“SO, YOU MEAN TO tell me that I actually agreed to this ridiculous plan to break up for five years six months ago?” Jack tried to make a joke and break the tension between him and Charli as they sat on the dock behind his parents’ house, dangling their bare feet into the cool dark water the night before Jack was supposed to take off for San Jose.
The Giants had drafted him two weeks earlier. Jack got a call from their general manager while he was watching the draft on TV with Charli at his house in Corvallis. After verbally accepting their offer, he hung up and turned to her, his heart pounding.
“I’m going to the Giants,” he said.
Her eyes glistened. “Oh Jack, I’m so . . . happy for you.” When she drew him into a hug, they both lost it and cried mixed tears of happiness for their careers and sadness that it meant the hypothetical pact Charli had come up with were this to happen was no longer hypothetical.
They graduated the following week and then moved all their stuff out of Corvallis and back home, where they’d been since, trying to enjoy their last few days together.
Charli kicked up some water. “Yeah. Why’d you agree to it? Now here I am with cold feet.”
Jack didn’t want to have to mentally adjust to a different plan, so he nudged her and said, “Pull your toes out of the river then.”
Although he’d left Hayden’s only partly sold on Charli’s idea that night she suggested it, when he got home, he’d jostled his mom awake. In their kitchen over coffee, he told her Charli’s plan, and when he finished, his mom looked at him through the steam rising out of her mug and said, “Actually, Jack, I think that’s kind of smart.”
“You do?” he replied.
“Yeah,” she said. “I think it might work for you two. Timing is everything in relationships, and you two unfortunately met too early in your lives. This plan—to reintroduce yourselves to each other at a point in your lives when the timing is better—kind of sounds perfect given your situation.”
Something about hearing his mom say that made Jack feel better about the pact. And over the months, the more he thought about it, the more it made sense to him.
“You’re right, we can’t second-guess this,” Charli said, catching his drift. She stood up and walked over to the old ragged rope swing hanging from the willow tree beside the dock. Pulling on it she said, “Remember when—”
“Yeah,” Jack cut in, knowing she was going to take him back to that day when they were ten or eleven, and she fell off the swing too close to the dock and split her chin open on it. “You were crying so hard, and blood was everywhere.”
“I never thanked you for carrying me all the way up to my house.”
“Or for watching the doctor sew in all those gross stitches,” Jack added.
“You didn’t have to watch.”
“Like you would have let go of my hand. God, I thought the doctor was going to have to amputate my fingers next.”
“Hey, you try having a needle threaded through your skin,” she said playfully.
It struck Jack how strange it was going to be to not make memories together for the next five years. Charli was in most of the ones he could remember.
She must have been thinking the same thing because in the light from the full moon hanging above them, he saw a tear roll down her cheek.
“So before I break down here, let’s talk about rules,” she said.
“Right.” That was why they were out on the dock. To discuss the rules of the pact. They probably shouldn’t have saved this for their last night together, but every other time they’d tried to discuss it, one of them hadn’t been in the mood.
Jack leaned back on his hands and stared up at Charli’s face in the milky light. “Let me guess . . . you wrote down a whole list of rules you think we should have.”
“You know me too well.” She reached into the back pocket of her faded jean shorts and pulled out a folded up sheet of paper. “Voila.”
Jack chuckled. “Always prepared.”
“And I’m guessing you don’t have a list.”
“I figured it was pointless, just like making study guides for our chemistry tests freshman year of high school when I knew you’d make them, and they’d be way better than what I could have come up with.”
“You’re lucky I was nice enough to make you copies of those,” Charli said.
“And . . . did you make copies of this as well?” Jack said half-joking.
“It just so happens that I did.” She pulled out a second folded sheet from her pocket for him. “I was going to give it to you afterwards to hang onto, but I guess you can have it now.” He took the paper from her, unfolded it, and squinted his eyes at it in the low light. “Rules of the Pact” was printed at the top, and it was numbered in outline form. Typical Charli.
“Number one,” Jack read out loud. “Delete each other from Facebook.”
Charli peered down at him over the top of her copy. “That only leads to jealousy and nostalgia, don’t you think?”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “If you hadn’t had that on here, I would have added it. Let’s take care of that right now.” He pulled up Facebook on his phone, searched for Charli, and clicked the defriend button right next to her profile picture of the two of them all dressed up for Charli’s last birthday. “We are officially not friends,” he announced sadly holding his phone up, so she could see.
Charli frowned. “Weird,” she said.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
They stared at each other in silence for a second, the reality of what they were doing really setting in. Jack knew if he looked at her for much longer, one of them would start to lose it, and they wouldn’t get through the rest, so he lowered his eyes again.
“Rule number two,” he read. “No texting, calling, or emailing. We’ll stay in touch by writing letters. Letters?” Jack looked up at her. “What are we, in the 1920s?”
“I know it’s a little old-fashioned, but think: if we call, email, or text, then we’ll probably be in touch all the time, and it will hardly feel like we’re broken up. It would basically put us in a long-distance relationship, and we’ve already gone over all the problems with those. Letters are safe. They’ll allow us to keep each other informed about how we’re doing with our dreams, but they won’t be too much. And they won’t give away other details about our lives that our voices might, like, for example, if one of us starts dating someone else.”
“Wait,” Jack said. “So, you mean we’re allowed to date other people?”
“Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. Do you want to read the next rule?”
Jack looked down and saw that his paper was shaking. He tried to steady his hands as he read, “Dating other people is okay. But no kissing and telling. If either one of us starts seeing someone else, leave that out of the letters so that we don’t crush each other.”
Charli took a seat back beside him. “It’s not like I can imagine dating anyone now, Jack. But five years is a long time. I don’t expect either one of us to shut down romantically.”
Jack inched his hand over to hers so that their pinky fingers were touching. “I don’t think I could ever meet someone as perfect for me as you.”
“I hope not,” she said with a nervous laugh. “And I don’t think I’ll meet someone as perfect for me as you either. But I’m just saying we’re both going to new places, and we’re going to meet new people. If you do want to go on a date with someone or even kiss a girl drunkenly at a bar, I won’t hate you for it, but I don’t want you to tell me about it.”
“I guess part of being broken up is having that freedom,” Jack said, realizing the rule probably made sense. He was most likely going to be put in a lot of situations by his baseball teammates where he’d be given a hard time if he didn’t flirt with other girls or make out with a stranger, especially if he told them he was single.
“Exactly,” Charli said. “We just have to trust in what we have, and if we’re meant to be, we’ll have our date at Hayden’s to come back to each other.”
Jack thought of that day five years out. “Damn, when I see you again at that restaurant . . . I’m going to kiss you so hard.”
Charli giggled. “Can you imagine? It will be like a scene from a movie if we both show up.”
If we both show up.
The words hung in the air between them.
“Sorry,” Charli said, shaking her head. “I mean when we both show up.”
“No, technically it is if,” Jack said. “Right? I mean, over the course of five years one of us could decide that we don’t want to get back together.”
“I guess,” Charli said sadly.
“And what do we do then?” Jack asked. “Do you have a rule about that?”
“Actually, no.” She sounded surprised with herself. “What do you think we should do?”
Jack considered this.“Part of me feels like it would be awful to show up and get stood up. But I also don’t want us influencing each other’s decisions. I don’t want you to feel like you need to show up if you don’t really want to, because I told you I was planning on it, for example. Or, say I thought a month before the reunion that I wasn’t going to go back for you, and so I wrote you that. But then the day got closer, and I changed my mind. At that point you’d already cancelled your flight and grieved about me, so I would have ruined everything.”
“Sounds like you’re leading more toward keeping it a mystery then?” Charli pulled her knees up to her chest.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Well, it’ll be incredibly romantic if we both show up, and incredibly tragic if only one of us does.”
“I’m pulling for it being romantic,” Jack said, leaning into her.
“Me too.” Charli smiled, and they both looked back down at the sheet. “Okay, the last rule is no seeing each other at all.”
“I figured given the other rules that that was going to be the case,” Jack said.
“It’ll be easy to implement considering my parents’ move.” Charli’s dad had gotten transferred to Chicago for work. Her parents would be gone before the holidays this year. “And I just feel like if we met up at all during the split, it’d be too hard to let go again. It’d be like we were breaking up all over.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “That’s something I only want to go through once.” And not even, he thought.
“So, you’re okay with that?”
“As okay as I am with all the other rules. I’m not crazy about any of them, but I know that they’re all in our best interest to pull this thing off.”
Charli nodded. “Exactly.” Then, looking out over the river she said, “So, there’s just one more thing we have to do.”
“What’s that?” Jack asked.
“Pick a date and a time for our reunion.”
“Right.” The most important part. They had told Gianna they would call and let her know. “Do they even make calendars that go out five years?”
“I’m sure I can find an infinity calendar on the Internet.” Charli took out her phone and started to search. “If all goes according to plan, I should be done in June 2017. My financial aid is for five years, so I will make it my mission to finish in that time frame. But since June’s your baseball season, maybe we should meet in March of that year, in between winter league and your regular season.”
“I’ll be in spring training,” Jack said. “But I’ll find a way to be there.”
She continued to look at her phone. “Okay, found a calendar. How about March 24? A Friday? At say, 7 o’clock?”
“Friday, March 24 at seven,” Jack said, thinking to himself that it couldn’t come soon enough. “Okay.”
“We should write this down so that we don’t forget,” Charli said.
“Yeah, should we put it on our rule sheets?”
Charli seemed to consider that for a second and then shook her head. “I have a better idea.” Crossing the dock, she went over and got her bag. She brought it over to where Jack was and pulled out a to-go box from Hayden’s. “I got a slice of our favorite cake for our last night,” she said. “I thought it would be symbolic, or something. Although now I don’t really have much of an appetite.” She set it down between them. “What if I write the date and time on the receipt for me, as my reminder? And for you, I’ll inscribe the information on the inside of the to-go box lid?”
It seemed fitting to put the date and time on something from Hayden’s. “All right.”
Charli took out a pen and the receipt from her purse and wrote down the information there first, then she opened up the to-go box and did the same. “Put this somewhere safe,” she told him.
“I’ll take it with me,” he said. “Keep it in my room next to a picture of you or something.”
“Okay,” Charli nodded. “I’ll do the same.” She finished up and then capped the pen and stuck it back in her bag. “You know, Jack, I was wrong a few minutes ago.”
“About what? You’re never wrong about things.”
She smiled softly. “I said that picking a date was the last thing we had to do . . . it wasn’t.”
“Oh?”
Her eyes were suddenly glossy. “Saying goodbye actually is.”
“Charli . . . ” his voice broke. “Come here.” He had her sit between his legs, facing the water, and he wrapped his arms around her. Holding her tight, he closed his eyes and listened to the warm wind rustling through the trees and the river water rushing downstream. When he was on the baseball field, there were certain moments that he wanted to slow down and live in longer, like right after he threw a strikeout pitch with a bases-loaded count, and the crowd jumped to their feet to applaud him. This was one of those moments off the field. He wanted to keep Charli in his arms for as long as he could and never let her go.
“Jack,” Charli whispered.
“Hmm?” He leaned his face down close to hers so that their cheeks brushed.
“Will you make love to me?”
“Here? Right now?”
“Here. Right now.” She turned in his arms and latched onto the bottom of his shirt, clenching it into a ball. “And make it count. In case, you know . . . this is it.”
Her words made him shudder. “Charli, this won’t be it,” he said. He cupped her chin in his hand, tilted it up, and looked her square in the eyes. “This can’t be it.” With tenderness, he kissed her forehead and then trailed his lips down to hers and eased his tongue into her mouth.
Charli pressed her forehead against his. “I’m scared of losing you,” she said. “I mean, I know this was my idea, but still . . . I’m really afraid.”
“I know you are,” Jack said. “I am too. We just have to remember that this is us. And this is our love we’re putting through this hoop.”
A few tears fell down her cheeks, and Jack reached up and wiped them off with his thumb, hating how much this hurt.
“I miss you so much already,” she breathed.
“Me too,” he said heavily.
She made eye contact with him for a couple of seconds and then glanced down at his lips.
Jack kissed her. Softly, at first, and then more urgently. Though he didn’t think this was it, though he didn’t want it to be, what if it was?
She kissed him back with the same sense of urgency, as if she were thinking the same thing, and then she crawled onto his lap and wrapped her legs around his waist.
A wave of desire coursed through him, and he reached for the bottom of her shirt and yanked it off over her head. For a brief moment, he took in the sight of her—the twinkle in her eyes, her angelic skin glowing in the moonlight, her nipples poking out of the sheer fabric of her bra, her hair blowing back behind her in the warm breeze—and he thought to himself that he’d never seen anyone so beautiful. She was his wildest dream right there in front of him . . . for one more night.
Charli broke his trance by moving her hand down and resting it on the spot where his pants were mounting. A shiver of pleasure ran down his spine. With her other hand, Charli lifted his shirt off and then dropped it on top of her own and leaned in to kiss his neck.
Jack remembered that this was her bra that unhooked from the front, and he unclasped it with his eyes closed and felt her fall into his hands. Her breasts—soft, full, familiar—still drove him crazy no matter how many times he touched them. He tipped his head down and drew cold wet circles with his tongue around their soft skin, making her whimper and making him grow harder at the sound of it.
“Jack,” he heard her say, faintly, breathlessly.
He looked up, meeting her eyes, and knew in an instant that she was as desperate for him as he was for her. He laid her down on the dock, working to undo the hard buttons on her shorts and then sliding off his jeans. Then he moved over her, hovering there for a moment, taking in the electricity between them, the intense high he was feeling, the unreal sensation of being this alive. And when he couldn’t take it any longer, he pushed himself inside her.
Jack had made love to Charli hundreds of times over the four years they’d been together. They’d had make-up sex. Just-woke-up sex. Too-many-drinks sex. Holiday sex. Out-in-the-open sex. Back-of-his-truck sex. Rainy-afternoon sex. I-won-a-baseball-game sex. I-love-you-sex. But tonight was different. This was earth-shattering sex. This was can’t-live-without-you sex. This was sex that said, “I’ll wait for you. I’ll come back. What we have is strong enough.”
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