Chapter Twelve
To: Bo Porter
From: Peyton Turner
Dear Bo,
I just hit submit on my assignment. Like, literally five minutes ago.
Not that you asked for it but I’m sending you a copy of what I wrote.
I do think I’ve managed to scrape at least a C+ so prepare yourself to be dazzled.
Oh and of course, thank you so much for all the help.
You did annoy me at times and there were a couple of occasions when I really wanted to strangle you but overall, you were great.
Now I’m sitting at my usual place—my desk by the window overlooking my favorite tree and I know you didn’t ask but they aren’t cutting it down anymore; all that neighborhood rallying seems to have worked!
—and writing you this letter. I’m also grinning like a crazy person in case you haven’t figured that part out yet.
But I also realized something. There’s no reason for us to talk anymore. I came to you for my assignment and it’s over now. So we could say goodbye to each other except I don’t think I want to.
I don’t want to stop writing to you. I don’t want to stop waiting for your letter every Friday.
Every week like clockwork, I finish my classes and my shift at the library, and race back to my apartment.
I whip open my red mailbox and there you always are.
Waiting for me inside a white prison stamped envelope.
Usually I tear you open right there, standing on the side of the street because I’m so excited to see you, your words.
I’m so excited to find out how they’ll affect me.
Sometimes you make me mad because you can be so blunt and rude.
Not to mention, so bossy and high-handed.
Especially when you tell me to quit my shitty job at the shitty library with shitty hours and the shitty air-conditioning.
And I know I freaked out on you when you told me to stay away from my math professor because he asked me to come up to his office after hours.
But you were right. He did make a pass at me.
So I declined his offer of being his TA.
And funnily—and spookily—enough, I heard that he took a job at another university a few days later.
You didn’t have anything to do with it though, did you?
There are times when you make me smile too.
You listen to me ramble about my classes, my professors, all the plans I have about grad school, about my future.
And then there are other ways I think about you.
I imagine how you look bent over the piece of paper that I hold in my hands every week.
I imagine your fingers—that I think are long and thick, maybe scarred and scrape-y from years of working on the ranch—clutching the pen and scribbling words.
For some reason, that picture is so hard to come by.
Maybe because after everything I know about you, it’s hard for me to imagine you sitting still.
Even though I know you do. Even though I know you have to, given where you are right now.
I also imagine your face.
I know we never talked about it, not after my initial confession, but the article I read about you in the Post had a picture of you too.
It was grainy and unclear. But I could see you, with your dark head bent, as you were escorted out of the courtroom with a crowd around you.
And while I couldn’t see your face among the sea of people, I could see that it was raining and some days I feel really sad about that.
About the fact that it was probably one of your last days on the outside and the sun was hiding behind gray clouds.
I don’t want to stop imagining you. I don’t want to stop talking to you. I don’t want to stop, period.
Do you?
Until next time (hopefully),
Peyton
To: Peyton Turner
From: Bo Porter
Peyton,
This is a bad idea. Straight up.
It was a bad idea when you first wrote to a felon, asking for his help, and it’s a bad idea now that you want to keep writing to me when there’s no need for it anymore.
This is the opposite of the careful life you want to lead.
The opposite of what a straight-A student might do.
I want you to remember that. For later. Remember that it was your idea because my answer is no. I don’t want to stop.
Instead, I want to tell you about my Tuesdays.
My Tuesdays go like your Fridays. Every Tuesday when one of the guards moves through the rows of tables in the dayroom, distributing the mail, he knows to come to me first. He knows I watch him like a hawk until he makes his way over.
And he knows not to let anyone disturb me when I get your words in my hands.
But unlike you, I don’t skip sentences. I go slow. I take my time. I take in every word, absorb paragraphs. Then I close my eyes and sniff your words in through the nose like cocaine. Call me crazy but they smell like flowers. Sweet and rosy. And when I’m high on you, I see you in my head too.
There you are, sitting at your desk with your head bent.
I think you’d have your hair up and away from your face.
You’re a straight-A student, aren’t you, so you don’t want anything to break your focus.
Maybe you also wrinkle your forehead when you’re deep in thought.
Or when you have a hard time coming up with the perfect word or the correct phrase.
Or maybe you bite your lip?
When you’re sassing me, I imagine you doing it with a lifted chin.
Your hand getting heavy on the paper, your breaths picking up speed.
Your cheeks red and flushed with anger. I imagine you frowning as I tell you that I don’t want you working so hard at the library, your nose buried in a book.
I want you to have an adventure. And if I could, I’d give it to you.
I imagine that frown getting thicker as I ask you what if it really was me, who scared that professor away? Like I did with those inmates.
Would you be scared of me?
And now I’m imagining the flush of anger spreading through your cheeks because you’re not afraid of anything, least of all a felon hundreds of miles away. And I want to touch it, that flush.
I want to touch you.
I untie your hair first and let the silky strands fall down your back.
And it is silky, isn’t it, your hair. It’s soft and rich and so long that it teases your lower back.
I imagine you sucking in a breath at this.
You probably weren’t expecting me to. But maybe you should have.
I’m a felon doing time; following the rules isn’t how I got behind bars.
After eight years of my life in this hard place, I’m thirsty for something soft.
I’m thirsty to run my fingers—that you already guessed are scarred and rough—through the soft and smooth mass of your hair.
Then I move those strands to the side and expose the nape of your neck.
It’s the color of the moon that I sometimes see through the barred window of my cell.
But I know just by looking at it that instead of it being cool, I’m going to find your skin all warm and cozy, probably from all the sunlight streaming in through that window of yours.
And well, you already know my last day on the outside, the sun was hiding, so now I crave it like I’ve never craved anything before.
I touch that fragile spot on your neck, all soft and warm.
I’m rubbing my finger up and down, back and forth, in circles, trying to soak up the feel of you.
Trying to memorize it just like I memorize your words so I can make it last for a whole week before I get to touch you again.
So when I touch my own fingertips, instead of rough skin, I feel your phantom softness.
But maybe you don’t want me to. Maybe you don’t want a roughened con touching you with his rougher fingers.
But then again, I warned you, didn’t I?
Bo
PS: Unlike you, I’m not much for reading but I read your paper and if your professor gives you anything less than a B, he’s a moron. But maybe I don’t have to tell you any more. You already know how all professors are fucking morons, and you should stay away from them.