Jack and Diane [part III]

Continued from part II

Six years later, to the month, the girl, who now lived in the Big City, recognized a name on the FROM line of her email inbox. A Christian name given to movie stars, hockey players, and hosts of popular reality shows, coupled with a family name that, while common when spelled with an O, is rarely rendered with an E.

It was from the boy she had called Jack.

The subject line read only, "?" and the body of the message was blank. There had been one or two similar missives since that day on the beach, and for the first three years there had been birthday greetings, but nothing since then. The girl had kept her promise to the boy who loved her very much: she had never replied.

This time, she did: "Hey, you. Let me know next time you're here. Maybe we can get together for a beer."

"I'm here now," he emailed back.

And the girl, who had always believed in fate, and who had been laughed at, and told, that's why the Boston Red Sox will never win the World Series, felt the tiniest glimmer of a feeling she hadn't felt for the past two years: hope.

* * *
You see, two years earlier, again, to the month — a month she now feared and despised — the boy who had loved her so very much told her he was not happy, and walked out the door. He abandoned her completely; left the cats, left the new new house, left the money in the bank and the furniture on the floors. He came back only once, for his clothes and his records. On her birthday. While she was out.

Three weeks later her mother died, and the girl had never felt so alone.

There followed many bad, bad days. After the funeral she crawled into bed and didn't emerge, but to tend to her cats, for weeks.

She thought about Jack. She wanted to call him. She knew she didn't have the right.

Eventually, she got out of bed and began, tentatively, to live again. It was the hardest thing she'd ever done. She thought about Jack every day. She wanted so very badly to hear his voice. To have him wrap his big, strong, arms around her and tell her she was safe. She was so terribly afraid, all the time.

But the girl did not call Jack. She could not bear the thought of him seeing her like this: needy and helpless. And she could not bear the possibility of rejection. Not again.

One spring day, two years into her aloneness, the girl made a decision: she would forget about Jack. She would never contact him. Her mind made up, she spring-cleaned her closets, collected the things that he had given her — a Frank Sinatra CD, a Dr. Seuss book, the song he had written for her, and Horse — and went down into the basement and threw them into the incinerator.

She stepped outside, into the warm, May day, turned her face to the sky, to the representation of Fate, and said, "There. It's all yours now."

The email appeared in her inbox four days later.

* * *
Go to Jack and Diane [part IV - fin]