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Her back was turned to me but when she heard my voice she turned and smiled before hopping down the stairs to meet me. She bent to sit on her ankles, one knee resting on the concrete and wound her fingers through the fence over mine. I readjusted mine to rest on top of hers and kept them gripped tightly. Our charge lit up the fence like a net of burning ember.
“You did well Gray!” She yelled over the drums.
“Thanks miss Jacobs! I’m really very glad you came tonight!”
“Yeah, well...........I got your note!” She smiled letting it touch the corners of her bright eyes.
“Oh yeah? Huh! Thought we’d need to talk about it but I can feel it won’t be necessary!”
“I don’t think it will Gray! I can tell you feel the same way!”
I smiled.
“The exact same way!”
I jumped onto the concrete barrier that separated the track from the stands and leaned my stomach against the fence. She stood and we met face to face.
I leaned into her ear, “I love you Julia Jacobs.”
I felt her grin against my cheek, electrifying my face.
“I love you Elliott Gray,” she whispered.
I pulled my face from hers and readied myself to kiss her. We both closed our eyes but when I expected to feel her warm lips on mine, instead, I felt a million hands pull me from the fence and carry me off the field. I stared back at her and shrugged my shoulders with a crooked smile. She only laughed. There would be a time for our first kiss and if I had anything to say about it that time would be very soon, like the next day.
I picked Jules up for our study session at the library in Charleston at two o’clock. I was really nervous. I knew her parents but never at a time that I found their daughter to be the most handsome woman I had ever known. Sorta’ added a pressure that hadn’t ever been there before. I tugged on my t-shirt and wrinkled cardigan before bounding up the steps to her front door. I should really invest in an iron. My eyes were tired from the game the night before and I was forced to wear my dark rimmed glasses again which made me incredibly self-conscious despite Jules’ earlier rants. I rang the door bell and looked down at my feet while I waited. Should have cleaned my Converse, I thought right before her dad answered. My blood pressure spiked to an unhealthy level when he signaled for me to step through the door.
“Mr. Jacobs” I said and offered my hand.
He took it and shook it with a firm squeeze. I returned the pressure in kind. My dad had always told me that was the only way a man knew if a new acquaintance was a real man or not.
“Julia!” He yelled down the long hall next to the front door. Jules’ room, I mentally took note. “Elliott Gray is here!” He yelled up the staircase. For Jules’ mom, I assumed. I’m not going to lie, she scared me a little. She was menacing looking with her black hair and pale skin. Jules looked just like her but somehow on Jules it looked fairy tale-like.
“Come. Sit down in here with me,” he said.
He gestured to a little sitting room that faced the dark, wide winding wood stairs. The house had to have been at least a hundred years old, same as mine, same as most of the homes in Bramwell but The Perry House, The Jacobs’ home, was one of the most well preserved. It had all the original dark wood throughout. The sitting room he led me into had a massive cast iron fireplace, probably original as well. I wondered what it must have been like for Jules growing up around the Victorian furniture as uptight as was in that home. It reflected her mother’s personality to an exact point. Don’t get me wrong, it was beautiful and matched the home perfectly but I would have felt stifled there.
I lived in a farmhouse from the same era but it was a lot more laid back in its architecture as well as my mother’s taste in furniture. I suspect it proved for a lot more comfortable childhood in comparison.
Just to give you an idea, if you went back in time to the late eighteen hundreds to a moment where the first owners of our homes were still about their houses, you’d see a silk clad woman with layers of heavy expensive fabric and a tightly brimmed hat piled high with feathers at Jule’s house and a simple cotton dressed woman with a white apron at mine.
Not much had changed since that era because that was still the difference in social standing between Jules and myself. Jules had jumped the tracks, so to speak. Her father and mother were executives at the company who owned the coal mine my dad worked at and my father was only a miner.
We were from two different worlds, but Jules never acted as such. I knew her mother well enough and I also knew Jules had not gotten that personality trait from her so I reasonably assumed she got it from her father and thus felt very comfortable sitting across from him at that moment.
“Mr. Jacobs, my mom made these for Mrs. Jacobs.”
I handed him the white cardboard box full of homemade cookies my mom had wrapped with a pale blue ribbon. She said that it was impolite to show up to someone’s home you’ve been invited to without a gift. I didn’t know a thing about any of that stuff and really didn’t care but I didn’t argue with my mom. Refusing would have gotten me a slap to the neck.
“Wow!” He said, peeling open the lid. “These look incredible!”
He took one out and began to eat.
“Don’t tell Ann you saw me eating this in here,” he grinned propping his feet up on a very expensive looking coffee table.
eam was required to be at the stadium an hour before the game but I got there five minutes late because the traffic was already horrible getting into the stadium parking lot. It looked like at least two thousand people from the nearby towns decided to make the game their Friday night. No pressure Elliott…. On all accounts. I walked into our locker room and saw all my gear piled into a locker with my name printed on a piece of paper tacked to a broken nameplate.
“Thanks for showing up Gray,” Coach Miles said sarcastically.
