids lined the fence outside and everyone sang together and let go of balloons at the same time.
A place where I wore ruffly dresses to school almost every day of elementary... and people still liked me. :)

I have a place where I learned about boys. Where I first held hands with one, and it was SO scandalous. Where my husband to be was in my sixth grade class, standing just a few feet away from me in our class picture and we never would have guessed that one day he would throw pebbles at my bedroom window, we would go on our first date, and he would eventually propose to me, all in the same little town.

I have a place where I could always escape. Always relax. A place where I could always be me. A place where I learned who I am.


I have a place where my kids learned country values. They fed neighbors' horses, they waded in dirty water, they picked wild flowers for GG and found deer tracks with Grandpa. They played on the same playground that I played on in elementary school. They ran around the school where I went to Junior High.

I have a place where half an hour's drive can take you to deserts where indians painted their art, where we "hung out" around bon-fires as teenagers, where rock formations whisper of a creator and remnants of people who came before whisper of the things important enough to pass down.

I have a place where half an hour's drive in the other direction can take you to lakes like mirrors with heaven's reflection in them. To mountains where there aren't designated camping spots with man-made everything, but where there are little stolen places to build your own fire pit and tuck yourself in under a million stars.
I left Ferron without an official goodbye. We did all of the same, wonderful things. I told Mom that I wouldn't think about how this could be the last time. As I pulled out of town, I stopped and filled a cup with mulberries. I've been eating them straight off of Ferron's trees since kindergarten. I ate them all of the way to Price, not watching too carefully for bugs or leaves. I tasted their sweet juice on my tongue, I crunched their tiny seeds in my teeth, I watched as they turned my fingers purple and that was my quiet, happy, delicious goodbye to Ferron.

I have a place that holds my first and last memories of my Dad... and so many other memories too. Turns out, that place isn't in Ferron. It's right here in my heart and always will be.

My True Love Story

It Involves Pen and Paper

Day 1,951ish

It’s funny how I’m not afraid. Ryan had such a terrifying power over me when we were in school. I felt real fear then. He had the ability to hurt me, to wrap his hand around my heart and squeeze until I doubled over and couldn’t breathe. I don’t feel that vulnerability as I walk to his house a few minutes before six o’clock. I don’t feel a docile calm either. I feel a surrounding force field of reassuring strength, with just enough anticipation humming inside it.
He greets me at the door, having let go of the anger I had heard earlier on the phone. We make meaningless small talk as he leads me through his house to the deck built onto the back. The wood is painted dark brown, built up to six feet off of the ground, with a quaint, matching awning above our heads. Sometimes Ryan would spend the night in a sleeping bag out here in the summertime, and I would come over to whisper bedtime stories and “I love you”s before he fell asleep. Another hundred memories are a part of the backdrop we can view from here, amid the lush landscape and colorful blossoms in his backyard.
He offers me a patio chair, almost formally, and he sits on another, facing me.
“So. Who was the guy?” he asks.
“Wwwhhhhhat guy?”
“Ha! The guy you were making out with on your couch last night.”
“Ah! I was not making out with him!”
“You mean the giant, matriculating him/you blob wasn’t the two of you making out?”
“No. No it was not. We weren’t kissing. I was facing the movie. If we had been kissing how would I have seen you at the window?”
“Well,” his mouth lifts in one corner, and he lowers his voice to a teasing tone. “I, for one, know that you sometimes open your eyes while you’re kissing.”
I break eye contact with him to steal a very important glance at my own hands in my lap, and then around the yard. Anywhere but back at him.
“Remember? Sometimes I’d open my eyes to find you looking at me, then I’d give you a bewildered look and we’d both start laughing. But I liked it… because then I got to see your sparkly eyes.”
His voice has lowered to the tone of an intimate song as he finishes the memory, and he’s leaning forward, focusing on my eyes until they can’t help but rest back on his.
Then I’m sure I see the memory of last night reinsert itself into the forefront of his mind. He sits up straight again, runs a hand through his hair and asks, “So who is he?”
I tell him.
He seems to like the information. “It’s him? Oh man! I thought it was someone you met at college, which, by the way, I’ve predicted all along. But him?” he shakes his head, almost laughing at himself. He grows serious again and says, “I could totally take him.”
So, he’s happy to know who he’s up against. Happy to have inside information. The confidence he gleans from knowing who I’m dating, and the implications of his comment light that familiar fire in me.
“Ryan! Why am I even answering your questions? Yes, I’m dating him. No, we weren’t making out, but we very well could’ve been and the last person I would have to explain myself to, is you! Now, if you don’t mind, it’s my turn to ask the questions around here. Why did you come last night?”
He looks out over the lawn, the trees, out into the setting sun for just a moment and then he looks right into my eyes and leans close again, a commitment to tell it to me straight regardless of the outcome.
“I turned in my mission papers,” he says. “I could get my call anytime now.”
“You’re kidding me! Oh, Ryan that’s--”. I light up with so much surprise and long awaited happiness, but words fail me. It doesn’t matter, because he waves the congratulations and the praise away and continues.
“I came to your house last night because…” his blue eyes bore into me without fear or shame or hesitation, “Because I wanted to ask you to write to me. I wanted to ask you to wait for me.”
Well, it’s clear what’s happened. I’ve entered an alternate universe. My eyes grow as wide as they’ve ever been, and I try to decipher what is clearly a foreign language he’s speaking.
“W-w-wait?” I ask.
“Yeah. You know, wait. Like in no ring on the left hand, red exes on two, twelve month calendars, elevator music gently playing in the background with an operator’s voice breaking in once in awhile to tell you she’s sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience?”
I don’t think I’ve blinked for awhile… and my mouth seems to be interminably hanging open. Ryan waves a hand in front of my face with caution, testing for brain activity.
Now I blink rapidly, lower my eye brows and angle my best hearing ear toward him, silently asking him to repeat himself.
He intentionally raises his voice to a comedic, unsure, higher pitch. “Mayyyybe just the writing. It involves pen, paper, and hopefully an… occasional… encouraging… sentiment?”
His mix of easy confidence and admitted vulnerability disarm me and I allow a reluctant smile to soften my features. It’s a smile that says, “You’re funny, but ohhh the nerve of you.” I stand up, turn my back to him and walk over to lean on the railing of the deck.
“This is so like you,” I say, “to just come strutting back into my life.”
He walks up next to me, watching me, reading me like he could always do so well in the beginning. He places his hand over mine with just the right amount of caution. “I wasn’t aware that I ever left your life,” he says, and the nerve endings in my hand remind me that he never really did.
Then he removes his hand and exhales, blowing the air out over the backyard. “Besides,” he says, “I wouldn’t say I managed to ‘strut’ back. I didn’t strut home from your house last night after seeing you in the window.”
My head whips toward him too quickly, and I sound a little too gratified when I ask, “What did you think when you saw that?”
“Like I said, I thought you met some guy at college already. I thought I’d lost you.” This, he says while looking at me, but then his eyes fall to his feet and he kicks at the wood beneath them. “I gotta admit, when I got back to the solitude of my room, I might have even shed a tear or two- something I swore I’d never do. I was like, ‘What’s this wet stuff coming out of my eyes?’” He elbows me playfully and I smile, without sympathy. He says, “So… yeah, thanks for taking my man card from me.”
I laugh. “Oh you did? You shed a tear or two huh?” I add my casual confession. “Yeah, I’ve shed a couple tears over you too. They now refer to them as Millsite Reservoir.” I call up thoughts of what our local reservoir looks like right now, water bursting over the spillway with the force that could kill.
“I know,” he says, “I know. I did some things that need to be forgiven, but come on. They’re not unforgiveable, are they?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
“Listen, I’m not going to give you a speech because you know I’m good at speeches and I know you’re good at rebuffing them. Just let me take you out next time you come home…. and… make it soon, would you?”
From the time I saw his silhouette in my window last night until now, there was never even a fraction of a second when I would’ve said no.

My True Love Story

Compartmental

Day 1,950ish

I’ve been looking at college bedroom décor, brightly colored, happy little boxes, shelves and drawers stacked in tidy, airtight order. They make compartmentalizing things look so darn cute. Too bad when we compartmentalize our lives we can’t top it all off with fluorescent pink and green Tupperware lids. No, no. The closest we come to that is putting things in a box and burying it in the back yard, having it dug up, and then stashing it in a cobwebby corner. It isn’t cute… but it seems to do the trick.
I didn’t intend to develop feelings for a new boy. I just went to work every day, and he was pretty much the best of all of us at the job, and that was attractive. So, yeah, attraction led to sitting next to, sitting led to talking, talking led to flirting and eventually flirting led to dating. Dating started out rocky. I was gun-shy, overly cautious to the point of having to explain myself.
“I’m not ready to be in a steady relationship,” I told him one night, sitting under the stars at a park. I told him all about Ryan, told him that it was over and that I was bound and determined to forget about him and move on… but it would take time.
I guess if I had the cute fluorescent green lid, it was the way he comforted me about the whole thing, the way he told me that he’d be patient, and the way he reassured me that he would never hurt me that way and couldn’t believe anyone had.
Ryan was long gone, and I knew I had to forget him, and it came to a point where I didn’t have to make a conscious effort to do so anymore. There’s an old cardboard box, wrapped in silver and black, torn and tear-stained, with a bit of loose dirt caked on and a bit spilled inside. There’s also a new box, a nice, clean, clear plastic box with a stylish fluorescent green lid and in my mind, as time passes, the two have less and less to do with each other.
So I’ve become very comfortable in the box with the green lid.
I’m sitting with green lid guy in my parent’s basement. It’s my first weekend home from college and I couldn’t wait to see him. He’s resting his back against the arm of the couch and I’m resting my back against him. His arms are wrapped around me and we’re watching a movie. It’s so comfortable. It’s so closed off. There isn’t anyone else in our box with us. We have our own little world, built somewhere in the transition between high school friends and college ones, almost secret- and because it’s almost secret, it feels so safe.
Just behind the big screen TV, there is a window. It sits right below my bedroom window, the one Ryan used to toss rocks at to get my attention at night. The basement window, in our line of sight, is barely illuminated by the orange glow of the front porch light. Green lid guy and I are 35% engrossed in the movie, 60% engrossed in each other, and suddenly the peripheral 5% of our interest is peaked by a movement we see outside that window!
I see the form of someone about our age, the dark figure looks masculine. He’s standing tall at first, but then crouches down, probably noticing the changing and moving light of the TV. I see his form crouch, then pause, then look closer as though he can’t believe his eyes. These things happen so quickly, but implant themselves in my mind to be replayed over and over in rewind and slow motion.
After the figure takes that closer, stunned look at green lid guy and I, cuddling on the couch, his form straightens like it’s snapping to attention and he disappears from the window with two fleeting steps.
Green lid guy says, “Was someone just looking in your window?”
“You saw it too,” I say, stiffening. I don’t know what green lid guy says after that. I push away from him and hurry over to the window. I can’t see anything past the small area of lawn that is obscurely lit by the front light. The onlooker has made his escape into the darkness, but I don’t need to see him to know him.
“It was him,” I say, more to myself than to green lid guy, though he has come up to look through the window behind me.
“Him? Him who? Wait. You mean Ryan?” He asks.
I nod, still staring out the window.
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
I guess the reason I know is because who else would be lurking outside my window. I think he came to throw pebbles at it the way he used to. I think he came to, I don’t know, amuse himself by spending his free time seeing if he could still woo me… except that it’s been a whole summer and I’m not sure that even he could be so flippant as to think we could just casually flirt our evening away for old time’s sake.
The green lid is suddenly blown clean off of our box. I let that happen. I know that I should try to sneer, try to talk about the nerve of Ryan coming to look in my window. I should laugh it off, go back to cuddling on the couch, and tell my date that he’s the only one that does or has ever mattered. I should lie. But I can’t.
I walk the few steps back to the couch and sink down on the edge of it. I sit there with my hands folded in my lap, staring into empty space. Green lid guy comes over to me. He’s asking me questions, but it’s honestly like he’s trying to communicate with me from a thousand miles away. Instinctively, he knows not to pull me close. He sinks onto the floor at my feet. We have a quiet conversation, though I’m not sure how I’m even forming sentences. All of the contents from the cardboard box with the black and silver stripes are being emptied into this box that I’m in now. All of the old, crumpled notes, the pictures, mixed with dirt from my backyard.
Finally, my date tells me that he thinks he should leave for the night. Can we go out tomorrow, after I’ve had some time to think? He’ll plan a date. He’ll come and pick me up in the early afternoon. I pull myself together enough to agree.
If we hadn’t bonded, if we didn’t have memories and moments of our own, I know green lid guy would probably never call me again. He’d think, “So long, crazy chick that has uncanny premonitions about ex-boyfriends who hang around outside her window at night!” He’d run, not walk, to his vehicle and speed away… and it would be no less than I deserve.
That night I do something I haven’t done for months. I look out my bedroom window and down the street to Ryan’s. His window is dark, but it doesn’t stop me from staring out at nothing, waiting for more nothing to happen. Somehow, I finally fall asleep.

With the light of a new morning, I’m thinking a little clearer, but I’m still determined to find out what Ryan came for last night. I wait until nine o’clock to call, and then I sit on my bed with the phone to my ear, staring at myself in the mirror on my wall. Phone calls are terrifying, and this one might just top all. What in the world do I think I’m going to say to him?
“Hey. I’ve got a random question for you. Did you happen to creep over to my house late last night and look in my window? Did you happen to see me on the couch with another guy, a tough to decipher tangle of intermingled arms and legs? Did you care? Do I care if you care?”
“Is Ryan there? …Thanks.” I take a deep breath. I’m stronger than that silly, heartbroken, insecure girl I was a year ago. I need to remember that.
“Hello?”
“Hey Ry. It’s Amie.”
“Hey.”
“So you are in town.”
“Yep.”
“Did you happen to come by house last night?”
Silence.
“I thought I saw someone outside my basement window.”
He exhales; like he’s forgotten to since I asked that last question. “Yeah,” he admits, sounding like he wishes there were some way around it. “Yeah, I did. I’m sorry. I came over to talk. I didn’t know you’d… be… busy.”
He sounds hurt. Angry-hurt. He’s too confident and strong to sound sad-hurt, and he knows he doesn’t have a right to be angry, but his voice has a growling, clipped quality to it.
“So… what did you want to talk about?” I ask.
“I don’t know if it matters anymore.”
It’s all I can do not to gasp. He has something real to talk about, something specific at least.
“Well, let’s find out if it matters,” I say, “What is it?”
“I don’t want to talk to you about it over the phone,” he says.
“Okay, let’s get together today.”
There’s another wary pause.
“I could see you this afternoon,” he says.
Now I’m the one pausing, still watching my own reactions in the mirror. My reflection and I share a half apologetic, half amused smile. I already have a date this afternoon. The humor of Ryan, the player, getting a little bit played isn’t lost on me.
“Actually,” I say, confiding a silent giggle and guilty look at my reflection, “I already have plans for this afternoon.” I shrug. “I could get together tonight though.”
“Oh just forget it,” Ryan says.
“No! No, if you really have something to talk to me about, let’s talk! I do want to hear. You’re not above waiting until I’m free are you?”
My reflection bites on her lip, and looks at me with wide, conspiratorial eyes.
“Oh fine. Come over to my house whenever you’re… free, I guess.”
“I’ll meet you at six o’clock,” I say. “You’ll be there? You swear?”
“Whether I’ll be here or not doesn’t seem to be the thing in question,” he answers.
I giggle just a bit. “I’ll see you at six.”

My True Love Story

Author's note: Read the hilarious excerpt from my yearbook that I included in a picture in the story. I think it is priceless! ... Oh.. and I didn't mean to have the provocative sexy legs of the Spartan being the only thing cut into the pic... we all just got lucky there. ;)

Transitions

Day 1890ish

I’m a high school graduate. It’s more melancholy than I expected. There’s a sadness to it, a finality. I keep telling everyone that I can’t wait to go to college, but it’s less about excitement and more about escape. The past year has been an uphill battle, with the most strenuous part of the climb at the very end, when I was the most exhausted, every little jealous incident with Ryan feeling worse, and seeming grimmer as we get closer to adulthood.
On the last day of school, when my friends were having him sign their yearbooks, I handed him mine as well. I knew it wasn’t just a casual exchange. What do you write in a piece of lifelong memorabilia after everything we’ve been through? There is no way “Have a nice summer,” does the trick when you’re graduating seniors. We were way beyond, “Hey call me, and let’s go have some fun.” Shoot, I had people sign my yearbook, teasing me that I was still going to marry him!

I didn’t know what I could possibly get away with writing in his yearbook, so I decided it was genius to have him sign mine first, then base what I wrote on what he wrote.
When I handed him the yearbook, his eyebrows pulled tight over his eyes. He handed his to me in exchange and I sat down nearby. Handfuls of our fellow classmates were sitting next to stacks of yearbooks, chattering and signing all around us. He had a couple of yearbooks in his hands, and he put mine at the bottom. He asked me several times over the next few minutes if I had signed his yet. Obviously I hadn’t, as per the plan, and I think he was hoping to turn the plan around and use it on me. The truth was there was absolutely nothing that we could write that would sound okay on a yearbook page. Nothing. That’s what we ended up writing. We both put it off, left them at the bottom of the stacks we were signing and then ran out of time. Like near strangers, we patronized each other with, “Oh I didn’t get to it yet,” and “That’s okay, we’ll do it later.”
He’s gone now. He moved away to work a summer job selling and delivering pianos with his older brother. We didn’t say goodbye. I didn’t watch him go. I turned away, and told myself that now I’d be able to forget about him for sure.
I keep very busy. I got my first job. I simply enter data into a computer, but I really like it. I’m getting faster and faster at typing, and I prefer being at a computer to other jobs that are available to teenagers. I’m getting to know new people, my co-workers, and I always enjoy that.
Because I’m Miss Peach Days, I got coaxed into participating in the county level scholarship pageant and I won! I couldn’t believe it! I’ve never felt like such a star. I was surrounded by people hugging me, little girls tugging on my sequined gown asking me to sign their programs and take pictures with them. My living room is filled with bouquets of congratulatory flowers. There are responsibilities too. I’m obligated to represent my County in the Miss Utah pageant and other events. I’ll be brushing shoulders with some of the most accomplished girls in the state and, heaven help me, I’m going to have to start preparing for interview questions by watching… the news.
I’m learning so much about who I am and who I want to be. I’m learning more about make-up and hair and fashion too. Sometimes it’s even a little hard to know where my priorities ought to be, because I want to do a lot of good in this world and make a difference, but I also just want to be striking and get the attention of cute boys and… well, honestly… feel like I could compete with all of those barbielicious girls that Ryan dated.
I’m all styled right now with my new make-up techniques and the curls my hairstylist taught me to do and I’m zipping around the shrine of cards, banners, pictures, my crown and all of the fresh flowers, arranged in beautiful glass vases in my house like a busy little bee, taking things out to my car and readying for a photo shoot appointment that I have in half an hour. The sun is shining, but the breeze is cool and there’s a happy, carefree way about my world. I happen to be headed out toward my car with my arms full when I see Ryan’s dad drive slowly by in his truck, and Ryan is in the passenger seat.
I can’t help it. You don’t know how I wish I could, but I can’t. My heart jumps right up into my throat. I see the truck pull into their driveway and I see Ryan get out and start walking down the street, at a fairly brisk pace, toward me. My heart may be in my throat, my hands may be shaking, but he doesn’t need to know that. I take plenty of time arranging my things in the back seat of my car, so he’s close enough to shout “hi” and make his presence known by the time I’m finished.
“Amie,” he says, “Or should I call you Miss Emery County? You won! It’s so awesome! Congratulations!”
He reaches his arms out, like so many friends and strangers alike had that night on the stage, and he hugs me. Just a congratulatory hug.
“Thanks!” I say. “I couldn’t believe I won!”
“I can. I just can’t believe I wasn’t there to see it. I really wanted to be there, and my Mom told me every detail over the phone.”
“Really? I’m sorry you had to go through that,” I say, with a smile and a wink.
“No, no. I asked her. I wanted to know everything. She said you were amazing.”
“Ah. I love your Mom. She’s so sweet and always supportive of me.”
We’re still standing out in the middle of my front lawn and all of the initial, easy stuff to say has almost been exhausted. We’re almost to the, “Oh man, every sentence I think to write in that blasted yearbook is the wrong thing to say,” stage. We’re about to reach the awkward point where we can’t think of any more sentences that are okay.
“You look like you’re getting ready to go somewhere,” he says.
“Yeah, I have a ton to do today. I have to go get pictures taken in just a few minutes.”
I don’t ask him if he’s just in town for the weekend because I know he is and because I’m not supposed to care. Besides, I really am busy. I really do have a life, and for the past weeks it hasn’t involved running into him with a pack of girls at social gatherings or watching for his bedroom light. He’s gone, and I’m busy.
“Well, I better let you go then,” he says with a brilliant white smile.
“Yeah,” I say, “Thanks for stopping by. It was great to see you.” I sound like someone who just won a scholarship pageant, all of the residual confidence beaming from me.
I turn and I walk back into the house, and the really amazing thing is: I just go right back up to my room and gather up the next things on my list. I don’t flop on my bed and take deep breaths, or look at myself in the mirror and try to talk myself out of a freak out. I go right on about my way with a peaceful satisfaction. I think to myself, “If that was the last time we ever talk, I’d like that ending. I could feel good about that memory. I wouldn’t have to bury that one in the backyard.”

My True Love Story

Just want to say thanks again for the critiques and compliments on last week's post! They really made me want to keep writing and improve! Love you all!

Like A Bridge Over Troubled Water

Day 1830ish

One night I went on a double date where they blindfolded us and led us through the rafters of our high school auditorium to a little corner where they had set up a TV with a scary movie, pillows, snacks and the best atmosphere you can imagine. One night I went on a date to the mountains where we played night games among the trees and wildlife, and roasted marshmallows on an open fire. One night I ballroom danced on the roof of our school, under the stars. It was amazing. I’ve dated good guys. Polite. Respectful. Humble. Funny. Fun.
I’m doing it. I’m doing it exactly the way they tell me to. Date a lot of people. Be young, have fun. Look inside, find out who you are, focus on bettering yourself. That’s how you make yourself into someone who can find a healthy relationship. They’re absolutely right.
What they don’t know is that at night, when it’s quiet, when it’s dark, when no one is there but my memories, I still pull back my curtain. Still look down the street to his window. The box of keepsakes didn’t stay buried, and neither will the feelings. The box is tucked away, however, in a dusty, cobwebby, corner of a never-used cabinet out back in the work-shop.
So every morning, when it’s light and the world is watching, I smile. I take care with my clothes, my hair, and I go out. I perform the many responsibilities that I have obligated myself to on the quest to be better. Today it’s an honor choir concert at another school. It’s a three hour bus ride, one way, with a ratio of about three girls to one boy… and Ryan sings.
I find a seat about three rows from the back of the bus and slide in. We’re Seniors now, and it’s usually a given that we choose to and therefore we get to sit at the back. The bus is a flurry of noise and movement as everyone crowds in. I hear a guy from the very back seat yell, “Leonhardt! Back here!” Great. Just Great.
I look to the front of the bus and I see Ryan finishing up a flirtatious conversation with one of the younger girls. She must have told him she’d call him, because as he walks away he yells his information to her. “Ryan Leonhardt. 384-2658…” He looks at me as he passes and throws his address in for good measure, right down to the zip code.
He’s still watching me as he finishes and I give him a sarcastic smile mixed with vindictive eyes and say, “You finally memorized it. Good job.”
He’s pleased with himself, but bristles at my usual snide reaction to his antics.
As the bus gets rolling, the girl and a handful of her friends decide to wander to the back four seats for a visit. They squeeze in next to Ryan and his friends, wondering aloud, in a damsel in distress way, if it’s safe to be crowded into the seats this way and if they’ll get in trouble.
“If we get in a wreck,” Ryan says, “And I get injured, this just means more people are available to give me mouth to mouth.” The giggling gaggle of girls is terribly amused. Then Ryan shoots an angry look at me and says, “Just don’t let her be the one to do it. Anybody but her.”
I face front and sink down into my seat. I say cruel things to him all the time. I cut him down whenever he’s in ear shot, but isn’t that my right? He’s the Casanova here. His ego can take it. I’m merely tossing pebbles at Goliath.
My friend Misty slides into my seat to survey the damage. “Amie,” she says, “Don’t let him get to you.”
“How am I going to endure three hours of this?” I ask.
“Listen.” she says, “Why do you think he’s back there talking so loud? Half of that crap he’s spouting is more for your ears than for theirs. He wants you to be jealous.”
I blink and tears slip from the corner of my eyes and down my cheeks.
“And why do you think he singled you out like that?” Misty asks. “He still likes you. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t even acknowledge you.”
I shake my head furiously. “I know he probably still has feelings for me,” I say, “But I don’t know if that matters anymore. Not after everything that’s happened.”
“Amie, you are beautiful and you’re an amazing girl. That’s the thing you can’t forget. That’s the thing that still matters, even after everything that’s happened.”
Misty is good at so many things, but maybe her greatest gift is the way she sees the best in everyone and communicates it to them so well.
I sit and think about her statement. . I try to block out every loudly spoken innuendo from the back seat, met with every desperate giggle. I focus deep inside, to try and see what stuff I’m really made of. I think back to Governor’s Honors Academy and the week I spent away at the beginning of last summer. I think about the way the counselors built us up, and reminded us of all that we could accomplish. I think of how I could be what I wanted to be without my small town, built-in stigma to categorize me so quickly. I think about the boys there that were really accomplished, good looking and confident… and interested in me. I remember how one of them was from the very school that we are now travelling to, and that he had an amazing singing voice.

I hit the girl’s restroom as soon as I finally emerge from the bus ride of doom, and I don’t walk away from my reflection until it reveals a new girl. I wipe away the smeared mascara, reapply the eye-liner and plaster on a glowing, though still not entirely genuine smile. I pray. I know that might sound silly, an emotional teen-age girl praying over boy problems, but I do. Then I meet up with a group of friends, and we gather in the crowded hallway, chattering and looking around at the foreign hallway of this high school and all of the new people.
That’s when I see him. I can’t believe my eyes. Dark tan skin, short black hair, deep brown eyes…. I remember him saying his roots were Italian, and it’s written all over his coloring, but the thing that stands out most about him is his approachable smile. Anybody he turns it on would be hypnotized into believing that they’ve known and counted on him all their lives. It’s Marcus, from Governor’s Honors Academy.
His hypnotizing smile, coupled with the “what have I got to lose” bus ride moves me toward him before I know what I’m doing.
“Marcus?” I say.
He turns those brown eyes on me. “Amie! Wow! It’s been awhile! How have you been?”
We gather a lot of attention while we catch up on our GHA memories and what we’ve been doing since. I can feel some animosity from the girls that attend his school. They’re watching me with that territorial look. The girls from my school love every second of it, and the boys from my school are calling out some teasing one-liners.
Marcus glances down at his watch. “Oh shoot!” he says. “I’m singing a solo in the concert tonight, and I was supposed to go practice.”
“Oh!” I say, “Well, let’s go find a place for you to practice then!”
His smile deepens. “Come on,” he says, and leads me down a short hall to a sound room. The door he closes behind us cuts us off from the commotion outside, but there’s a huge window, and the curious students are gathering around to see what the two of us will do next.
In the center of the small room, sits a well used, but forever beautiful, grand piano. He plays a chord and sings through a normally boring, but completely enthralling under the circumstances, choir song. Despite my not being a huge fan of most high school choir music, I am thoroughly impressed with his voice and I gush and flatter appropriately when he’s finished.
The praise falls on him well, making him warmer and closer to me than would normally be the case after our spontaneous reunion in the crowded hall. He says, “Well, enough of that! I could… sing a song for you now.”
“I would love that,” I say, a little out of breath.
He sits down at the piano and sweeps his hands across the keyboard. Oh my goodness. I quickly pull up a metal and plastic school chair, for fear my legs may not be able to hold me up.
He plays an intro and then, as if anything could improve the lovely music, his voice… the voice of which dreams are made begins to sing. He looks right into my eyes, his ultra-friendly smile, muted into a smile personalized for me. I lose myself in the words that float like angel wings around my head, “When you're weary, feeling small, when tears are in your eyes I will dry them all. I'm on your side when times get rough and friends just can't be found, like a bridge over troubled water I will lay me down.”

I think about the bus ride. I think about Ryan… because, that’s right, not even a gorgeous Italian sitting at a grand piano and playing and singing a song just for me can completely bury those thoughts. Not even a shovel and a goodly portion of dirt can bury those thoughts… but the point is that this is my bridge! This moment, this other-worldy moment, this music and these onlookers, and that voice coming from that boy are my bridge over troubled waters! This moment is my protection. It’s my hope. It’s my passage through this day and maybe more hard days to come. I think about an emotional teen-age girl praying over boy troubles, and I believe those prayers are heard.

I don’t know if Ryan sees the crowd gathered, I don’t know if he gets a peek inside that window, but I know for sure he’ll hear about it. There aren’t many choir students who aren’t talking about it.
My place on the rafters during the dress rehearsal is right behind Ryan, so close that I can smell the once alluring smell that is all him. At one point, Marcus moves to the front and center of the stage to sing his solo. I hear two girls a few people to the right whisper. “He’s so hot.” “I know, but we don’t have a shot with him. He’s so into Amie Gee.”
Ryan’s head whips around to glare at them, and then he turns almost completely around and I can feel him looking square at me for a long, long time. I stare straight at the conductor, immoveable as stone. There can be no argument that Marcus’s song is incredible, that his voice is a gift. When he is done singing, the people next to me elbow me and grin, smile at me and tell me how good it was as though it were my own accomplishment. Ryan tells them with venom dripping from every word, “That kid is a loser. A loser! I’d love to punch him.”
I continue to stare straight at the conductor, but the corners of my mouth creep up to barely reveal a dimple on each cheek.