If Only I Had Told Her

by Laura Nowlin

She talks, kicks, steals the covers, uses you as a pillow.

Autumn is uncharacteristically embarrassed about her nocturnal chaos though, and it’s one of her eccentricities for which she will not tolerate a bit of teasing.

The Mo...

Autumn’s nighttime calamities, and the look that she gives t...

to stop me from sharing my childhood memories of her violent, ...

I’d rather give away all my games than lose a minute of whatever has been happening between us since Jamie broke up with her.

I have to admit: I’d hoped for something like this.

But here we are, in this blanket tent I made for her,

Autumn was drifting, but I hadn’t wanted to give her up yet,

“The room in between what, Autumn?” “Pretend and reality. Help me. It’s so messy.”

she was twitching and mumbling a few inches away from me, presumably cleaning the space between this world and the next.

We weren’t touching, but it felt like the atoms between us were warm with my love for her.

This is heaven: her forehead pressed into me, her head under my arm, and my hand on her shoulder. We found each other by instinct.

I was still in love with Autumn after all these years,

mostly happy

Remembering Sylvie robs my penis of the delusion that a miracle is about to occur and adds to my already bloated guilt.

hope this trip was everything she needed, helped the way her therapist thought it would.

I hope Sylvie sees how capable she is, how smart and resilient.

Sylvie could be anything she wants if she just stops caring what the wrong people think about her.

pretend my arm was never around her, but I can’t bear to yet.

allow myself the brief luxury of gazing at her face.

is cosmically unfair how beautiful Autumn is. It puts me at such a disadvantage. Her brilliant, goofy brain was already enough. Why must she have a perfect face too?

I never stood a chance.

“I know what I’m doing,”

“She would have to be the stupidest person on earth to not know you’re bonkers in love with her.”

She’s disturbingly good at hiding how much pain she’s in.”

How am I going to live the rest of my life in love with Autumn Davis with no hope of reciprocation?

When I was lusting after her a few minutes ago, what I should have been doing was worrying about her hangover.

Sometimes it feels like Autumn brings out the worst in me.

A few times over the years though, when something was said specifically, vulgarly, about Autumn, my mouth spoke before the rest of me knew what was happening.

she doesn’t want me thinking about her

She didn’t have to leave me the way that she did.

“For fuck’s sake, kiddo. Talk to her.”

She knows I wish she felt differently about me. She needs to know it’s much worse than she thinks.

My love for her is the closest thing I have to religion.

take note again of how unfair it is that she can be so beautiful while hungover.

“That she knows but also simultaneously doesn’t know that you’re in love with her.”

Maybe you are the two stupidest people on earth who somehow don’t realize you’re in love with each other,

But all I can think about is Autumn.

I cannot look back and say when I fell in love with Autumn Rose.

Something I felt for her before I even learned to read had grown and sharpened as we grew up together.

when our hands happened to touch, try to make the moment linger. And I did.

Those early years of being in love with her were hard, but I had no idea how much harder it was going to get.

Surely the school administrators knew we had always been together, were meant to be together.

“He’s my—” and we said “favorite” together. I don’t remember the rest of the conversation, but we were friends.

Autumn for everything else.

(Not that she talked about soccer. It was more that she cared enough to remember when I talked about Paolo Maldini.)

but I failed to prove to him (or honestly, me) that she and I were still friends.

Autumn had come out of her trance, and it was as if she could see me again.

The relief was so deep that it hit me on a physical level. I slept better in those two weeks than I had in months.