“I wouldn't go that far.”
“You certainly broke my heart.”
I wanted to ask him how that was, considering he was the one that never came back during the summer. I was back the next year just like I said I would be. He was the one that never showed up. He was the one that had broken my heart. How did he not know that?
I didn't mention any of it, obviously, because it was too real and too personal. I wondered what would have been different if he would have come back that summer. Would he have gone into the military? Would things have turned out differently between us? I guess it was something that I was always going to wonder.
When we got in the house, I could tell right off the bat that he was a bachelor. Although there were several things that didn't make sense, the rest was the general mess of men. I saw a stuffed animal on the couch, and I picked it up with a question on my face.
Frank didn’t say anything one way or another about it. I don't know how I was supposed to take that, but before I could ask anything else, he was distracting me with a drink, and I followed him into the kitchen to see what he had. It had been one hell of a day, and it was the sort of day that I just wanted to forget about. With Frank by my side and a drink in my hand, I couldn’t imagine anything else than that. Frank would help me forget.
5
Frank
“I can definitely see you making clothes. You were always the best dressed in town.”
She waved me off. It was getting pretty clear that Amber had had enough. She’d probably had enough two drinks ago, so when I said something about it, she just told me I didn't know what I was talking about.
“Maybe not, but it looks like you hold your liquor about the same as you used to. Remember when we got some beer from my dad and took it on your grandpa's roof?”
Amber agreed. “Yeah, I remember. I guess I wasn't the only one that had trouble holding down my alcohol. That would have been horrible. I remember being so scared when you almost fell off.”
“When you pulled me back up, I think that was the first time that you kissed me.”
Amber nodded, and she had that smile on her face, the one that made me want to kiss her again. How long had it been since I’d seen it and heard the tinkling sound of her laughter? Whatever the answer was, I knew for sure it had been too long. Even though I had thought about her the last ten years, I don't think I quite understood how much I had missed her.
At some point when I wasn’t around her for so long, even when I replayed the moments that I had with her over and over again in my mind, something was lost through the years. The memory faded and the feelings that I had, started to fade as well. While I knew that I missed her and I wanted to see her again, my brain had played a trick on me, somehow helping me to forget just how great she really was. Maybe it was for my own good. Maybe I would have missed her even more, and it would have changed the trajectory of things. Maybe I should have.
All of this was running through my head as I was sitting across the table from Amber. The next moment, the table was too large of a space between us. How badly I wanted to kiss her, wondering if it would feel the same as it had before. Had I forgotten that feeling as well? Had it changed just like everything else?
She got this look on her face while we were talking about the past, and for a minute, I recognized it well. She wanted me. The only problem was that she was too drunk. There was no way that we could do anything, at least not tonight.
Amber had decided at some point that I was the new mark and she was smiling at me in that way she had. It was impossible not to smile with her. It was the smile of a devil, though. I was sure of it.
“Come on, Frank. Are you going to tell me that you never thought about it, all that time we were together, and you didn't wonder what it would be like if we had done more on my grandfather’s roof? I always thought that we would have been together if you had been there the next summer. All year I had been working up the courage to be with you. I had this perfect nightgown that I thought was going to entice you. I had all these big plans for us, and then you were gone.”
I felt like she was telling me more than she wanted to tell me, and her sober self would probably be very upset with her loose tongue in the morning. It actually was a good thing, though, as far as I was concerned. I'd been so worried about what I had felt for her being one way. It wouldn't have taken away my feelings, but it would have been harder to face her knowing that she didn't feel the same way, and I had spent the last decade thinking of somebody who hadn't even thought of me. I think that would have been the worst feeling ever.
It wasn't the case, though. She had thought about me and now she wanted us to finally be together. It was something that we had talked about a lot, but I hadn't felt like she was ready back then. I had been with a few girls,
