Dear Emily (4 page)

“You're not my waitress.” Jack took in
her high ponytail, biker shorts, and jersey top.

While she smelled strongly of beer and
chicken wings, Jack smelled of vanilla and spice. He'd spent the
day at the farm, but he obviously went home to shower first. He was
wearing a crisp white T-shirt and khaki shorts. His hair was combed
neatly.

“Don't you have friends to hang out
with?” Unlike her, Jack did have friends and they were
spectacular.

He grinned. “Do you want me to have
them meet me here? Then we can all escort you back to the apartment
when your shift is over.”

“You know,” she said, her eyes
narrowing. “I could ask the cook to start spitting in your
food.”

“Now, why would you do a mean thing
like that?”

“So you stop coming here when I'm
working. You don't have to drive me home from work,” she said,
cringing she'd used the word, 'home'. She had to constantly remind
herself this situation was temporary.

“Maybe I like the food.” He shrugged
and took a sip of his beer.

“It's like ten blocks away, Jack.
Really, it's not a big deal. I can walk.”

Jack rubbed his hands across his
face.

“I'm not being difficult,” she
said.

“I didn't say you were
difficult.”

“You were thinking it.”

“A man's thoughts are no one's but his
own.”

And boy did she want to know everything
he was thinking.

All the time.

He lifted his beer in the air and
caught Kelly's attention as he tapped the side of his glass with
his finger. “I'm going to need another one, please.”

“Now what are you doing?” she
asked.

“Having too many beers. You're doing me
a favor. I suddenly find myself in need of a designated
driver.”

“Now who's being difficult?”

“I never said you were
difficult.”

“You were thinking it.”

“Amy?” He asked.

“Yes?”

He covered her hand with his, and her
heart rate sped up. “What time are we leaving?”

She sighed, and picked up the empty
plate on his table. “In an hour.”

Jack nodded, obviously satisfied with
his win, and turned his attention to one of the many flat screen
televisions broadcasting a basketball game.

It was six weeks since she started
living with Jack Harper. He was not at the apartment much during
the day. This semester, his master's program was comprised of
independent study, so he only met with a professor on campus once a
week.

The rest of his time he spent at the
farm helping Terri and Tom—soaking up generations of knowledge he'd
never learn in a book.

Though entirely focused on schoolwork,
Amy had been back to the farm a handful of times. It may not have
been love at first sight for her, but the farm and Amy were
certainly in the midst of courtship. Her arms and legs were
stronger and leaner than ever, and she didn't necessarily feel like
she was going to keel over after an hour of work
anymore.

Living with Jack was easy.

Too easy.

It was both painful and fun to imagine
in an alternate universe, they may have been wonderful...
roommates.

The bigger surprise was that keeping
her living arrangements from her parents was easier than she would
have imagined. She fed them a story about sharing an apartment with
a girlfriend. It's not like they were ever going to visit her
anyway. Too many memories. This is where Emily would have gone to
school, her mother would say. Amy hadn't even wanted to go away to
college, preferring to stay with her parents. That protest had
obviously gone nowhere.

When Amy's shift was over, she met Jack
at the front door and he handed her the keys to his truck. As they
pulled out of the parking lot, she caught a glimpse of him in the
dim parking lot lights. He was the most handsome man she'd ever
seen in real life.

When she was in middle school, they
knew of Jack Harper, the junior. The girls used to joke he was too
good-looking to even speak to. Looking directly in his eyes was a
great feat. Amy realized now they weren't far off from those
assumptions they'd had in middle school.

“We're out of OJ,” he said, as she
turned onto the main road.

“We can stop at Wal-Mart if you want to
go now.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Although Jack promoted locally grown
food, he was a victim to convenience now and again. Considering
they practically lived solely on food from the farm, a container of
OJ or a box of granola bars seemed excusable.

She continued down the main Parkway,
looking for the beacon of light that was the twenty-four hour
Wal-Mart. It was surprising how many cars were in the parking lot
at midnight, and she parked the truck in the back of the parking
lot.

“We could have walked from the
apartment,” he said, meeting her in front of the truck.

“I can barely drive this thing on the
road, much less park it amongst other cars and human beings. You
want me as far away from objects as possible.”

He grabbed a shopping cart as they
entered the store.

“Do we need a cart for orange juice?”
she asked.

“It's Wal-Mart, we'll need a shopping
cart.”

They stood in front of the orange juice
section knowing they were going to get the same orange juice they
always got, however contemplating the options all the same. “Do you
think I'll be a real adult the day I choose orange juice with
pulp?” Amy asked.

Jack shook his head in disgust. “Pulp
is asking too much of me so early in the morning. If I wanted to
eat my juice, I'd have an orange.”

“Look at this,” Amy muttered, “Extra
pulp.”

“That's just pretentious.”

She put the usual, pulp-free orange
juice in the cart and headed for the checkout lines.

“Wait, I want to see one thing,” Jack
said, making a sharp turn for another aisle.

“And we've lost another soul to the
magnetic pull of Wal-Mart.” She followed Jack but stopped when she
saw the toy section and a display of hula-hoops. “A hula hoop!” she
exclaimed, admiring the rainbow of hula-hoops on display. “I used
to love the hula hoop. I was superb at it. Do you want to
see?”

“Yes,” he said, without hesitation, and
leaned against the cart, waiting for her to begin.

She pulled the lime-green hula over her
head and held the plastic ring around her hips. “Prepare to be
amazed,” she said, meeting his eyes.

“You're stalling.” His eyes narrowed in
skepticism, but he simpered ever so slightly as her hips began
rotations.

By her count, she'd successfully hula
hooped for nineteen seconds. Not too shabby if you asked
her.

“You do not disappoint,” he conceded.
Amy blushed.

They continued shopping and Jack led
her to the furniture section and after walking down three aisles of
boxes and more boxes and couches and mirrors and kitchen tables, he
seemed to find what he was looking for.

He picked up a box for a
build-it-yourself- three-drawer dresser. It was simple and easy to
build. He checked the back of the box to make sure it came with
everything one would need to build the dresser. Jack purchased his
dresser and she insisted on paying for the orange juice. She
offered to help him carry the box up the stairs to the apartment,
but he managed on his own.

After a quick shower to wash the stench
of the pub off her, she went to the kitchen under the pretense of
wanting something to drink. Truthfully, she wanted to be with Jack.
Not disappointed, he was in the living room opening the box to the
furniture he'd purchased. “Are you putting your dresser together
now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you ever sleep?”

He shrugged. “Not well.”

“It seems like you always go to sleep
after me and yet you're up before me every morning.”

She sat down beside him on the living
room floor. “Can I help you build it?”

“Yes.”

She peered into the box. “I actually
like building things. Oh, look, Aliens is on TV.”

She put the movie on the television in
the living room and pushed the ottoman over to one side so they
would have space to work. Jack removed the pieces from the box and
spread them out on the floor. Together, they sorted the pieces into
groups and then Amy held the instructions up as they counted each
piece to make sure they were not missing anything.

She read the instructions and told him
which pieces needed to go together. They took their time but did
good work. “Emily and I used to like building things,” Amy said,
meeting his eyes and silently asking if it was okay to talk about
her sister with him.

“What did you two used to build?” He
asked, without missing a beat.

“We thought we could build birdhouses
and sell them to people.”

“I didn't peg you for an
entrepreneur.”

“We need the other bracket,” Amy said.
“The smaller one.”

He nodded and joined the correct
pieces.

“We started with one birdhouse, of
course. And it was crooked and I worried we'd used too much glue
and the birds would die from glue exposure and we saw a few birds
the first afternoon. But the second day, we went to refill the bird
seed and there was a huge palmetto bug in it and I screamed when I
saw it and it flew at us and we cried and never built another bird
house.”

Jack laughed. “The business was over
that fast?”

She nodded. “Did you know
Emily?”

He only hesitated for a moment before
answering. “We went to a small enough school that I knew her. But I
didn't know her.”

“She wasn't very social.”

“No, she wasn't. Not that I can
remember,” he said. “Can you hold this piece in place with the glue
while I hammer in the nails?”

She nodded, and her body vibrated with
each contact. “She was a little shy,” Amy said. “Some people
couldn't believe we were sisters. Because I talk too
much.”

“You talk just enough.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“I think we're done,” he
said.

With the dresser or with talk of Emily?
Amy wondered.

“You'll have to tell me where you want
it in your room.”

Amy smiled. “I was hoping it was for
me,” she said. The roommate, his name was Dave, might have been
living abroad for the semester. But his closet and dresser were
filled to capacity, forcing Amy to live out of her
suitcase.

She stared at the dresser for too long.
“I'm still actively looking for another place to live.”

“I know. Until then... the
dresser.”

“You're a good person,
Jack.”

He nodded once and stood, revealing a
lone, metal hinge that had somehow been left out.

“Well shit,” he said. “There's a hinge
missing.”

Yes, Amy thought. There certainly was a
hinge missing.

Dear Emily,
I'm so happy sometimes I forget things were ever any
different.
Chapter 4

The next day, Amy didn't go to work and
studied instead.

Studying became easier ever since
living with Jack. With her brain more focused on school and not so
much focused on keeping a roof over her head, she found
she wasn't half bad in the school business.

She couldn't be sure
if it was only the security of a home, or if Jack's
friendship may also have played a part in her
phoenix-like rise from the ashes. That, she
decided, was something she didn't want to consider now.
Her head hurt when she thought about it too
much.

It was irrelevant.

She woke up at eight, only to find
Jack was already awake. Of course,
he was already awake.
How could someone look so well rested when they
didn't sleep?

Amy had even gone so far as
to research the effects of lack of sleep. What she
found was an extensive list of very important
fancy pants people that survived on an average of four
hours a night. Several US Presidents made the
list. It was no surprise to Amy that Jack
too, appeared to excel with so little sleep.

She dressed and took a quiet enjoyment
in selecting clothes from the dresser. The piece of furniture
signified so much, and yet again, it was a topic she
did not wish to contemplate further.
She was only mildly concerned about what the
dresser meant, but then decided it didn't need
to say anything.

It was a functional piece of
furniture. Wood panels glued and screwed together for containing
clothes. It was nothing else
and certainly was not anything special.

She spread her books and papers out on
the dining room table, every inch of wood blanketed in paper and
every electronic device she owned. If only
she could lie on top of the table and learn by osmosis.
That would be so much easier.