random girls. I bared my soul writing about the day I’d tortured myself with Internet pictures of him for hours and how Jazz had ripped the modem from the wall.
Jack was dead silent, paging through our intimately personal history, his hand trembling slightly, learning things about us, about me, that changed the memories captured by the tabloids.
But I’d also found, thanks to Charlotte, a few lesser circulated stories about his work on the movie and how there was talk of it being an award show nomination. In a crazy twist of fate, on the same day those stories had been published, I’d received my acceptance letter to SCAD. I pasted it in alongside.
I know I’ll think about Jack every day for the rest of my life. He changed me. He made me want more. Made me want to be more. Those are good things. I’m hanging onto them.
I talked about Colt asking me out.
Colt made me happy. He made me laugh. What was wrong with me? Was it still too soon, or was it that Jack Eversea was a fire that burned brighter than the sun, and I’d been seared beyond repair?
I pasted in the invitation to be part of the summer exhibition of Southern artists at the Westin on Hilton Head Island. And I pasted in a few photocopied pieces of Jack’s journal that he’d shared with me. The next page was a picture I’d taken of Jack riding a horse shirtless on the beach, and a picture I’d stolen from his phone of me from that same day.
On the day Audrey’s crazy lost pregnancy story broke, I added the newspaper story of the auction and how Jack had ended up in a bidding war for a student’s work. Mine .
And then came the tabloid pictures of us together. Some with less than savory headlines. With every one of them, I wrote a small anecdote of what we were doing on the day they were published. Funny or beautiful things Jack had said to me that I remembered, or tickets to things we’d done, a flyer for the cottage rental place on Daufuskie where we always tried to steal time together.
Even though I knew Jack had a copy, I added in the story that reporter Shannon Keith had written about Jack and me and how we met. Some of the final pictures were of us at the airport in Atlanta and at Heathrow where we’d landed and where the stupid photographers had yelled out disgusting things. I pasted our boarding tickets in and wrote Keri Ann’s first flight across the ocean a nd The day Keri Ann learned what the word SNOG means. There was a postcard from Hastings and finally a colored pencil sketch of a bull chasing a boy and a girl with a red scarf.
You are my star, I wrote, I’d follow you anywhere.
There were still pages left to fill at some point. I hadn’t even put in my first experience with snow.
The room was deathly quiet, and I realized Jeff and Charlotte had left. Jack was still holding the book, his knuckles now white, and staring at the last page so I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
Shit .
Heart pounding with terror, I swallowed some moisture back into my mouth and slid off the couch to kneel in front of him. “Please say something.” I was barely able to form words.
“I can’t,” Jack whispered, still staring at the book. Then he carefully closed it and moved it off his lap next to him. His Adam’s apple bobbed roughly in his throat and his nostrils flared. A pulse beat visibly at his temple, and I realized he was trying to compose himself. He raised his face and his eyes were vivid and full, the green sparkling to depths I’d never seen. It was wonder, it was love, it was a thousand things I couldn’t name.
He reached out and took my face in his warm rough hands. “You,” Jack said on a choked up whisper, shaking his head slightly. Moments passed where we looked into each other, and he didn’t say anything more. Then his thumb brushed over my lips. “You,” he said finally, “make… every… single … thing in my world beautiful.”
The first people I wish to thank are my readers without
Jack was dead silent, paging through our intimately personal history, his hand trembling slightly, learning things about us, about me, that changed the memories captured by the tabloids.
But I’d also found, thanks to Charlotte, a few lesser circulated stories about his work on the movie and how there was talk of it being an award show nomination. In a crazy twist of fate, on the same day those stories had been published, I’d received my acceptance letter to SCAD. I pasted it in alongside.
I know I’ll think about Jack every day for the rest of my life. He changed me. He made me want more. Made me want to be more. Those are good things. I’m hanging onto them.
I talked about Colt asking me out.
Colt made me happy. He made me laugh. What was wrong with me? Was it still too soon, or was it that Jack Eversea was a fire that burned brighter than the sun, and I’d been seared beyond repair?
I pasted in the invitation to be part of the summer exhibition of Southern artists at the Westin on Hilton Head Island. And I pasted in a few photocopied pieces of Jack’s journal that he’d shared with me. The next page was a picture I’d taken of Jack riding a horse shirtless on the beach, and a picture I’d stolen from his phone of me from that same day.
On the day Audrey’s crazy lost pregnancy story broke, I added the newspaper story of the auction and how Jack had ended up in a bidding war for a student’s work. Mine .
And then came the tabloid pictures of us together. Some with less than savory headlines. With every one of them, I wrote a small anecdote of what we were doing on the day they were published. Funny or beautiful things Jack had said to me that I remembered, or tickets to things we’d done, a flyer for the cottage rental place on Daufuskie where we always tried to steal time together.
Even though I knew Jack had a copy, I added in the story that reporter Shannon Keith had written about Jack and me and how we met. Some of the final pictures were of us at the airport in Atlanta and at Heathrow where we’d landed and where the stupid photographers had yelled out disgusting things. I pasted our boarding tickets in and wrote Keri Ann’s first flight across the ocean a nd The day Keri Ann learned what the word SNOG means. There was a postcard from Hastings and finally a colored pencil sketch of a bull chasing a boy and a girl with a red scarf.
You are my star, I wrote, I’d follow you anywhere.
There were still pages left to fill at some point. I hadn’t even put in my first experience with snow.
The room was deathly quiet, and I realized Jeff and Charlotte had left. Jack was still holding the book, his knuckles now white, and staring at the last page so I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
Shit .
Heart pounding with terror, I swallowed some moisture back into my mouth and slid off the couch to kneel in front of him. “Please say something.” I was barely able to form words.
“I can’t,” Jack whispered, still staring at the book. Then he carefully closed it and moved it off his lap next to him. His Adam’s apple bobbed roughly in his throat and his nostrils flared. A pulse beat visibly at his temple, and I realized he was trying to compose himself. He raised his face and his eyes were vivid and full, the green sparkling to depths I’d never seen. It was wonder, it was love, it was a thousand things I couldn’t name.
He reached out and took my face in his warm rough hands. “You,” Jack said on a choked up whisper, shaking his head slightly. Moments passed where we looked into each other, and he didn’t say anything more. Then his thumb brushed over my lips. “You,” he said finally, “make… every… single … thing in my world beautiful.”
The first people I wish to thank are my readers without
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