Serve

by C.W. Farnsworth

There are a lot of adjectives that come to mind to describe Georgie, following our one and only meeting. Boring isn’t one of them.

All you need to know is that if it ever comes down to being between my life and yours, I’ll choose yours. That’s what it means to serve.

I don’t like him; I guess I made that clear. But he doesn’t seem to like me either. It should be a relief. Mutually agreed upon dislike.

Georgie is an enigma. Every time I think I have her figured out; she proves me wrong. Party girl. Tennis star. Bratty daughter. Reliable friend. And the harder she is to figure out, the more I want to try to.

My only job? Is to serve.

“You’re not pretty.” The words are out before I’ve thought them through. Before I’ve considered how they’ll sound. “Way to kick a girl when she’s down, Ethan.” Georgie scoffs. I can’t leave things like that, so I continue. “You’re more than pretty. Like sunshine. It hurts to look at you.” I’m not sure if she grasps what I’m really saying. That it hurts me to look at her. That she makes me want things I shouldn’t—desires that jeopardize what I’ve worked hard to achieve.

“Because of duty and patriotism and democracy and service and all the other lofty ideals you love to wax poetic about.”

She’s wrong—that’s not why she’s here. She’s here because I want her to be. Because I decided to force some proximity between us, to test myself and prove I’m under complete control. So far, I’m failing spectacularly.

I stare at her. Trace the features that I could probably paint from memory. The slope of her nose and the curve of her cheek. The one strand of hair that still bears a trace of lavender. The faint, half moon-shaped scar on the left side of her chin. I stare, and I wonder. Is this what falling in love feels like?

I’m not sure which is more terrifying: the certainty that Georgie and I would be more than a fling or the fear that if I don’t find out I’ll regret it forever.

Do you keep falling, after you acknowledge you love someone? Is it a slow tumble or a fast cascade? Can love change or is it always tied to the moment you first acknowledge it? I don’t know. But Ethan keeps humming my favorite song.

My mom has always said she knew—when she met my dad. Knew they had something special that couldn’t be replicated with other people. The sort of magic that some people never find.

I glance at Georgie, flushed and smiling beside me. And I think, I know.