“I have a test tomorrow that I need to study for. Rain check?”
Ryder sits down beside me. I naturally gravitate toward him. I lean into his side and he wraps those strong arms around me, placing a kiss on my shoulder.
“I’m meeting him at the track so will be a little late tonight. I’ll text you when I’m on my way back,” he says, his voice muffled against my skin.
Ryder is sitting sideways on the couch with me between his legs. I snuggle back into him. “Would you mind picking up those vegan tacos I like so much on your way home?”
“I can do that.” He gets up from the couch and kisses me one last time. “I promise I won’t be too late.”
“Don’t worry about me. My face is going to be shoved in this calc textbook for the next couple of hours.”
I hear Ryder grab his keys from the kitchen counter. “I love you!” he calls out.
“I love you too!” I call back. The front door closes. I grab my phone.
Me: What time r u and Sara coming over on Sunday?
Sunday is Halloween.
Firecracker: She said it would take about 4 hours to paint you. Noon ok?
Me: Sounds good.
Me: Ryder out with Fallon tonight. Want to come over later? Need to study for test first.
Firecracker: Wish I could. Going out with a few girls from the dorm. Why don’t u come?
Me: I’ll pass, but thanks. Have fun!
There’s a text from Jayson. I really should change his screen name.
ScaryGuy: Place is too quiet. What r u doing?
Julien is in Florida with his team. They’re playing in the Halloween Cup so he won’t be back until Saturday. Elijah couldn’t go because he has work.
Me: About to start studying.
ScaryGuy: Want some company?
Me: Can I text u later?
ScaryGuy: NP. I’ll be here all nite.
I grab my bag from the floor. Calculus III has been my arch-nemesis all semester. The professor makes his TA teach the class most days, and that guy is bad. I mean really bad. He doesn’t explain how to work out the problems; he expects you to already know how. He refuses to answer questions saying that we have to make an appointment with the professor. He spends most of the time during the scheduled weekly help session playing games on his phone. So in order to keep up, I have to study three times as hard. Trevor took the class last year and he’s been helping me.
As I pull out my textbook, another origami star falls out. Jayson must have put it in there this morning while we were having breakfast. I always read them. I know I shouldn’t. What I should do is tell Jayson to stop giving them to me. I unfold the paper.
“If love was like time, mine would be eternity.”
I sigh and get up. Holding the delicate piece of paper in my hand, I walk into my bedroom and open my closet door. The banker’s box with the other paper stars is way in the back. My eyes light on the other boxes. The ones I consider to be Pandora’s boxes. There are three of them. Eighteen years of my life shoved into three boxes. Eighteen years of lost memories relegated to three insignificant cubes of cardboard. I pull one out. Then another, then the third one. They barely weigh anything.
With shaking hands, I slowly peel the packing tape off the first box with my fingernails. Once the two flaps at the top open, I sit back and stare at it. The two flaps resemble a double-door opening into a dark room. Like the dark, scary doors you see in the movies behind which the villain hides. I stare at those two damn flaps for several minutes, then carefully pull them open and peer inside the darkness. A musty odor assails my nose. I grab the second box and rip the tape off. I do the same to the third box, then I turn each one over, dumping their contents onto my bedroom floor.
There are pictures and papers, tiny trinkets and sheets of music. I look at the pictures first. Most of them I recognize from all the pictures the boys have shown me. I take out a few of me and Ryder so I can create a memory board with them. There are several binders and scrapbooks. I pick one up and open it. It’s filled with hand-written poetry. I notice the nameHaileyscribbled at the top of each. There are dozens of them. Some written in a childish penmanship, others in elegant cursive. The first one is titled: “Elizabeth and Her Princes.” I read it. I read them all. I don’t realize I’m crying until I see tear marks on the last poem I’m holding. The ink on the paper runs as my tears dissolve the words.
I pick up another binder. This one is a scrapbook. There are drawings and love hearts all over it. The front says “All Our Next Times” in big, bold lettering. I open the cover. The pages are filled with notes, letters, pictures, and music. Dried flowers, wrinkled pieces of paper, butterfly cut-outs, seashells, a bag of black sand, and pieces of ribbon. The scrapbook chronicles my love story with Jayson. From the night he first kissed me and told me he loved me, to our first date, to the night we made love for the first time, to senior year of high school, and everything in between.
Something shiny catches my eye. It’s half-hidden under a photograph. I flip the photo over. It’s another one of me and Ryder. We’re standing together in what looks like a field. We’re in front of a dirt bike and Ryder is holding a helmet under one arm, his dark hair sticking up at the top. Our pinkies are linked. I smile as I touch the photograph. My gorgeous, handsome man. I place the photo with the others of him and me.
