Forever

by Jeff Holmes

  She turned the notebook around and showed Scott a profile picture of himself, with the car window in the background and soft smile on his face. “Is that for me?” he asked.

  “Mmm, no,” Roni said. “I think I’ll keep it.”

  But Scott never thought he was in Roni’s league, insofar as dating. As friends, no problem. But dating, again his damn shyness just kept biting him in the ass.

  They had talked about lots of things over the years. She told him how she always wanted to work for a design or architecture firm, using her artistic talent to remake Colorado. She was accepted at Colorado University and was going to major in architectural design. She and Betsy Collins were going to room together.

  But right after graduation, she told Scott she’d changed plans. Instead of CU, she had decided to go to Greeley and maybe major in art education. Scott and most of the rest of the people who knew her couldn’t understand the sudden change, and no one could pry the reason out of her. She was, as always, an enigma.

  Although UNC isn’t a large school, hardly anyone ever saw her on campus. While most of the Wild Horse gang lived out on West Campus, Roni lived on Central Campus. She spent a lot of time in the art building. Maggie had a couple of classes with her the first year-and-a-half, and she and Scott had coffee in the Union a few times. She did come to Doug Martens’ New Year’s Eve party in ’75 and Scott shared the first kiss of the new year with her. But she met new friends and was moving in another direction.

  But there was that one night.

  ****

  CHAPTER 3

  The second week after Thanksgiving ’76, as Scott’s life was in free-fall, there was a party on his floor on a Thursday night. This was traditionally the last party weekend before finals, and this was a particularly good party. But for Scott, it was a shit day. He went to all of his classes, but also found out that even if he aced finals in two classes, he was going to flunk both of them. He was dropped from another because he quit coming (because he forgot about it). He knew he’d have three Fs, but an A in Football Theory. His roommate, and kick holder, Danny Joe, was pretty much living at his girlfriend’s now, so he had the room to himself. The day of the party, Scott came back from class, smoked some hash Rick gave him, and slept almost all the way through supper.

  He managed to wake up in time to grab something to eat before food service closed, but by the time he went back upstairs, the girls were already arriving for the party. He slipped across the hall to the bathroom to shower quickly. A few people hooted and whistled as he came back out trying to balance his shampoo, soap and room key while holding his towel around him. He managed to hang onto the towel but dropped everything else. As he reached down to try and fish out his key, he heard a familiar voice.

  “Nice outfit. Is that what you’re wearing to the party?”

  He turned to see Roni standing above him. She was wearing jeans and a burgundy sweater with the collar of a white shirt sticking out the top.

  “No,” he said, his face turning red.

  “Good,” she said. “Get your ass dressed and come find me. I want to hear about things.”

  “Things?” Scott thought. What did she know?

  By the time Scott dressed and headed down the hall, the party was in full swing. Roni and couple of girls he didn’t know were talking to Craig Bowen, the floor art geek. The two girls he didn’t know were arguing with Craig about expressionism or abstractism or some kind of –ism, while Roni stood there listening and drinking her wine.

  They made small talk for awhile, and had a couple of more drinks. All of a sudden, one of Roni’s friends came for her. “Emily is puking her head off in the bathroom,” the other girl said, almost hysterically.

  Roni looked at Scott and her shoulders drooped. “I’m den mother sometimes,” she said. “I’ll find you somewhere.”

  That was around 9:30. By 11, Scott started to wonder what was going on. He saw Kevin Towers in the hall; he’d been in a couple of classes with Roni and he was the one who invited her house to the party. “Did you see Roni and those guys?” Scott asked him.

  “That Emily girl was sicker than shit,” Kevin said. “Sloe gin, I think. Anyway, I think Roni helped take her home.”

  Well, Scott thought, the perfect end to the perfect day. Some chick named Emily boots all over the bathroom and the best conversation he’d had with someone in months was shot to hell.

  As he walked back toward his room, he heard his phone ringing. He ran to the door opened it and grabbed the receiver on the fourth ring. “Roni?” he said.

  “Roni?” a female voice answered. “It’s me.”

  It was Maggie. He loved talking to her, but she wasn’t his first choice tonight. “Hi Mags,” he said.

  “You guys have a party tonight?” Maggie asked.

  “Yeah,” Scott said. “Kind of breaking up now.”

  “Is Rick there?” she asked. Shit, Scott thought, that dumb ass is out banging that freshman swimmer from Grand Junction he’d been talking about.

  “I haven’t seen him, Mags,” Scott said, not lying. “Did he tell you he was coming over?”

  “No, but I called over there earlier,” she said, “and Rathbun (Rick’s roommate) said he thought Rick was with you.”

  Scott hated the way Rick treated her, but there’s the guy code. “When I talked to him earlier (he hadn’t), he said Forrester (one of the other track guys) was meeting him at The Bear Claw. That’s probably where they are,” Scott said. “He’ll probably drunk-call you later.”

  “Wonderful,” she said.

  Then she paused.

  “You OK, Footer?” Maggie asked softly. “Rick said you were having a rough time.”

  “Oh, you know, Mags,” Scott said, “it’s nothing I can’t handle. We’ll talk about it later.”

  “Well, OK,” she said. “Good night, Scott.”

  “Night, Mags. If he drunk-calls, don’t tell him to call me, OK?” Scott said.

  “I promise,” she said as she hung up.

  Scott grabbed a beer out his fridge and slumped into his chair. Outside, it had started to snow. He was trying to decide whether to get out his guitar or turn on the stereo when his fog was cleared by a knock on the door. “It’s open,” he said.

  “Good,” he heard a familiar female voice say. “We weren’t done talking.”

  He whirled in his chair. Roni was standing there in the same sweater and jeans as earlier with her red ski jacket, a UNC stocking cap and black mittens. She walked in and shut the door, pulling off her mittens. “So, I take Emily back to her room, get her cleaned up, get her to bed, go back to my room, right?”

  “Walk in and my roommate is riding the hell out of that Craig guy,” Roni said, those baby blue eyes flashing through a somewhat maniacal smile as she pulled off her jacket. “She actually had her glasses on. Looked back at me and just said ‘bye,” so I figured you and I weren’t done talking, so here I am. Got a cigarette?”

  Scott grabbed a pack off the spool table in the middle of the room and tossed it to Roni, as she flopped into the love seat across from him. “So you’re flunking out, huh?” she asked. “Scotty, what’s going on?

  “How did you know?” he asked. “Did Rick tell you?”

  “Maggie did,” she said. “She called me. She’s worried about you. And Rick didn’t tell her, she just kind of put two-and-two together.”

  And then the flood gates opened. Scott told her everything: the partying, the women, forgetting about a class. And she sat and listened. He didn’t realize it until later, but she never took her eyes off of him. She grabbed a beer, another cigarette, even loaded a bowl with hash for them. But the baby blue eyes never left him.

  At one point, Scott stood up and clicked on the stereo. “Put some James Taylor on,” Roni said. He stuck the Greatest Hits 8-track tape in the player, and as the first notes of “Something In The Way She Moves” began, he just started to cry. “Come here and sit down,” Roni said softly.

  Scott dropped into the
seat next to her and she wrapped her arms around him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, Roni. I really don’t. My parents are pissed at me, my friends are all pissed at me, and in a week I’m out of here, and I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen. And I’m scared.”

  “I don’t know, Footer. I don’t know,” Roni said. Her cheek was against his and suddenly he realized she was crying. But he didn’t say anything. By this time it was after 1 a.m.

  “I’m going to the little girls’ room,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  Scott was looking out the window, so he didn’t see what she did before she left the room. When she came back, she was carrying the jeans, the sweater and the white shirt, all neatly folded.

  She was wearing Scott’s high school football jersey. She must have grabbed it on the way out. The burgundy jersey hung nearly to her knees, and the bottom of the white number 73 almost reached her waist. The white “STAMPEDERS” hung across her chest, and it was obvious her bra must have been neatly folded in the pile as well. With the baggy black ski socks she was wearing, she had never looked more adorable.

  Roni set the clothes down. “OK, get this straight,” she said. “I’m tired and so are you. It’s too damn cold, late and snowing too hard for me to walk back. You are not, under any circumstances, going to score here; we don’t need that complication right now. Now, let’s have another bowl and go to bed.”

  Scott stripped to his boxers and sat down in the love seat. Roni plopped down next to him and leaned her head against his chest, pulling an afghan over them. They passed the bowl back and forth as they listened to the Taylor 8-track, which was now on its second trip through.

  The bowl burned out and Roni set the pipe on the spool. “C’mon, Footer,” she said, standing and grabbing his hand. “Let’s go to bed.”

  She stood up, took his hand and led him over to the single bed. She switched the tape to Elton John’s “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” turned off the room light, and clicked on a couple of Coors bar signs on the wall. As Roni snuggled into him, she reminded him, “I’m still afraid of the dark.”

  He smiled. She gave him a peck on the lips, snuggled her head onto his shoulder and draped her arm across his chest. He pulled her close and soon they were both sound asleep. It all felt so natural.

  Elton John was singing “Harmony” as Scott stirred about 7:00 a.m. At first things seemed normal, until the memory came roaring back. He was alone. On the spool was a folded piece of notebook paper, with “Footer” written in Roni’s distinctive script.

  He opened it.

  “Scott,

  Thanks for letting me stay and thanks for trusting me with everything. I wish I had more answers for you, and it makes me sad to see you like this. I’ve missed watching you kick a football and missed seeing you around. Yeah, I know that’s mostly been me, but that’s another story for another day. Just be safe and please take care of yourself. And you do still have a lot of people who care about you. I should know. I’m one of them. I’ll find you somewhere.

  Love,

  Roni

  P.S.: Oh, and I have your jersey. I’ll wash it and get back to you when I see you.

  And that was it. He tried to call her later that day, but her roommate said she was at the art building. At that point, he realized what she meant; “I’ll find you somewhere,” was her way of saying when the time is right, she’d find him.

  ****

  CHAPTER 4

  Scott kept turning the envelope over and over, just staring at it and looking at the handwriting. In two-and-a-half weeks in the Army, he already received more than his share of mail. But that was from his Mom, his sisters, aunts and cousins, Maggie and some of his wrestlers. But this was different; it was from Roni.

  He almost didn’t want to open it. Sealed, the letter was safe, but he also had to know what it said.

  Finally, he carefully pealed up the back of the envelope and pulled out the pages.

  March 27, Sunday Night…

  Dear Scott,

  Yeah, see, you know when I said I’d find you somewhere? Sorry I’m just getting around to it. I kept thinking you’d show up on campus or I’d finally call you back or something. Then I’m home Friday and I see the paper. And there’s you in a funny hat and no hair and looking really sad, and all I could think of was, ‘what the fuck?’

  So I went right back Saturday and went to Maggie and Rick’s. Of course he was gone, but she and I made daiquiris in the blender and ordered pizza and wrapped up in blankets and talked about lots of stuff (mostly you and sometimes Rick). Then guess what comes on TV? GUESS! “Tribes.”

  Of course, we start watching, then I start crying, then she starts crying and then I want to kill Darren McGavin, then I want to kill Earl Holliman. Then I want to kill you because we’re crying because we’re watching this movie because you’re down there with no hair and a funny hat and looking really sad. Then I got scared because I hated that you might going through what Jan Michael Vincent is going through. Then I got mad at me because I got mad at you. And then Rick comes in and Maggie and I are drunk and crying and cuddled up in blankets and watching this stupid movie and he actually managed not to be a jerk. He just kept telling us you were OK, and that stuff wasn’t happening to you. We had a little smoke and I calmed down and slept on their couch. Oh, and I’m a bridesmaid now!

  Are you OK, Footer? I’m sorry if I wasn’t there for you if you needed to talk. Rick said you talked to him about the Army and you said you wanted to do it, but he said he knew you were lying, too. I’m assuming he’s right. But you’re there now, and I’m guessing nobody can do anything about it. So if that’s the case and you’re stuck there, then I’m going to tell you some stuff, because, well, I want to and you can’t go anywhere.

  First, I don’t know how you felt about that night I stayed with you, but it meant more to me than you can possibly know. I’ve never felt that safe in someone’s arms. Hell, it might have been the first time I’ve ever spent the night with someone where we slept that way all night. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that close to someone and it felt so good. When I woke up that morning, it was as if we hadn’t moved. It felt wonderful, and I wanted to stay right there, but I thought it’d be better if I left. Maybe I was wrong.

  Second, for the record, Maggie finally told me you still have a crush on me (Rick was pissed when he found out she told me, but I told him to stay out of it; girl stuff, you know). You dumbshit! Why have you never said anything? I mean, I knew you did when we were kids, but I didn’t know you still did. I mean, with you there and me here, there’s not much we can do right now, but we can talk about stuff. The thing I want you to understand is that I’m not very good at relationships and stuff, and that’s something I just have to get over, I guess. There’s just been a lot of shit and I guess I have to work that stuff out or something. But I guess I have a couple of months, right?

  Last, why do you still care about me? I have teased you and picked on you and probably given you more reasons to hate me over the years than I can count and you still like me? Are you crazy? I mean, I’m glad, because you really are one of the few people left I actually trust. Yes, trust. And you have no idea how much that means to me. It means more than like and love and lust all that shit. I promise I’ll explain this all to you some day. I slept in your arms all night and you didn’t make a move (although I did feel you rubbing your fingers on my boob before we went to sleep; I’ll give you that one). You respected me and let me care for you when you needed me. It just means a lot.

  OK, well, I’m going to go; it’s 11:00 and I haven’t finished reading my Humanities yet. Please write me back and tell me what’s happening. Please tell me you’re OK. And please tell me if you’re not. I know I can’t fix it from here, but if you’re not OK, I at least want to wish I could do something. Promise me, OK?

  If I don’t hear back by next Wednesday, I’m coming down there and breaking you out. OK? Oh, and I’m wearing your jersey. I’ll wash it.
/>   Love,

  Roni

  P.S. – Oh, this is just mean, but…

  You know how I didn’t have my bra on under your jersey? I didn’t have my underwear on either. And, when I woke up that morning, for a moment, I was standing there in front of you completely naked (other than the socks). But you were asleep. And, since you’re trapped down there for two months with nothing but guys, you MIGHT want to just put that out of your mind for now. For now…

  Bye-bye, Footer….Ha! Ha!

  Now it was three months since that night in his dorm room. And there was an envelope in his hand with her return address on the front, and a bunny saying hi! For the first time in months, he felt something strange in his body. It was his heart beating.

  Scott sat on the edge of bunk, staring blankly at the pages. His mind was going in about 15 directions at once and he was trying to grab hold for dear life. He was picturing Roni and Maggie, in sweats, on the puke green couch he and Rick found at St. Vincent DePaul’s, pizza box and daiquiris (in those big-assed beer schooners they’d swiped from Happy Joe’s). They’re hammered (and Maggie hardly ever drank) and watching that goddamn movie. Scott had always loved “Tribes.” Not so much anymore.

  He choked up a little when he thought about them crying, especially Roni. She always tries to act to so damn bad ass, he thought. Now that’s twice she’s cried about him. Scott always thought she was too tough for that. Maybe not…

  And, as Roni predicted, the image of her standing naked in the middle of the room in front of him wasn’t going away for awhile. But she said, “…for now.”

  She’d said so much in a little less than a 1,000 words, but not too much. She talked about feelings and the future and going forward, but there was no commitment. She talked about relationships and working at them, but didn’t say they had one. And as much as Scott wanted it to happen, he knew it was not the right time to talk about it. There was lots of time and this wasn’t a letter subject; that was at least voice-to-voice, if not face-to-face.