Page 19 of Somewhere With You
She laughed, shook her head, and slapped his thigh hard. “You know… Jack Harrison… I didn’t think it was possible to like you any more than I already do. But when you’re like this—meaning, not so serious, I prove myself wrong. Every time.”
By then, light rain had started to fall. Jack took off his coat and wrapped it around her. “We’d better go,” he’d said glancing up at the sky. Amelie snuggled up to him and pushed her head into his chest.
“What if we didn’t… not yet.” He settled into her. “Jack?” she whispered and snuggled closer as though it were possible. “I’m really going to miss you.”
He sighed, tucked his chin to her forehead, and inhaled, trying his damnedest to memorize the way she felt.
The next morning, Jack awoke to find Amelie straddling him, her camera pointed at his face. “Merry Christmas, Jack!” Click. Click. Click. She snapped. When he groaned in annoyance, she let the camera fall down around her neck, and she lifted a package off the bed and thrust it at his face. “Here,” she said. “I got you something.”
He pushed himself up slowly causing her to shuffle backward a little. Undeterred, she raised the camera back up to her eye and resumed pointing it at his face. Jack gave her a look. “What? I want to capture your face when you see what it is…”
He carefully tore at the paper and placed it off to the side. He surveyed the contents. It was a book. No, it was two books. They were photo albums to be exact. He looked up at her, unsure what to say. Thank you would be good, he thought. But for some reason, the words weren’t forming on his lips.
She took the one on top from him and opened it up at its middle. “The first one,” she cheered and then paused, “is of us. It’s all the summers.” Jack looked down and stared at the younger version of him on the page. In the photo, he was holding a fish and grinning from ear to ear. Did he actually grin like that? Had he ever really been that happy? She slowly turned the page, not taking her eyes off his, clearly trying to gauge his reaction. In the next photo, there he was painting a fence. Jack barely remembered painting that fence until now. But seeing himself there on the page, holding the brush, it all suddenly came flooding back. The way she’d talked his ear off that day. The way he handed her the brush in hopes that maybe it would shut her up. He remembered how furious he’d been when she got it all wrong. He thought of the way she’d thrown the brush and sulked off when he yelled at her for painting in the wrong direction. “Painting is a solitary sport,” he had assured her. Jack smiled then as he recalled the expression on her face right before she’d taken her finger, dipped it in the red paint, and traced a straight line from his forehead all the way down his nose. He laughed at how she’d crossed her arms and grinned afterward, clearly satisfied with herself. “Take that, Jack Harrison,” he remembered she had called over her shoulder as she stormed off. Take that, Jack Harrison was right. One photograph, and just like that, everything came rushing back. She was that good.
“Do you like it?” She nudged his arm.
He didn’t answer—not because he didn’t want to but because he couldn’t. His throat was too dry. “Here, open this one,” she said taking the book from his hands and replacing it with the other. She adjusted it in his lap. He raised his eyebrows suggestively.
She read his mind. “That gift comes next. Pun intended.”
Jack shook his head. He opened the album and froze. There they were—glued one by one to each page—all the letters his mother had written him. She studied his face and spoke softly. “I wanted to preserve them for you.” She handed him an envelope. “But I also had copies made.”
His eyes filled with tears as he stared at the words on the page though not really seeing them. Jack swallowed hard as the tears threatened to spill over.
Amelie reached for his hand and wrapped it in both of hers. “These letters are really lovely, Jack. Your mother seems like an amazing person,” she said quietly, wiping the tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. “And I can tell that she really, really loves you.”
Jack looked up at her then. “Loved. You meant to say loved, not loves.”
She shrugged.
He tried to swallow the lump that had formed in his throat. After three tries, he succeeded. “I don’t know what to say… just… thank you.”
Amelie carefully moved the books from his lap and placed them on the bedside table. She climbed into his lap and ran her finger across his bottom lip. “I want you to promise me that you’ll read these, Jack. You really need to read them.”
He looked away. “I can’t.”
“What if I read them aloud to you?”
He looked back at her as though maybe he was really seeing her for the first time. He searched her eyes as he smoothed her hair away from her face. “Sounds like a good plan. Not now, though. Now… I need to give you your gift.” He smirked, lowering her back onto the bed. She raised her eyebrows. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, but I should warn you this, um… gift is probably going to take awhile.”
“Those are always the best kind.” She giggled. Jack kissed the tip of her nose, and she smiled. There it is, that smile, he thought. God, that smile. So maybe he couldn’t memorize everything about her the way he’d hoped. But as long as he lived, he knew that he would never forget that smile.
Jack lay awake that night, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how the tides had turned in their friendship. For as many years as he could remember, it had always been Amelie who wanted him. Amelie wanted to be friends. Amelie chased him around camp. Amelie followed him around like a lost puppy. Hell, just last summer, it was she who had begged him not to leave her. And now, he found it odd that it was he who needed to do the begging now. Jack knew himself though. He wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t ask her to stay. But there in the dead of night, when he was sure that no one was listening, he allowed himself one shot at it just so he’d know what it felt like. He rolled over, pulled her in close, and whispered in her ear… “Please don’t go.”
Three days later, Jack kissed Amelie goodbye in the airport terminal. “So you’ll visit me this summer, right?” she asked excitedly as though maybe she weren’t ripping his heart out.
He nodded. “Of course.”
“And you’ll read the letters?”
“Yeah… Probably.”
Amelie didn’t buy it. She pulled something from her carry-on… a pen, as it turned out. She grabbed his hand, turned his palm up to face her, and pushed the tip into it. “So, you should know that I’ve numbered them. There were two that I didn’t open. One for your wedding day, and one for the day your first child is born.” She shrugged. “I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t. Anyway this is the one I think you should start with.” He watched the pen move as she scribbled the number fourteen on his hand.
A voice overhead said something Jack hadn’t paid attention to. She glance