Last Words: A Diary of Survival

by Shari J. Ryan

  His hands roamed unreservedly, leaving his warmth behind on every inch of my skin. His touch was gentle and cautious, unlike the scenes that repeatedly played out within my barrack. I watched as women were abused and taken against their will, all while crying out in pain. They weren't given a choice to say no. We were informed that the Nazis had needs, and we were to comply or suffer the consequences. I worked so many hours and tried my best to make myself scarce in every possible way that I somehow managed to escape the wrath of their unforgiving attacks.

  “Is this okay?” Charlie asked in a whisper as his lips brushed against my ear.

  “Yes,” I said with only my breath. He struggled against me for a moment, freeing himself before pushing my dress up above my waist. My heart was pounding, scared of feeling the pain some of those other women had experienced. “I’ve never been with a man before.” I felt the need to let him know. It was as if I left home being a young girl, and over the course of time I had been there, I became a woman who had seen too much.

  His smile displayed a sense of contentment in response to my confession, and his mouth fell to mine, distracting me from every thought as a new connection forced my eyes wide open. Charlie was careful with me, taking his time while proving his movements were out of love rather than anything else. It was painful at first, but not so much that I wanted it to stop. I watched his face for a moment—the way his eyes closed, and how his lips parted while giving in to heavy breaths. A shooting star in the sky briefly stole my attention until a sense of pleasure caught me off guard and moved through my body like a current. Instinctively, I gripped my hands around Charlie's arms, needing an anchor to keep me grounded because with each movement, a small piece of me melted into the soil beneath us. My heavy eyelids gave in, shutting the world out while I imagined the most beautiful sunset liquefying into a crystal-clear body of water. It's how I felt—the rush of lapping waves upon a sandy shore that was fed to the tide and pulled farther and farther away until I was completely lost amid the sea.

  A warm sensation filled every part of me, and I realized I had been pressing my fingernails into Charlie's arms so hard, I may have cut him. He didn't seem to notice, however. He was too busy staring at me with a worried gaze. “Are you okay?”

  “That was amazing,” I told him. “You’re amazing.”

  He released a heavy, held-in breath and lowered his head to my chest. “We will forever have this night, Amelia,” he said, and my thoughts instantly returned to the apprehension of Charlie leaving the next day.

  “Don’t talk like that,” I told him.

  “We’ll never have to wonder now,” he continued.

  “Charlie!” I scolded him once more.

  “I need to be honest with myself, Amelia.”

  “I need you to remain positive,” I argued in return.

  He looked like he was about to fall ill, so I wrapped my arms around him, holding him with all my strength until it became difficult for me to breathe through our embrace. If crying was still a natural emotion for me, it may have been one of the few times it happened, but I had forgotten how to release my tears. Crying was no longer an involuntary response to human emotions. I was conditioned to do what my body was supposed to do in order to stay alive. I had been dehumanized by the monsters who killed for their own amusement.

  Charlie righted himself and his uniform, then returned my dress to where it belonged. He helped me up to my feet and laced his fingers between mine. “I want to hold your hand. I want to walk side by side with you and tell the world you belong to me—that we were brought together when my soul came back to life.”

  “We don't live in that kind of world,” I reminded him. “We’re a secret that no one would understand or accept, but we’re also living proof that some people can’t control everything.”

  “I suppose this is one battle that we won in this ugly war, Amelia—us.”

  “Come back to me,” I told him. “Please.”

  “If I don’t—” he began. I didn't like where his words were going, but I let him say what he needed to say because I couldn't be in denial about our life. “Survive for as long as you can, fight until you can’t fight any longer, and if this damn war ever ends, I want you to run as far away from here as you can. Never look back. Start over, fulfill your dreams, and live the way you deserve to live.”

  “These sound like your last words,” I whispered to him as I began to shake.

  “If they are, they need to count,” he said.

  I knew I owed him my last words in case it was the final time we would ever be together. “I want you to go to that university and become a businessman. Wear a suit, hold your shoulders back and your chin high. Find a woman who makes your heart race, have a family, love your children more than you love yourself, and take them to a place where they can forever run free through meadows of flowers. Give them the freedom to be themselves, a freedom we couldn't have.”

  “I don’t see how I could ever be happy without you,” he said.

  “Don’t make those your last words,” I huffed through anger.

  “Fine. I love you, Amelia.”

  I stared at him for a long minute, knowing I couldn’t say the same to him. I couldn’t tell him I loved him even though I did. I still believed it would become a guarantee that he would never return.

  I pressed myself up onto my toes, cupped my hands against his cheeks and kissed him with everything I had in me. “May the world keep you safe wherever you go,” I whispered with a choke in my throat as a single tear escaped from the barren desert of my emotions. “Goodbye, my Charlie.”

  Those were my last words to him.

  What a waste of words.

  I ran as fast as my legs could carry me, sneaking quietly back into my barrack where I curled into a ball on my thin mattress. I felt as though a knife had plunged into the depths of my heart and soul—a pain so deep, it seared through every vein and fiber in my body. I knew I would never be the same again, but at least I could rest knowing there was one good man amongst so many terrible ones.

  Humanity was not entirely lost.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Emma

  The diary is flicked out of my loose grip and falls to the table as the pages fan to equal sides of the binding. My chest is aching, and I feel breathless while sitting quietly at a table in the middle of Starbucks.

  “I figured I’d find you here at some point today,” Mike says, hovering over the table with his arms folded across his chest.

  It’s only been two days, yet it feels like a year since I’ve seen him last. During the last two days since I broke up with him, so much as changed. My life has spun into a maze that I’m not sure how to find a way out of. I don’t know which way is up or down, and everything is scattered in my head. “What are you doing here?” I can only hope he isn’t here to cause a scene.

  Charlie was gone. Grams had lost everyone. How could life be so cruel?

  Mike had been talking, but my mind was elsewhere, lost in a goodbye I wasn’t even part of. Her last words to Charlie were “goodbye.” He told her he loved her, and she couldn’t say it back even though she did love him. How terribly sad.

  “Earth to Emma,” Mike says, waving his hand in front of my face. “What is that thing anyway?” He points to the diary as if it were today’s newspaper, full of nothing more than celebrity gossip.

  “Nothing,” I tell him, removing the diary from the table.

  “It sure doesn’t look like nothing to me.”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask again.

  “Did you get my note?”

  “I did,” I answer cordially, ignoring his presence as I reorganize the belongings in my bag to make space for the diary.

  “And?” he continues.

  “Who wrote it for you?” I can’t believe I just asked him that. Not, that he doesn’t deserve it, but the thought did cross my mind earlier, and seeing how he’s acting now, I’m almost sure someone told him what to say. Either that or he Google
d “how to win your ex back.”

  “Really?” he counters.

  “In six years, you never said something so full of thought, and then out of the blue, after I tell you I’m done, you leave me a note that sounds as if it came from a different person. Now, I’m supposed to fall to my knees and forget everything?” I was wondering when my anger and rage would catch up to me. It’s building inside, overflowing like hot lava on top of the millions of emotions Grams’s diary is stirring up.

  “Haven’t you ever heard the saying, ‘You don’t know what you had until it’s gone?’” he has the nerve to ask me. I don’t know if he’s implying I should be thinking this, or he’s thinking this, but in any case, I don’t care.

  “Yeah, Mike, and for some reason, I didn’t realize what I was missing until you were gone.” Witty comebacks aren’t my thing, but for once, the words come out when they should, rather than an hour later when I’m talking to myself, thinking of what I should have said.

  He leans forward, pressing his palms onto the top of the table. “Six years, Emma. We can work this shit out.” That’s all I’ve ever been to him. Shit.

  “Why do you want to be with me so badly, Mike? What is it about me that is so important to keep around?” I lean back into my chair, hugging my bag into my chest.

  “I love you,” he says.

  “You don’t know what love is,” I tell him.

  “Oh, and you do?”

  I squeeze my hands tighter around the bag. “Yeah, but not from my own experience.”

  “Okay, okay, fine, what do you want from me? Want me to make a scene here? Get down on my hands and knees and beg for your forgiveness, beg for you to take me back?” The thought of him doing that sickens me. He’s such a loose cannon that I could see him doing something so stupid and pathetic. I shouldn’t be wondering why it took me so long to break up with him. I shouldn’t be having this conversation with him. I should have done the right thing years ago.

  I take a sip of my now-lukewarm coffee to break up the conversation, giving me a moment to collect my next thoughts. “What I want from you…is to leave. I want you to forget about me. I want you to figure out what is going to make you happy in your life because it’s so, so clear that I’m not the person for you, and you’re definitely not the person for me.”

  Mike presses his lips together and exhales sharply through his nose. “You’re wrong,” he grunts. “I want to be with you, Emma.”

  I glance down at my cup, fixating on the recycled cardboard sleeve. Am I making a mistake? Is he my great challenge? Am I supposed to endure this, live through it, and dig until I find the good inside of him that gives us both a lifetime full of happiness? A relationship surely shouldn’t be this hard, but love knows no bounds.

  “Emma,” he says again as his hand gently falls to my wrist. “Please, give me a chance to show you I can be a better man.”

  I force myself to look up at him, staring into his dark eyes while trying to find the part of him I was once so deeply attracted to. I’m sure it must be there somewhere. His brows buckle, and his forehead crinkles with lines, pleading without words, causing me to feel guilty without cause.

  As I take the extra few seconds to really look at him—the man I have told myself I loved—I can’t seem to find one single part of him that makes me feel any type of emotion, not even a twitch.

  “I can’t,” I tell him.

  “Fuck, Emma,” he shouts boisterously, forcing his voice to echo off the walls within this small cafe. “Is there someone else, or something?”

  “You’re asking me if there’s someone else when you admitted to cheating on me?”

  “Yeah, I’m asking you if there’s someone else,” he repeats.

  I’m not sure if Jackson’s short presence in my life can count as someone else, but in the time I’ve known him, he’s offered me more than Mike did in the six years we spent together. Jackson is someone good, and he’s opened my eyes to a world I didn’t know existed. “Yes, Mike, there’s someone else.” I take my phone from next to my leg and hit the display to check the time. “As a matter of fact, I need to get going so I can go shower and change for my date with him tonight.”

  Mike looks around as if I told a joke others might have heard too. “A date?” he asks, laughing cynically.

  “Yeah, I realize you’re unfamiliar with the concept of spending time alone with the person you supposedly love, but some people still practice the ancient method of courting.”

  “Courting?” he questions while throwing his head back.

  “Forget it.” I stand up with my bag and laptop, ready to get as far away from him as possible.

  “So, this is seriously it?” he asks. Obviously, I haven’t been clear enough. There has always been one definitive line with me that can’t be crossed, and I was clear about it. I won’t put up with cheating. Dad cheated on Mom so many times before she called him out on it, and once she did, he disappeared from our lives as if we were never important to him. There is no way I’d put up with that for as long as she did, or at all for that matter.

  “This is it,” I confirm. Mike’s shoulders slouch in defeat. “Next time you have a good girl to come home to, don’t cheat on her. Treat her like she’s important—like she matters to you.” I wrap my arms around his neck and offer him a quick hug. “Goodbye, Mike.” How could my last words to Mike be the same as Grams’s last words to Charlie, yet have such a different meaning? It couldn’t have been. There’s more of Charlie in this book. I know it.

  I head toward the door, mortified from the scene Mike caused. “Bye, Em,” Chelsea shouts from behind the counter. I turn around, taking a couple of steps backward to the door as I wave goodbye. The look on her face tells me she heard everything that happened and my phone will most likely be buzzing in an hour when she gets out of work.

  I haven’t been on an actual date where I’ve been given the opportunity to dress up my normal wardrobe, curl my hair, and put on a little makeup since college. I’ve missed that feeling of anticipation and excitement.

  The drive back into Boston is quick and easy, and I find a nearly empty lot in front of the restaurant where Jackson said to meet him. I pull down the visor to check my reflection one last time, and when I see my face, I notice something I haven’t witnessed in a while: My cheeks are pink, and my eyes look brighter. I’ve lost that worn-out look I so often had when Mike and I were together. I feel different, too. I feel a sense of unfamiliar happiness.

  I step out of the Jeep, balancing myself in a pair of heels I haven’t worn since a wedding I went to last year and head across the parking lot toward the street parallel to the restaurant.

  Jackson is standing where he said he’d be waiting, and he’s smiling at me as if he hasn’t seen me in a month—as if he’s truly happy to see me.

  “Well, hello, gorgeous,” he says, shamelessly checking me out. My heart flops around in the bottom of my stomach, and my cheeks ache from the smile I’m trying to downplay. I’m forced to pinch my bottom lip between my front teeth as a rush of warmth reels through while I take in the sight of this amazing man in front of me. He’s dressed casually in a pair of jeans-ones that look like he was the one reason jeans were invented. In addition, his casual, blue-and-white plaid collared shirt is fitted, showing off a toned body he’s hidden beneath scrubs. I’m suddenly aware of the fact that he is even farther out of my league than I originally thought, and I don’t know how the heck I ended up here.

  “Hi,” I offer in return as I come within an arm’s length of him. He doesn’t waste a second before stretching out his hand and taking hold of my elbow to pull me in toward him.

  “The last few hours have been the longest hours of my entire life,” he says. “I couldn’t stop thinking about you.” I feel utterly speechless. No one has ever spoken to me this way before.

  For most of my adult life, I have had the notion that some girls are the type that men woo over, and others, like me, are the ones men settle for when they’re lookin
g for simplicity. Jackson’s making me feel like I’m on a whole other level than I thought I was.

  “Me?” I question. I can’t help wondering what it is about me he couldn’t stop thinking about.

  His thumb and forefinger gently pinch my chin as he leisurely—slowly—bends his neck down to kiss me so softly that my lips quiver as if they were touched by the tip of a feather. Oh, wow. I can’t think straight.

  “Why did you want to meet me outside?” I ask him.

  “I needed this moment before we were surrounded by people.”

  My heart aches from beating so hard. I should not be falling for him so quickly. I could get hurt. I could fall in love. I can easily see myself intertwining my life with his—just the idea of being with him is compelling, and I’ve known him for less than a week. I don’t do this sort of thing. I take my time. I waste my time. I spent six years with a person only to realize I hate him.

  I should stop following rules.

  “How did your work go today?” Jackson asks while opening the heavy wooden door to the restaurant.

  “Good. I got enough done to be somewhat caught up. I schedule projects in increments to try and maintain a somewhat normal schedule. It’s hard to stick to, but I’ve been working hard at cutting back for the whole work/life balance thing everyone is always talking about.” I chuckle at what I’m saying because I’m talking about a busy schedule to a doctor who most definitely works more hours in any given week than I do.

  “It’s definitely a tricky accomplishment to find a balance like that, but I’ve seen my fair share of people going crazy from a lack of fresh air.”

  “I can only imagine.”

  “A table for two please, in the back if you have anything,” Jackson tells the hostess.

  She takes two menus and heads toward the back of the restaurant where we’re brought to a round booth. We both slide in and sigh at the same time. “You too, huh?” I ask.