If Only I Had Told Her

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.

“Oh, so now you’re going to dental school?” she asks.

“I might have to if you maintain your rate of sugar consumption,” I say, and I receive another playful whack.

The glowing lights of the taco place greet us.

“Okay, but—” Autumn says suddenly, as if we hadn’t been silent for the past minute.

I pull the car into the drive-through.

“You’re majoring in premed,” she says, “and you’ve been eating greasy fast food with me nearly every night all summer. Admit that we’re both terrible and wasting our youthful bodies on trash food.”

Keeping my foot firmly on the brake, I turn to her in my seat.

“I admit it,” I say. “But I go running three or four times a week. You’re naturally thin, but—” I lean in so I can meet her eyes in the dark. “You are lazy, Autumn.”

“That is true,” she says primly, happily, and I have to laugh.

Damn, she is cute.

We look at each other.

The car behind us blares its horn. We’re holding up the line.

“Oops!” she says and laughs, then uncurls in her seat and stretches.

I pretend that navigating the car two yards forward takes my full concentration. We’ve hit a late rush. We aren’t even to the menu yet. “Do you want what you always get?” I ask, still staring straight ahead.

“Yup.”

I hear her settling back into the seat. That’s the thing about being in this car that makes me want to make every trip last as long as possible—it’s close, intimate, but I’m safe from losing my mind. It’s like driving takes up enough of my frontal lobe activity that I can keep perspective.

I release the brake, and the car inches forward.

“It’ll catch up with me someday,” Autumn says.

Involuntarily, I look at her, then look forward again as I hit the brake softly.

“What will?” I ask.

“My diet or lack thereof? Right now, I can eat whatever I want. I won’t gain an ounce. After I’ve been pregnant or am older or whatever, I bet I’ll have to think about calories or even exercise on purpose, like you.”

It’s always fascinated me that girls can be so comfortable with the idea of constructing an entirely new human inside their bodies. I guess if it were something my body was capable of, it would be easier to imagine, let alone be casual about. My point is her train of thought would have surprised me anyway, but her confidence that someday she would be pregnant, that made me pause.

Someday, someone would get her pregnant.

“Maybe, but that won’t be for a while, right?” We’re finally approaching the box to order.

She laughs. “Yeah, I’m not immaculately conceiving.”

The employee asks for our order, and I’m saved from the urge to make a joke about helping her raise a little Jesus II.

Because I would help, stupid as that sounds.

With our tacos in tow, our mission is half complete. I turn us back toward the highway and the odd little gas station that sells Autumn’s arcane candies.

She finished her novel.

We’re eighteen, almost nineteen; our birthdays are coming up.

She is as extraordinary as she is beautiful.

“Do you want the windows back down?” I ask. I’m so proud of you, I think.

“I need to finish at least one taco first,” she says, chewing. “I’m really hungry.”

“What did you eat at home?”

“Um.”

“Autumn?”

“I was writing!” she cries.

“It’s eight o’clock at night!” I glance at her. “All you’ve had to eat were those two pieces of toast and that taco?”

“But I have six more tacos right here,” she says. She finishes the first and unwraps another.

After a minute, I ask, “Would you have eaten if I hadn’t come by when you didn’t answer my text?”

“What text?”

She shifts in her seat, and there’s light from her phone as she opens it.

“Oh!” she says. I’m glad she’s surprised that she didn’t notice. “Sorry.”

“Not a big deal. It’s good I came by before you passed out and hit your head on something.”

“Oh, har-har,” she says, but I mean it.

This, this right here, is why I need to wait until Christmas break to tell her that what I feel for her is more than physical attraction, that I need some space. First semester, I’m going to need to make sure Autumn remembers to get to the dining hall before it closes.

When Autumn is depressed or stressed or writing, she gets so inside her head that she forgets about her body. I can’t imagine not noticing that I’m hungry. I can’t imagine living so outside the physical world the way she does.

Autumn would probably say that she can’t imagine having a body like mine, one that runs in a confident rhythm or that can take aim and hit the desired mark.

“Do you want to steer on the way back?” I ask as I pull into the gas station parking lot. The light inside glows warmly, and I park in one of the spaces illuminated by the windows.

“I’m too tired. I’ll crash. Even you couldn’t save us,” she says.

“I’ll get your candy. Stay here and eat.”

I should probably tell Autumn that the “nice older man” inside, who always smiles and says hi to her, also leers at her when she’s facing away. I don’t think he’s dangerous, but it’s gross. He’s fifty at least. I’m eighteen, and I have a better handle on my hormones than him.

“I’ll be right back.”

Autumn nods and chews another mouthful. She looks content. I know this summer could never mean as much to her as it does to me, but I want her to remember it fondly. I don’t want this creep saying something to sully the memory.

Autumn’s sludge tubes and the little powder packets are at the bottom shelf of the candy aisle with the other sugar oddities. For example, this must be the last place on earth that sells candy cigarettes. I wonder if we’ve been the only ones buying this candy here all summer and if, after we’ve gone, this shelf will sit untouched for months.

I get sodas despite my earlier teasing, because I know it’ll make Autumn happy. I will go to dental school and rebuild her teeth if she needs it.

The older guy is there. I see him see me as I wait in line. I see him look for Autumn behind me.

As I set my items on the counter, he says, “Alone tonight?”

I look at his face, because I’m not certain of his tone. He’s raised one eyebrow and gives me the sort of smile he makes when he thinks no one sees him eyeing Autumn.

“No, she’s with me.” I emphasize the words so that they imply what I wish were true—that I am hers.

As he’s ringing up the items, his gaze moves out the window to my car. “So how is it?” he asks, like I have something to share.

“I don’t need my change.” I grab our stuff and leave. Tomorrow, I’ll buy the whole stock of Autumn’s weird candy so that we never have to come back here again.

“Hey. Yay!” Autumn says as I slide in next to her.

I drop her loot in her lap and restart the car. I glance at the counter as I pull out, but the man is busy with another customer. He’ll never see her again.

The CD is still playing. If she hadn’t liked it, she would have found something else on the radio. We’re quiet together as another song plays that makes me think of her. I want to drive with her like this for the rest of the night, for the rest of our lives. The road stretches out in front of us, seemingly unending.

After the song finishes, I ask, “Are you certain you don’t want to practice driving tonight?”

“Nah,” she says. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Maybe later.”

I wonder if she notices the way I loop the long way along North County, the way I drive the speed limit. I hope she’s absorbing the words from the songs, like my love could be a protective spell, even if she’s unaware of it.

Christmas might be too soon. She can’t keep track of her phone or her keys. How is she going to keep track of her drinks at parties? I’m going to have to stick around to make sure whatever guy she falls for treats her right. This time, if I see something, I’ll say something.

Autumn is where she wants to be, sitting next to me, her friend, and I’ll be there if she needs me.

“Have you been thinking about what you’ll focus on in med school?” She’s leaning her temple against the window again. The floor of my car is littered with taco wrappers.

I turn the music down. “I won’t figure that out until a couple years into classes,” I say. “It’s not like I know that much about the human body yet.” I pause, because I want to share something more with her. “I’ve been thinking about the brain a lot lately.”

“What about it?” She sounds dreamy, but I can tell she’s listening.

“Well.” I pause to make sure I’m saying it right. “I’m driving, so on one level, I’m thinking about visibility, speed, and car spacing, and I’m making adjustments with the steering wheel, but I’m not really thinking about any of those things. I’m really thinking”—that you’re so close to me—“about our conversation. Meanwhile, my brain is also telling my lungs to breathe and my heart to beat, but I’m not thinking about any of that either, not at all. My brain makes sure my body is doing all this, while I’m thinking about”—how much I adore you—“whether I’m explaining any of this well.”

I’ve run out of air. I guess my brain isn’t doing so hot after all.

I breathe deep and plunge back in. “One organ is responsible for all those things, and it’s so small. Most people don’t realize how small their brain really is, probably because we talk about how big the human brain is compared to other animals. But you can hold it in one hand. And it’s responsible for everything that we consider to be ‘us.’ Your novel came from your brain, Autumn, word by word, and I wish I could understand how your brain is able to do that.”

Autumn is silent. I can’t end there. It implies too much.

Then she says, “Or how a brain can know things logically but still send illogical signals and emotions? Tell you to do stupid things?”

“Yeah, exactly.” I steer the car off the highway. “It does all these things right and gets all these things wrong. It records all this information and still misses so much.” I shrug. “I’m looking forward to learning something about how it does all that.” I glance at her.

She smiles at me, making my heart beat faster.

I turn up the music. The album has started again at the first song, and maybe, on some level, her brain understands that I’m playing this song for her.