Page 46 of The Fall Classic

Logan

I wouldn’t mind if you liked me more than fine.

Georgie

:)

Logan

<))

I wish I didn’t have to leave tomorrow.

The road series hasn’t even started yet and it already feels longer than usual.

Thanks a lot for that, by the way.

I clutch the phone in my hands and put my feet up in my chair, trying not to squeal out loud, because even if I’m all alone, that feels too open. Too big.

No one has ever told me that my absence would be felt. Not since my mom. The simplicity of it is almost more than I can process. I’m so accustomed to reading between the lines that reading sentences with nothing between them feels almost brazen.

Georgie

I’ll be cheering for you every game.

Logan

Now I feel like I owe you two sideways ice cream cones.

One like this: <))

And a real one.

When I’m back.

After we go out for dinner.

Georgie

I’d like that.

Logan

It’s a date.

I read through our exchange long after we’ve both stopped texting. As I move to my tiny table next to the window and write a paper for my supply chain management class, I return to his messages like a butterfly flitting back to its favorite flower.

At one point, I find myself staring down at the quiet parking lot below. I crack my window, letting some of the mild night air into my apartment. I lean slightly to see my library in the northwest corner of the lot, with its powder blue paint gone soft gray in the dark, the brass hinge catching the faintest edge of the streetlamp.

Our conversations have gone so deep, but if a single poem can keep us riveted for days, we’ll never run out of things to talk about. There’ll always be some new thought to explore, some new question to try to answer, some new viewpoint to discover.

Forever.

I like that idea more than I should.

I don’t stop myself from liking it, though. I take a sip of my hot chocolate and look at the little library in the dark and let myself want something.

Just for tonight.