Filed to story: If He Had Been With Me Book PDF Free
“You can’t read it.” We’re leaning into each other like two sides of a triangle. She’s still sniffling.
“Why not?” She said something before about how I might take elements too literally, how I’d draw parallels to her real life. Maybe there’s stuff in there about Jamie or her dad, or rather his absence. Maybe there’s something about Sylvie? That seems unlikely.
The thing is I know that she wants me to read it. She knows what she wrote is good, in the same way she knows that she’s pretty. She knows it’s good, but she’s terrified that it’s not as good as she hopes. At least that’s what I assume, because that’s what she said about the final draft of her four-part poetic drama about the faerie-dragon wars she finished when we were almost twelve.
“Not all dragons want to wipe out faeries, only some of them, and the other dragons are finally joining the faeries’ fight,” Autumn explained to me as if these were current events.
I wasn’t enthused by faeries, but I figured I wouldn’t hate her story. When I read her superlong poem, though, it was so much better than what I had expected. She surprised me. It didn’t sound like something a kid had written, and I told her so afterward. I told her how I found myself caring about that dragon prince way, way more than I had expected or even wanted to. It was the truth. She was triumphant, and it was wonderful to see.
It’s turned dark now. Her breathing is quiet. She could move if she wanted to. Why hasn’t she moved?
“Okay,” she says. “You can read it after dinner.” She lifts her head off my chest, and both of my arms fall away.
“All right,” I say. I don’t need to tell her that I ate dinner a while ago. Meals don’t have time or meaning for us this summer. I hop off the bed and hold out my hand to her.
“Um, I need to get dressed?” she says.
I drop my hand.
“Oh.” I try to laugh. “I forgot. How about you meet me in the car?”
I guess I can’t be too bad of a guy if my concern for Autumn’s emotional state could make me entirely forget her state of undress.
seven
Outside, with the moon and streetlights, it’s brighter than inside her house. I get in my car and start the engine, turning my headlights on so that her back porch is illuminated like a stage. It isn’t long before she makes her entrance. Autumn’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, casual and untouchable. She carries her laptop. Is she bringing it now so that she doesn’t lose her nerve later? Autumn shades her eyes as she heads to the car.
“So where are we going? Tacos? Burgers? Chicken?” I ask as she sits next to me in the passenger seat. The flush is gone from her face.
“Oh?” she says, as if she had forgotten that dinner involves food.
“This is a celebratory drive-through run,” I tell her. “We’ll stop at that gas station that sells those candies that you like, the one that looks like hair gel in a tube and the one that comes in the paper packets that looks like laundry detergent.”
She doesn’t laugh. “Okay.”
“I mean, it’s great that you finished your novel, even if you feel like you’ve”—I try to choose my words carefully—“like you’ve lost your main characters?”
“Yeah,” she says with a nod. She turns and faces forward, looking out the windshield. “I didn’t know it would hurt this much.”
“You’ll still have to edit it, right?” I take the car out of park. “And when it’s published, they’ll live forever within other people, you know?”
She gives me an annoyed scoff.
“What?” I ask.
“You can’t just say, ‘When it’s published,’ Finny.”
I catch a glimpse of her face before I turn in my seat to navigate down the long driveway. She’s gazing out the dark window.
She sighs. “It’s probably never going to be published. That’s simply a fact.”
“No, no, no.” I wait for a car to pass before I turn onto Elizabeth Street and continue, “That’s not a fact. A fact is that you’re good. A fact is that you’re going to let me read it.” I’m starting to feel giddy. It must be an aftereffect of holding her.
She sighs again. I risk another glance. Autumn is curled up in the seat, leaning against the window. I want to tell her that it’s not safe to ride with her feet off the floor, but I don’t want to be bossy, and anyway, I’m a good driver.
“So where are we going?” I ask.
There’s a pause before I hear her quiet voice next to me.
“Tacos,” she says.
“As you wish,” and I get the laugh I knew the movie reference would win me. When she lifts her head, I roll down the windows to let in the night air the way she likes. Autumn puts her hand out the window and rides the currents. The wind whips her hair around, and I gorge myself on her scent, filling my lungs to capacity.
There have been nights with her this summer when I only turned the car toward home because I was afraid I would be too tired to drive safely if we didn’t head back. I love her next to me. I love hearing her react to the random madness of local radio stations. I love holding her hands beneath mine on the steering wheel, showing her that she will be able to drive if she trusts herself.
“And then what?” Jack asked me. “Then what?”
Eventually, I’ll have to tell her that it can’t always be like it’s been this summer or how it will probably be this fall if I’m being realistic. I don’t want to be like all the asshole guys who can’t see past her body, but I can’t only be her friend. Not if I am this close to her. Not if my feelings are so much more than a friend’s. I’ll have to tell her by Christmas though, or I’ll go mad.
But tonight, she needs me. For a while, I have this excuse: her current fragility, the coming adjustment of us both going to college, and then, and then, and then—
I can’t think about it right now.
“Care if I put on music?” I ask.
“Yeah, sure,” she mumbles, and I reach with one hand for a CD in the glove box. There’s this song from a band I discovered that I want her to hear because, well, to be honest, there’re a few songs on this album that make me think of her. The opening song reminds me of this summer with her, the nervous energy of us being out at night in my car, even if we aren’t together in quite the same way. It’s safe to put on this CD and pretend it isn’t a message to her, because I’m filling the silence and she’s still in her head.
I shouldn’t be enjoying this moment so much. I’ve done nothing to earn it. Autumn is trusting me to be the friend she needs, yet here I am, whispering the lyrics, pretending I’m singing them to her.
Sometimes love is heavy, but tonight it is making me light and free. I’m grateful to have this time with her. It’s almost enough.
“I really liked that,” Autumn says when the song ends.
I blush, even though I know she didn’t get the message. The next song starts.
“You missed the exit,” she says.
“Oh, whoops,” I say, because I missed it on purpose.
“Don’t forget you promised me candy.”
She’s starting to sound a bit more like herself.
“I wouldn’t think of it. First, tacos, and then all the high-fructose sludge and powder you desire. And theeen”—I turn to look at her—“we go home so I. Can. Read. It.”
She groans. Out of the corner of my eye, I see her put her face in her hands. She makes another noise and looks up and away. We’re turning around and getting back on the highway after the exit I “missed,” and I glance at her while at the stop light before the on-ramp.
Autumn stares stoically out the window like someone nobly facing execution. I stifle my laugh and decide to stop teasing her. Well, about her writing.
This is what Jamie never understood. Autumn needs her friends to tease her and stop her from taking herself too seriously. Otherwise, she gets lost inside her mind. But that doesn’t mean not taking her seriously. She’s in agony over letting me read her work—I won’t let her go back on saying I can read it—but she doesn’t need me to needle her about it.
“You know, someday, when all your teeth are gone, you’ll regret being such a sugar goblin,” I tell her as we speed down the ramp, back onto the dark highway.
She laughs in the way I hoped. “I’m not a sugar goblin,” she insists, but she knows it’s true. “I’m not going to lose my teeth,” she adds.
“Eh.” I shrug.
She huffs next to me, and I let myself smile but I do not laugh.