If Only I Had Told Her

by Laura Nowlin

Because Autumn knows I love her.

“I didn’t know why you had kissed me, and it freaked me out. I thought maybe you w...

“If you didn’t know, then why did you leave me?”

I’ll love her even if she turns out to be cruel. That’s my curse.

“I’m not saying it’s not my fault. I’m just saying I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

Oh, Autumn.

Autumn didn’t know that I loved her.

It’s like the DNA of my entire relationship with Autumn has mutated.

“And all these years I was terrified that you could tell that I still…you know,” I say. “Still what?” Because even after all this, she still needs me to spell it out. “Still wanted you.”

the most obvious, drunkenly lovestruck things to her.

Autumn hadn’t heard the love that had screamed so loud inside my mind.

But she hadn’t known.

Jamie probably would have been a dick about it, and if Autumn had actually loved me back then—

love her because I have known her for so long, but she drives me crazy, and most of the time, I don’t like her that much.

The fact that Sylvie was as pretty as Autumn, though in a different way, provided a welcome distraction. Sylvie felt safe to look at.

She was beautiful. She was nice. She wanted to be with me.

Sylvie has been good for me. I’ve enjoyed almost every minute with her. She has made me a better person in so many little ways.

say to Autumn, “Don’t think that I never cared about Sylvie, because I did.” I do. “She’s not really what you think.” She’s so much more. “And she needed me to take care of her when you didn’t anymore.” Because she’s like you: complicated. “I loved he...

“You said that you loved me too.”

“Maybe since forever too, but I didn’t admit it until two years ago.”

Maybe forever too?

She loves me. She really, truly loves me.

“It’s you and me now, right?”

But I don’t sleep. There’s too much to think about.

Sylvie will accept that I’m choosing Autumn over her if it’s for more than friendship. That’s what makes this so hard.

“What’s with you every time you see her with him?”

“Come on, Finn. You were just glaring at them.”

“I don’t like him.”

“aren’t they all kinda, ‘Woo-hoo, I’m so quirky’? She wears a tiara every day and seems to like the way Jamie tosses her around in public.”

“Autumn was born strange,” I said. “She’s being herself. Jamie does things for attention, and you know how I feel about that.”

It would have been hot if either of them were really into it. That Sylvie had done it to impress some dudes we’d never met before grossed me out. And I had told her so.

“I can’t be with you if you’re only looking for attention.”

“I need to tell you something later,”

And then came the comments about her needing to cover up, how he was a man after all, and she was so pretty.

“What I need to hear, Finn,” Sylvie said, “is that you want to be with me. That I’m not the convenient choice for you because you can’t be with the person you actually want.”

I was trying to unscramble what I could say that was honest. It was convenient to be with her. Autumn didn’t love me. But I genuinely wanted to be with Sylvie. I told her, “I want to be with you.

“That you don’t want to be with anyone else. That you only want to be with me,”

At the time, I thought that she hadn’t noticed what I had not said, but I was wrong.

Today I must tell Sylvie that I’m choosing Autumn over her, like she’s always feared.

“I love you.”

I’m not so sorry to see her awake.

I want it to be only us, as much as possible for as long as possible.

I’m struck again by my new reality. She loves me. Autumn is in love with me, definitively. It’s so much more than I ever could have imagined.

It was a frequent, recurring dream over the years that Autumn and I were a couple.

We would simply be together.

I always felt such a sense of relief when I dreamed that we were together.

I need her to understand that I had to do this. I had to be with her if the chance was there. My love for her is part of who I am.

“But I also feel like I’ve been loyal to something bigger.”

It doesn’t matter what we do as long as I can look at her.

“I wanted something better for you,” I told her. “That’s why I made you promise not to do it when you were drinking, but really, the idea of you ever doing it with anybody made me mad.”