If Only I Had Told Her

by Laura Nowlin

Even when I could have escaped her or avoided thoughts of her, I chose not to.

My love for her is vehement, protracted, and interminable.

“Autumn—beautiful!” I said, my brain too focused on studying to remember to keep my secrets. “What?” Sylvie looked at me over the cards. “Beautiful, right? That’s what it means?” “Yeah,” she said. “But you said—” “Oh! Autumn, like my birthday! Fall leaves and stuff. You know how I like the leaves changing color.” Sylvie knows I love fall leaves. It’s my favorite season, my birthday, etc., etc., but I honestly don’t know if she believed me.

“Mendacious?” she finally quizzed me. “Dishonest. Next word?” She let us move on.

Before Sylvie took me back after our breakup sophomore year, she asked, again and again, if I was really, really, really sure that I no longer had romantic feelings for Autumn.

I lied to Sylvie, again and again, because I loved Sylvie, I missed her, and I desperately wanted her back.

I told Sylvie that Autumn was my first love, but now, we were like brother and sister.

“I can’t be with you anymore because I am in love with Autumn.

She’s worked so hard to value herself again after what happened before we met.

to be a disciple for a different girl who will never fall for me.

we don’t have to keep hanging out if she doesn’t want to.

Would Autumn have realized back then that his ego was more important than her wishes?

Still, it doesn’t matter why she’s crying, because she’s crying.

pulling her into my arms the way I have dreamed of so many times before,

with so many different tenors of emotio...

It’s been so long since she let me see her vulnerable like this.

We were so young the last time.

ever since Jamie made me the happiest man alive by breaking Autumn’s heart.

Jamie and Sasha. The two people who kept her anchored through her ups and downs the past four years.

she is truly grieving the end of their friendship.

She looks so sweet and so absolutely devastated.

And you’re just so wonderful that it makes me terrible,

I feel my grin widen again, but I can’t help it. “Who cares about Jamie?” she says and begins to cry again.

“You don’t understand,”

Autumn lives in this world and the fictions of her mind or those written by others like her.

She knows me almost as well as I know her.

I know that she wants me to read it.

Meals don’t have time or meaning for us this summer.

with the moon and streetlights,

I roll down the windows to let in the night air the way she likes.

I gorge myself on her scent, filling my lungs to capacity.

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.

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.

she nee...

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.

Jamie never understood.

“You know, someday, when all your teeth are gone, you’ll regret being such a sugar goblin,”

Damn, she is cute.

That’s the thing about being in this car that makes me want to make every trip last as long as possible—it’s

Because I would help, stupid as that sounds.

She is as extraordinary as she is beautiful.

I’m so proud of you,

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.

know this summer could never mean as much to her as it does to me, but I want her to remember it fondly.

because I know it’ll make Autumn happy.

“No, she’s with me.”

Tomorrow, I’ll buy the whole stock of Autumn’s weird candy so that we never have to come back here again.