That night, right at 6:00, the doorbell rang, and my mom opened the front door.
“Hello, Mrs. Wyatt, I’m Chris. I’m here to see Allie,” he said, extending a hand to my mom. She shook it with hesitation as she turned to look at me, standing on the bottom step. I smiled at him and waved him up to my room.
“No locked doors,” she said, with a look of skepticism as Chris climbed the stairs past her..
“Got it, Mom,” I said, from the top of the steps as we turned down the hall to my room.
Once inside my room, I shut the door and turned the doorknob slowly as I held down the lock button, then released the knob so that my mom wouldn’t hear it lock. Chris smiled at my ingenuity, then he moved across the room and pushed me up against the wall to kiss me.
“Hey,” he said quietly into my mouth.
“Hey,” I said, then I ducked underneath his arms and went over to the stereo to press play. Dave Matthews Ants Marching started coming through the speakers to drown out our conversation. Then I returned to him and pushed him backwards onto the bed and climbed on top to straddle him, sat on his belly, and rested my hands on his shoulders. His hair fell back onto the bed on either side of his face. “I’m still sore on my shoulders from that massage you gave me at the river, can you believe that?” I said.
“You really were so tense. Hey, come here. Have you been crying?” he asked as he pulled me in closer to look at my eyes. Your eyes are usually green, and they look like the ocean. Tell me what’s wrong,” he said with concern.
Without hesitating, I told him about the scholarship as he just stared back at me, his eyes now twice the size as they were before.
“Allie, are you serious? That’s unbelievable. So why were you crying? Were they happy tears, I hope?” he said, as he waited for me to reply.
“I was crying because I was happy and in shock that I had actually been offered the spot, but then I got upset because I told my mom about it, and her reaction sucked. It’s like she can’t accept how much it matters to me. She said I had to go on a college visit to see if I even like it, and decide on a major if I want to go there. Like I care what I would major in, I just want to play field hockey! Doesn’t she get it? I’m so sick of this!” I said, as I looked back at him to gauge his reaction. He looked upset for me.
“Why is she so unsupportive of you? That is such bullshit, Allie. I’m so sorry. You deserve that scholarship more than anyone. If she were paying attention to you, she would know that. There’s more to life than good grades. Come here,” he said, then he pulled me down onto his chest for a hug. We stayed there for what felt like forever before I rolled off of his chest to stare up at the ceiling.
Suddenly, he picked his head up to look over at my desk, and I craned my neck to see what he was looking at. It was the pink and white bag sitting on my desk chair, and a smile grew across his face as he began to wrestle with me, trying to get to the bag.
“Come on, show me what’s in it, please!” he begged.
“Patience,” I said, as I shoved him back down onto the bed and kissed his neck. “Thanks for being supportive,” I said softly.
“Hey,” he said as he reached up to graze my cheek with his fingertips. “You know I’ve always got your back.”
I just smiled back at him, then climbed off, grabbed his hoodie, and headed towards the door.
“Come on, let’s go, I want to show you something,” I said, motioning for him to follow. He got up off the bed, and we made our way past Amy’s empty room, down the back stairs, and outside.
“Where are we going?” Chris asked.
“You’ll see,” I said, as I grabbed his hand, then turned back to look at him over my shoulder and smiled.
18
Our house sat next to a grass airstrip that the neighborhood kids all used as a hangout spot through the humid haze of summer. It bordered a creek, home to copperheads and newts, but we played in it anyway. When we were too lazy to walk the dirt path a mile to the James River for an unsupervised swim off the rickety dock my Dad built, we turned on all the sprinklers and ran yard to yard, drinking water from the hose.
As we got older, we used to ride our bikes down the air strip, past the white pebble X, to go peek in the frosted windows of the airplane hanger nestled at the end. The woods of this place also became my retreat when my parents would fight or my dad would threaten to leave. I would climb down the roof and sit in these woods among the sounds of the birds, and think about the days when my Dad taught me to ride my bike or catch a ball in this place. This place was special, but it was also a graveyard of memories.
Chris and I made our way through the weathered three-board fence on the next-door neighbor’s property towards the airstrip as the sun began to settle in the sky.
“Where are we headed?” he asked, as we got closer and he began to look around. “What is this place?”
“It’s an abandoned air strip,” I replied. “There’s even a white pebble X at the end, down by that airplane hanger,” I said, pointing to the end of the well-manicured grass runway.
“This is so cool, how did I never know all of this was down here?” he said, turning around to walk backwards for a moment, looking up and down the airstrip, taking it all in. I smiled at his interest in the place that raised me.
I grabbed his hand and we made our way down the airstrip as early evening lightning bugs began to flicker.
“Look!” I said, as I pointed to the first flashes of light. He smiled as we kept walking, swinging our laced fingers back and forth in unison with our stride. The emotions of being in this place, now older, with someone who hadn’t been a part of my younger life, were overwhelming. I tipped my head back and closed my eyes for a moment as we walked, just breathing in the mix of the freshly cut grass and the pine trees that ran along the border of the airstrip. When I opened my eyes again, Chris was looking at me, probably trying to decipher what was going through my mind.
“All good?” he asked.
