AUTHOR’S NOTE / SUMMARY: I recently began this story for a few friends of mine who don’t usually get my metaphorical stuff. This is just an all-too-common teen romance with a twist. Two best friends, Annie and Gray, are separated just as they learn their true feelings for each other. But Gray, unable to express himself face to face, leaves her the first in a series of letter back and forth – confessing his love – just before he leaves for France for eight months.

As Annie copes with abandonment, she meets Nick, a smooth-talking, chain-smoking, 20-year-old who acts like he’s permanently floating through a Pink Floyd concert. Meanwhile in France, Gray literally stumbles upon his next door neighbor, Desiree, who is a philophobic, self-destructive, sexually-confused Jewish girl with delusions of grandeur and plans to deface public property as revenge to her sugar daddy art dealer.

When Annie admits to being less than faithful while he’s away, will he ever take her back? Will they ever forget Marseille?

WARNINGS: Minor cursing here and there. A bit of sexuality, drug use, domestic violence, self-mutilation… later on. I’ll warn you then. For now, mostly just a lot of private jokes.

--

LETTERS FROM MARSEILLE

by AriadneInLove

--

CHAPTER ONE: One sock short of a pair…

“Hey Jude,” Annie called out to the little girl hidden behind the counter. She walked into the Starbucks around the corner from her school as she always did. She heard a tiny growl by the cashier’s leg and smiled on the way to her seat against the window. Gray followed behind her, his hands in his pocket as he stared at his old, red Converse, thinking they were getting a bit too old for public use like all his other things. She watched him pull up his pant leg to check his socks. Once again, they did not match.

Sarah, the cashier and sole employee of the Starbucks around the corner, was looking over some photos, spread out over the counter, of Jude’s seventh birthday party last weekend. She just got them back today, as the boy at the pharmacy where she gets them developed smokes pot behind the curtain and often forgets what an hour means to regular folk who can see straight.

Sarah was also a Wiccan and didn’t believe in daycare so she brought Jude to work with her on weekdays when business was so slow that Annie and Gray could sneak away from school completely undetected. Without even looking, Sarah greeted, “Hey Annie. Gray. What class are we skipping today?”

She blindly reached over for two cups, grande-sized, and began to mix up their drinks absentmindedly, her eyes still on the photos as she wondered who to send them to and how much postage would cost.

Annie gulped. She didn’t like to consider her frequent absences as skipping, merely small holidays necessary for her sanity. It kept the guilt at bay. “AP Bio,” Gray responded for her since Annie had shrunk into her seat.

Sarah brought the drinks around the counter and set them down at their table. They stopped having to order some years ago. Annie sipped a bit of her vanilla bean frappuccino and avoided Sarah’s gaze as best she could.

“Grade?” she asked.

Annie shrunk down lower, to the point where Gray could only see a bit of her nose and eyes over the tabletop from the seat across from her. She looked to him for an answer. He didn’t understand why she was being so timid about truancy. It’s not like it mattered anymore. They were a few months away from graduation.

“An A,” he finally answered. “I promise. She’s just scared you’ll be disappointed in her for leaving early. Though, if we had to hear another hour of that old windbag’s childhood memories or jokes at the atomic weight of Boron, I might have shot her myself.”

“Right,” Sarah said disbelievingly. She’d been home-schooled so she took his word on it. Besides, she trusted Annie so long as she was with Gray. She was always a little crazy but he was incorruptible, her conscience of sorts.

He’d taken out a blue spiral notebook from his bookbag and begun to scribble quickly on it with his favorite blue-ink pen. She saw him draw up his knees to rest the notebook on his thighs and didn’t think much of it as the booth was a bit uncomfortable. She didn’t realize he was trying to hide what he was writing but she wouldn’t force it out of him even if he was.

She plopped her own messenger bag on the table and began to take out her homework and a pink Hostess Sno-Ball. She started biting into it like she hadn’t seen food in a week. They didn’t have a lot of money so instead of eating the horrid lunch they served at school, she kept it to buy herself a frap and a Sno-Ball afterwards. It was no wonder she was so thin and gawky.

She often wondered what she would eat if she had more money. A Ho-Ho? Buckets upon buckets of ice cream? Gray wondered where they would go if they had a car of their own instead of having to walk everywhere. Neither could afford one, since their parents agreed that they shouldn’t work so they could focus on their studies. That didn’t mean much to them. They were both in the top 5 of their class, even if there were only 200 seniors.

After a half hour of comfortable silence, Annie turned her attention away from the window back to Gray and his smirk. He smiled when he wrote. She always thought he should become a writer but whenever she brought it up, he’d jokingly respond, “You can’t get chicks as a writer.”

Then she’d stupidly mentioned one time how lawyers didn’t get any chicks either and he quickly turned sour. His father was a lawyer and he’d left his mother for another woman when Gray was just five years old. They didn’t talk about it much. He’d gotten into his head that to be happy, he had to be just like his father, which was ridiculous in her eyes because there was no one Gray hated more.

She looked over to Sarah, who’d started biting her nails and separating the photos into small piles, and Jude, who was spinning in one of the bar seats. How she was going to miss them, should life insist on giving her opportunities.

“I got into Stanford,” she whispered, watching Jude spin till she puked onto the floor. Sarah ran to help her but it was too late. All she could do was clean up.

Gray’s eyes, however, snapped to attention. She was staring off into space as usual, twirling a strand of brown hair with her index finger.

“What?” he squeaked, then cleared his throat. He didn’t know she’d applied. “Whoa… wait. Stanford?”

“Mhmm.” She didn’t take her eyes off Jude and Sarah, looking straight past them at the wall like it was made of glittering diamonds and trying desperately to keep her mind clear of second thoughts.

He set the notebook on the table upside-down, lowered his legs, and reached for her hand. The warmth of his fingers seemed to snap her back to reality.

“Annie, that’s fantastic!” he shouted, trying to fake enthusiasm. “Did they give you a scholarship too?”

She nodded. “Full ride for four years.”

Sarah had come to get more paper towers from the front counter when she saw Annie and Gray by the window, leaning across the table, his hand atop hers. She’d caught them like that only a few times in the last ten years she’d worked there. They only did it when times were especially hard, when words didn’t make any difference. They had a way of looking at each other, as if their expressions were a language only they knew. In a single minute, they could have a conversation in complete silence, just by staring into each other’s eyes.

Sarah wondered how they would deal with the true silence after he left.

“I’m happy for you,” he lied, and gulped.

“I’m not going.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” he shouted.

Sarah watched him take his hand away and knew they were back in the world. She suddenly felt like she was intruding into a private moment so she took the paper towels and headed back to help Jude clean up the floor. She knew as long as they started that things would only end badly. Pride always got in the way.

“Ann, you know what it would mean for your family, how much you could earn with--”

“It’s not always about money, Gray!” she yelled back. Sarah looked up, piteous as much as scared. When the best of friends fought, what hope was there for the rest of us?

“Is this about France?”

“Of course it’s not!” she lied too. He saw right through her.

“Annie, it’s just eight months!”

“And what if Kenneth asks you to stay? Are you honestly about to tell me you’d say no to Daddy?”

He hated her tone, how she mocked his intentions. Yes, Kenneth was his father and he had done horrible things for which he’d never apologized but what was so wrong with wanting his approval? Hell, what was so wrong about wanting his love after all this time? So, when Kenneth asked if he wanted to come live with him in Marseille for a year, Gray was more than willing to hold back his studies for a year to experience life among the French with his stepmother, Vivien. She was supposedly very kind.

“I don’t know,” he replied. All the blood rushed to her face with the sort of grief-stricken anger that explodes after one realizes everything that makes life worth living is taken away. “Annie, you have to learn that you can’t depend on people like me. You can’t depend on anyone but yourself. Maybe going away will do us some good. And it’s only eight months. Eight! That’s nothing.”

She scoffed, crossed her arms and looked out the window. He hated when she gave him the cheek. A police car passed by and the officer waved at them through his window. When they didn’t wave back, he took their expressions as a warning and quickly parked. He wobbled inside, his large gut opening the door for him.

“What’s going on here?” he asked.

“Nothing, Stanley,” Gray answered, eyes fixed on Annie’s stone cheek.

“Aren’t you kids supposed to be at school?” He already knew the answer. Annie was usually pretty good at talking their way out of truancy charges but she knew if she opened her mouth to speak, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from crying.

“AP Bio,” she managed to sneer, still staring out the window. Gray ran a hand through his hair and sighed. She’d just dug her own grave. Had she lied and said something tedious like PE or Art, it might have spared him clarification.

He quickly added, “We both have A’s. You can check. We did all the work too. It was a slow day and as you can tell, Annie needed some time away from large crowds.”

Stanley put his hands on his hips, much like Sarah had done, but just went to pull up his pants by his belt, ineffectively, before turning back to the counter. “That cop discount still up, Sarah?” he joked.

She smirked and went to get him his coffee. Gray let out a sigh of relief then quickly returned to Annie’s cold cheek.

“Ann, that scholarship won’t wait for you. If you start a year late, you lose it.” He looked down at his slightly trembling hands. “It won’t wait for us.”

She snapped to stare him down. “I can’t do Stanford, Gray. Simple as that. You know me. I’m not book smart. You’re constantly reminding me to homework and--”

“Fine, Ann. Do what you want. Throw your future away!” he yelled, throwing his arms in the air in defeat. She didn’t want to cry, not in his presence. She hadn’t cried when he told her he was leaving and she wasn’t about to cry now. But he knew how to hurt her. He knew that all she worried about, every hour of every day when they weren’t together, was being ripped out of childhood and thrown into the “grand desert in which we are all destined to wander” as she liked to call it. He’d laughed when she told him that but she was serious. She was terrified because she knew eventually, they would part and she’d be left to wander alone.

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’m telling them no. I’m going to a State and that’s final,” she mumbled.

He decided in 9th grade, when the word “college” suddenly took meaning, that he was going to the University of Vermont or any other local college so he could still help his mother. It’s why both parties insisted on making France such a short engagement. He should have known Annie would want to follow him to the end of the world if need be.

That’s when he realized that he would follower her just as well, if she ever found the courage to move.

“Fine,” he mumbled back and returned to his notebook, his letter. She waited to see him smile again but he didn’t. In fact, he looked suddenly in pain. She took another sip of frappuccino and pretended the conversation never happened, that her world was still blissfully monotonous. They were so good at pretending by now.

They got home around 4PM. The streets were muddy and they’d worn regular tennis shoes, instead of boots, so they got muddied up to their knees. They rolled up their jeans but they still got sprayed every time a car passed by.

He still had his macchiato in one hand, sipping absentmindedly, the other in his pocket. He stared at the road, knowing their path all too well, despite the mud. They walked in silence the whole way, up till his house. He just kept walking on to his cabin by the woods, mumbling a goodbye through his straw as he went.

She watched him go and smirked. Gray had grown so much over the years. She still had pictures of them from first grade, front teeth missing yet grinning proudly at the camera. His shoulders had broadened; he’d grown a good foot in the last year and a half. Even with his blond curls hidden beneath his hat, which looked very much like something a cat burglar would wear, the thick set of his jaw made him much more handsome. He’d grown into a man.

She looked down at herself as she walked home. She had barely grown at all. She was still 5’5 and not likely to get any taller, which next to him made her feel like a dwarf. But he’d always been taller so that didn’t bother her as much. She hated that she had a relatively flat chest though, and small hips, because it made her feel less feminine than she already was. She had high cheekbones and dark eyes, dark hair. Nothing all that extraordinary.

He had the loveliest eyes in school, for which he’d been named. She knew that depending on how he felt and how much he slept, they shifted between a green and gray color. Only she had gotten close enough to notice. When they were twelve, they started a chapter on astronomy and she told him his eyes reminded her of the Helix Nebula. He become fascinated by it and by his next birthday, he was practically living at the planetarium in St. Johnsbury, often dragging her along. He hadn’t gone back in a bit.

She decided that, before he left, she’d take him there again.

--

Next day was a Friday. Gray walked down the hallway toward his first class, Spanish. Annie had Economics now but they crossed paths in the new wing. She smiled at him apologetically. He didn’t smile back but he did hug her with one arm. She found it strange because they were already running late as usual and he was not the type to hug in public. It felt more like he was pulling her towards him as if to keep her, the way a kid hugged a present on Christmas morning.

“Gray? What is it?”

He pulled away. “Nothing. Just saying hello.”

She furrowed her brow. “You don’t say hello. You say ‘What’s up, dude?’ and punch me in the arm.” His face lit up and it reminded her of what she’d remembered to tell him in the car. “By the way! We have a sub in AP Lit. Prepare yourself.”

He groaned and covered his eyes with his hand. Gray had the misfortune of having a surname for a first name and a first name for a surname so substitute teachers often inverted it. He hated having to correct them so Annie had devised a plan in seventh grade to make it even more embarrassing for him.

The first class went by slowly as usual. Everyone, including the teacher, was still half asleep. The bell rang and she scurried out into the hall, trying not to slide on the linoleum floor. Despite her height, she liked to wear flat slipper-like shoes.

She found Gray at the other end of the hall, talking to his teacher by the door. His teacher was young, in his 30s, with dark skin and kind eyes. She never asked where he was from but she imagined South America since he obviously mastered Spanish. She had him later that day. Though they had similar classes, Annie and Gray only managed two periods together this year. Already they were splintering.

“Ready?” she asked with a giant smile. He looked tired and reluctantly nodded. She took his arm and pulled him down the hall towards the older building.

The sub was blonde, with a thin Southern accent. Annie could tell a mile away that she wasn’t the type to double check her pronunciation. The class could see the anticipation in Annie’s face and quieted quickly, suppressing the occasional giggle. The sub had written Mrs. Cabrera on the board. They wondered if she was any relation to the Spanish teacher, a wife or sister perhaps. They didn’t have the same skin color, hair, heritage… so they figured wife.

“Okay students!” she called out though there was no need. Everyone was silent. “I’m going to take attendance as one of you passes out the class work for today.”

She handed the papers to Connie, a shy girl in the front row, and started to read from the list. First was Brianna Aarons, then Daniel Casing, then Margot Dubois… Annie tapped her fingers on the desk and moved closer to Gray, smiling madly with excitement. She loved to see him turn red.

Strangely though, as the sub reached Carla Owens, she found herself looking at him in a new light. It no longer bothered him that they might say his name wrong, that the entire class would correct the teacher for him. He was past such childish things. She stopped smiling and looked at him appreciatively. He’d started filling in the blanks on the worksheet as soon as it hit his desk with bored accuracy.

She didn’t even realize the sub had called out Scott Grayson until the class jumped in loudly, “IT’S GRAYSON SCOTT!!”

Annie jumped and smiled a thanks to the class. The sub looked scared and put in her place. It just didn’t have the same satisfaction it once did. It was three weeks to graduation and she had finally caught up to him, but then again, he’d been born a man.

She looked up at the sub and felt ashamed. Gray caught her looking up and touched her arm. “You okay?” he whispered, as the class still roared at their private joke. “Annie?”

“Yea, I’m fine,” she snapped. She looked down at the worksheet and went to pick up her pencil but stopped. “Before I forget, I’m taking you for a ride tomorrow. That okay?”

“Uh… sure. Where to?”

“Does it matter? Isn’t my company enough?” He scoffed and ruffled his hair. He was about to answer when she interrupted, “Just dress warm.”

He didn’t complain.

--

It was a fifteen-minute drive from Waterford to St. Johnsbury so Annie spent it talking about the first memory that popped into her head. He smirked from time to time but his nebula eyes never lit up how she wanted. He usually smiled with his eyes, not his lips.

He took out his case of cigarettes from the breast pocket of his army jacket and hit it up against his palm. He lit one up and rolled down the window of the old Chrysler. She made a face of disgust and rolled down her own.

“My mother’s going to kill you.”

“Ha,” he shot out. She didn’t know her mother had started smoking again. Actually, she’d never really quit, merely picked up the pace as times got worse. He didn’t like to smoke in Annie’s presence but to keep her mother’s secret, he’d light up once in a while to mask the already existing odor.

“Why do you insist on killing yourself?” she asked, resting her elbow on the window edge, her fist on her cheek. The roads were mostly clear. The breeze was mostly cool and calming, sending her short hair flying about behind her.

He slid down a bit in his seat. “I figure once I’m gone, you’ll finally miss me.”

They didn’t talk again after that. He realized where they were going the moment they turned onto Concord. He would never admit it but his heart started to beat a little faster. Like a kid in a candy store, she’d once told him. She parked at the front. It wasn’t too full. In the lobby, she went to pay when an old man behind the booth greeted him.

“Hey kiddo! Long time no see,” he said, almost in a song.

“Hey Saul!” Gray answered as he signed the logbook. “How’d the surgery go?”

“Good good.”

“And Margaret?”

“Oh she’s fine, Gray. The kids are inside somewhere, probably attacking Katie in the gift shop.” Then Gray laughed, which seemed unnaturally real. She wondered if the laughs she knew were just put forth for her benefit, unlike this one which was done in earnest.

“Katie? What happened to Jodie?”

“Oh she left around Easter. It was too far a drive and too little money.”

“That’s a shame,” Gray replied though Annie got that he wasn’t so sincere about that, despite his lack of sarcasm.

“This your girl?” At that, Annie snapped to attention with wide-open eyes. She shook her head no.

Gray laughed again, sincerely. “No no. This is just Annie.”

“The infamous Annie,” he said, putting a hand through the mouse hole in the glass wall where people slipped him their money. She took it and shook. He seemed like a kind man, the type of man she imagined Gray grow up to be someday.

Gray continued to flip through the logbook, even though it wasn’t really that interesting. She wondered whose eyes he was avoiding, Saul’s or hers. She knew it was most likely her since there was nothing horribly unappealing about the old man’s face.

“Glad to know I’m famous. How much?” she asked, nodding towards the admission prices that seemed to have worn off from weather and wear.

The man suddenly looked insulted. “Are you kidding? For Gray? Nothing. Go right in.”

He slipped them two paper wrist bands through the mouse hole, their slips past the guards, though Annie knew they were all well-acquainted with Gray. He was practically one of them. How strangely eerie.

“So I’m famous, huh?” she mocked with a tight-lipped smile. He rolled his eyes and opened the door for her.

“Don’t let it go to your head,” he warned. “So why are we here?”

“What, I can’t surprise you?”

“It’s a surprise, yea, but your motives don’t exactly--”

She stepped in quickly, “It’s an olive branch, Gray. Would you just enjoy it?”

He paused for a moment and replied, “You’re right. Thanks. It’s a nice surprise.”

She let out a breath of relief. Her heart was going crazy. She didn’t know why. She’d never had much cause to be nervous around him. Why did today feel strangely like a date?

She realized he was leading her down a curved corridor towards the planetarium. It was mostly empty and the show had already started. He snuck her in to the front and told her to lie down on the carpet. She raised a curious eyebrow but followed nonetheless. He was right. The view was better. Her neck didn’t hurt after a while.

He didn’t lie down right away. He seemed to want to avoid her side but no, he just went up to the guy handling the projectors and whispered something in his ear. She watched as the guy nodded back and Gray ran back to her side. He lied down next to her and took her hand.

“Hey, I’m supposed to be surprising you, you know,” she complained like a petulant child.

“Yes well you’re bad at it.”

She laughed and he pointed up. Suddenly, the slowly rotating dots of white light stopped moving and streaked quickly towards the middle of the dome before exploding as they collided all at once in a shower of silver, blue, and gold. She gasped and gripped his hand tighter. It was stunning, like his eyes.

A few moments later, the guy at the projector announced on the microphone, “Ladies and gentleman, the Helix Nebula. For Annie.”

She didn’t cry. No, that would be silly of her since she’d seen the nebula dozens of times. But her chest did feel compressed somehow. The skin over her heart felt so heavy that it was stripping her heart of an even beat.

“You’re right,” she whispered. “You’re better at surprises.”

The car ride back, he drove because she was too tired. She rested her head against the window and slowly began to fall asleep as he talked about the early years together, of their first grade teacher trying to sit them apart so they’d stop talking and their mothers having to come in to talk to her so they’d stop complaining at home, of the time he picked a fight with the biggest brute in the fifth grade and won by the sheer luck that the brute wasn’t smart enough to see the low-hanging monkey bar…

From time to time, she’d laugh or smile but as she fought to forget he was leaving, remembering just made it hurt more. She thought this was maybe her punishment for selfishly wanting him to stay. She’d go to church tomorrow and confess. If not for her immortal soul, for her pathetic conscience.

--

“When are you leaving?” she asked him over a crusty plate of macaroni and cheese in the cafeteria two weeks later. Being the final week, she figured she’d try the food at least once before she graduated. But, as she suspected, it had been safer not to.

“June 5th, day after graduation,” he answered, as if he were talking about going to the bathroom and back, and not about Europe.

“Geez. In much of a hurry?”

“The sooner I leave, the sooner I come back.”

“What time do we have to be at the airport?” She took another big bite of the mac and cheese. It didn’t look very good but it tasted okay. It was edible at least.

He looked up at her through his eyelashes. He had to think about it. “Uh… 7PM. It’s a late flight.”

“Even better. We get the afternoon to ourselves.”

“Annie, I’ll be packing the entire week. There’s not much we can do.”

“Not even the Fair? Or the planetarium again? Or the movies! You have to catch the last showing of My Fair Lady before you go. You simply must.”

He lowered his head again and whispered, “We’ll see.”

She was starting to get the feeling that he didn’t want to be around her anymore, which was preposterous of course, but he was retreating into his head the way he did when things annoyed him.

“Are you at least going to say bye to everyone before you leave?”

“Like who? You’re the only--” he began but stopped himself.

“Just great. I’ve left you friendless,” she joked. “What about Sarah and Jude? And my folks. They’ll want to see you off though I doubt they’ll be able to leave the amoebas at home.”

Annie had three younger siblings – twin boys and a sister – whom she called the amoebas, so her parents were always short on cash and even shorter on patience. For some reason, whenever Gray walked through the door, they’d smile at him like he was the Sultan of Momba, if in fact there was a sultan in Momba.

“I’ll say goodbye to them at graduation. All of you.”

She nodded as if she understood and went back to her food until the next question arose. He’d answer it vaguely and she’d just move to the next question. She wanted to know if he was going to get himself a beret, or talk to the people in Spanish instead of French just to piss them off. He didn’t know a word of French, except “moi” because Annie used it so often to refer to herself.

The lunch bell rang but they didn’t get up from the cafeteria table. She still had her last question to ask. “Are you going to miss me?”

He laughed. “Of course not. You’ll be right there beside me,” he said, lifting up his notebook. “In your letters.”

“And I’ll write every day.”

“Promise?”

“Yea though I’ll be so bored that all my letters will be three sentences long.”

“Oh no. I’ll expect you to complain. A lot.”

A wide-backed security guard came to tell them it was time to go on to their next class. She turned around to hassle any other stragglers and Annie instantly rolled her eyes. Gray tried not to smile.

They split paths in front of the cafeteria. She had Statistics. He had AP World History. She had no idea why he bothered if state college was a sure bet without all the advanced placement courses. At least the exams had passed a month ago and so he didn’t have to take finals for those classes. She only had two, which she shared with him, so she still had to do all the pointless little projects they gave her in her other classes.

“Meet you in Bio,” he called out, suddenly realizing where he was and how much he had left to go. She knew what he’d said, even if she couldn’t make it out in the distance.

--

Graduation Day seemed so far away, but when it arrived, it took them all by surprise. She’d helped him pack three days before so she took the time to plan her own outfit for the event. Her cap and gown hung from the plastic hook on her closet door. She sat on her bed with her shoes in one hand, flats as usual, biting the nails on her free one. Her eyes jumped from the clock-radio on her nightstand to the gown to the door. She looked down at herself in her tight blue tube dress and realized how ridiculous she was being. She’d gotten dressed two hours early.

Her TV had broken three months ago so she just sat and waited. Her nails wouldn’t survive. She reached into the nightstand and pulled out two black cashmere gloves her aunt had sent her over from New Hampshire two Christmases ago. She slipped them on, hoping that would stop her ridiculous habit. Two minutes later, she was nibbling on the inner lining of her lip like a cat deprived of food for a week.

She got up and double checked she had everything for tonight. Her parents’ tickets, the babysitter’s number, Gray’s gift, her hair clips, extra panty hose… Every time she checked, she added a new item. When her mother walked in to announce it was time to go, the room was turned upside down and the little bag that went with her tube dress was carefully put on top of a very large pile of things.

“Where are you going? Tahiti?” her mother joked.

“I don’t know. I’m just scared. What if I trip or what if--”

“Yea, bull. This is about Gray, isn’t it?” She sat down beside her on the bed, grabbing a thrown-about comb to smooth out the hurricane that passed through her daughter’s head. She’d cut it again for the ceremony, an inch above her shoulders. “Sweety, he’ll be back. He and I agree you need some time alone. It’s like you’re anchored to that boy.”

“He’s never left, Mom. Not once in 12 years!”

“But you have, plenty of times, and survived. Consider your summer here another vacation to Lake Tahoe and let him go.”

Annie scoffed. “Easy for you to say. Besides, all those times--”

Her mother pulled the comb away and set it on the nightstand, interrupting her again. “It was you leaving him and not the other way around. It’ll hurt sweety but get over it.”

With that, she left to wait in the car. Annie looked at the time, at the pile, and decided just to take the little bag from the top, sending the rest toppling to the floor as she ran out the door to meet her parents in the car.

“Got everything?” her father asked as she closed the door beside her.

“Yea, Dad. I’m good.”

He nodded and started the car.

--

Gray was late. A good fifteen minutes into the ceremony, she looked at his empty seat again and realized she couldn’t hold back the tears for much longer. She wanted to run out of there and find him and beg him to stay. She had come to this silly thing for him. She hadn’t gone to any other senior event, not even prom. And what about his goodbyes?

She looked to the stands where her parents were standing proudly, waving madly. She faked a smile and waved back. She stood up as the others did and walked up to the stage when her name was called, shook the man’s hand, and took her diploma. But never once was she aware of what she was doing, where she was, like she’d suddenly gone into autopilot to keep herself from breaking down.

Her heart felt crushed again. She walked past her parents, handed them the diploma and cap and continued out into the mud towards Gray’s house.

The house was made of wood, mostly, like the sort of cabins resorts often faked for the sake of tourists. It was large, with two floors and a porch. The woods around it seemed to be held back by an invisible barrier that kept it a few yards from the house itself so it could have a little backyard.

“Gray!” she called out, tracking mud all over the floor. She stopped in the kitchen when she noticed the mess she was leaving and took off her shoes. She set them in a corner, not that it was helping anyone. Her calves were still encrusted in mud.

She ran up the stairs to his room but the closer she got, the slower she moved. She knew he wouldn’t be there. She stopped calling his name when she stood at his open door. His room was cleaned up, no boxers thrown carelessly over furniture or boots huddled in a corner. It seemed almost ghostly empty, like he’d died and they’d tried to preserve some false image of him, like they wanted the world to think he was clean as well as kind. It was ridiculous. She’d seen him take mud baths on more than one occasion.

A single striped shirt had been left on the bed, thrown carelessly. He must have switched shirts at the last moment and left it behind. She sat down beside it and brought it to her face. It still smelled of him, of grass and soap and the faint hint of cologne that his mother had most likely forced on him.

She closed her eyes and gripped the shirt tightly, nearly ripping it. She couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. She suddenly realized she had no address, no phone number, no email to reach him. He didn’t even have a computer over there. She had no idea how she was going to get a hold of him. It already felt as if he’d died.

She rested onto her side on the bed. The sun was starting to set. She wasn’t sure how long she was there in his room, holding onto his shirt like a baby held its blanket. All she remembered was hearing the front door close. She’d forgotten she’d left it open. She thought maybe he’d come back and ran downstairs, sliding on the mud she’d trailed in. She quickly pulled herself back up, feeling a cool hand on her bare shoulder.

“Annie is that you?”

“Hey Mrs. Scott,” she answered sadly, her emotions once again drained out of her. “I thought maybe you were Gray.”

“No I’ve just come back from the airport.” She set the keys down on the kitchen table and began to take off her scarf, wrapping it around the back of a chair. “I wondered why you weren’t there but I suppose he thought it was for the best.”

Annie didn’t respond, just sat down on the second to last step of the stairs and stared off into nowhere. Mrs. Scott, a curvaceous woman with tired eyes, noticed Annie’s tear-reddened face and sat down beside her on the step. She took out an envelope from her large bag that had apparently been folded in half the way Gray did when he kept things in his back pocket. Annie smirked when she saw it and took it carefully like it was made of delicate cake frosting.

“He wanted you to have this,” Mrs. Scott said, heading for the kitchen. “I imagine it explains why he didn’t tell you. Would you like to stay for dinner, dear?”

Annie didn’t respond to that either so the woman continued, “His room’s all yours for as long as you need it, love. I can tell it’s not going to be easy. I’ll just call your parents and let them know you’re here.”

But she’d already begun back upstairs, staring at the letter in her hands and slipping at least two more times before finding his bed. She turned on the light and plopped onto his four-poster bed, a small sense of glee befalling her collapsed heart. He hadn’t simply forgotten her, disregarded her.

She told herself maybe this was part of his plan but she would grasp at the first straw in sight. And she opened the first letter.

My dearest Annie,

You’re sitting in front of me at Starbucks right now eating some disgusting pink thing probably processed in a factory in Jersey, and all I can think about – aside from what a slob you are – is that I’ll be eight months eating without you. That’s like eight months without water or air.

I wonder if they have Starbucks in France. Likely. I still won’t go, even if they did. I don’t think Sarah would allow me any type of coffee she hasn’t blessed, eh? God, eight months. It hasn’t really hit me how fucking long that is. A lifetime to us.

And I know you’ll be angry with me. I know, but I had to do it. I wish I could be there to scare the rage away with my usual charm. Yes, I have charm. Don’t deny it. Now, don’t lock yourself in your room (or mine) and bombard your Beatles CDs. Don’t do that to your family, please. Karis will attack me when I come back if you do, and you know they’ll only make you cry even more.

I feel terrible for secretly hoping you’re crying over me. I know you wouldn’t before but I also know how much not having someone there is going to hurt. I wish I could be there when you read this, just to hug you and tell you it’s going to be okay. It will, Ann. It will.

And as much as you probably hate me right now, I want you to know that I didn’t do it to hurt you. You have no idea how much going away is killing me. I’m even sorrier that I never got to see your face tear up when you said goodbye or to hug you or—Annie, I want you to know that I didn’t leave like this because I’m being cruel. I did it because I know if I saw you shed a single tear for me, I wouldn’t get on that plane.

I left like this, Ann, because it took the thought of losing you to make me realize how much I love you, the way a man loves a woman.

I don’t expect you to feel the same. It’s harder for you to see me as I see you because I don’t wear my soul on my sleeve, only on paper. There’s less to love. But I thought that maybe in these letters, if you forgive me enough to write back, I could tell you all that I ever wanted to tell you but let pride obscure.

My father’s address in Marseille is written on the envelope. Write me. I beg you.

I love you.

-Gray.

Her hands were shaking so much that she didn’t notice the letter had slide off the bed till she went to read it again and couldn’t find it. For an instant, she wondered if it had been real, but there it was! In his handwriting! A confession of his love. She couldn’t even deny it to herself.

She went to cover her mouth because she knew what was coming. Not vomit but the insatiable need to scream out, “YOU BASTARD!!”

When Mrs. Scott heard the yell, she dropped a pan she’d been cleaning into the sink, but she knew to leave her alone. A dozen people would be telling her it’d all be better soon but she’d only believe it from Gray, and maybe that was best.

--

CHAPTER TWO: A window short of a view… is coming soon!

--

Please be kind and review. I love to hear what you think.