Chapter Four #3
I lay back in the grass, making sure there’s enough space between us so whatever electricity is traveling between us will stop, and find the blue sky between the splotches of vibrant leaves overhead.
We lay there quietly for a long time, with only the sounds of our breathing for a while.
I feel like this moment could last forever.
Before we know it, the world is pinking up under a brilliant sunset and, with shoes fully tied and secured to our feet, I walk with Martin halfway back to his car before heading off to mine.
Days later, the journal is on the windshield of my truck.
It has been a long day of meetings and spreadsheets and CAD drawings and I am just ready to get in my truck, grab dinner, and head home to decompress after a long day.
And there it is. Tucked under my windshield wiper like a promotional flier.
It’s still sealed in the white envelope with the blue tie-string and my name, still scribbled out, is where it had been before.
I grab it, and climb into my truck, starting the engine so the heater can start warming against the crisp fall evening.
I sit in the driver’s seat, staring at the envelope, unopened, and then find myself looking around the parking lot like someone might be wondering what I’ve got.
Each person I see has their head buried in their phone, or is focused on getting to their vehicle and getting home, seemingly on autopilot.
Matthew from diagnostics looks my way and waves.
I wave back, and then before I know it, he’s heading over.
I watch him for a minute as he makes eye contact with me and smiles, still heading toward the driver’s side window of my truck.
It takes me a minute to realize he’s actually intending to talk with me.
I roll down the window, as he grabs the door frame.
“How’s it going, Liam?”
I find myself tucking the white envelope between the seat and the middle console, like some kid trying to hide something. Do I look suspicious?
“I’m good. It’s been a while since I’ve seen you.
Haven’t been in the diagnostics building lately, I guess,” I say.
He’s smiling broadly and the late afternoon sky is reflecting in the glint of his eyes.
His short beard is curling around his smile, his curly hair rising with the muscles around his ears.
I see his eyes wander to my hands on the steering wheel and then back again. My heart is racing.
“I know. It’s funny how we can work in the same place and feel like it’s a different planet.
” He chuckles in a way that shakes his entire body, a low masculine growl that shakes the truck slightly as he pounds his hand on the window ledge.
I can’t help but smile along. “Hey, several of the guys are going to Darby’s on Friday after work for happy hour.
Maybe shoot some darts or pool or something.
You should come with us.” The sides of his beard rise again under the growing smile, with the whites of his teeth showing.
I watch his hand squeeze the window sill as his forearm tenses.
“Um, okay,” I stumble, catching my breath, trying to keep my eyes off the muscles of his forearm. “Maybe, um, sure. I think I, sure, maybe.”
“Liam,” he places his other hand on the window, “You should join us. It’ll be low key. Hey,” he adds abruptly, grabbing his phone out of his pocket. “Give me your number and I’ll text you mine. Then you can let me know.”
Before I know it, I’m rattling off my number to him and watching him type it in his phone.
Then my phone rattles and there’s a message that says, “This is Matthew.” When I look back, he’s typing my name into his contacts and then looks at me, assuming I know he’s seeking my last name, which I guess I do because I’m telling him: “Everett.”
Instinctively, I’m mirroring his actions into my phone, typing his first name and “Gordon,” which he provides without asking.
He waves his phone at me. “We’ll be there right after work, I’ll text you to remind you.” Then, he stops fully, wraps his left elbow over my side-view mirror and stares at me for a minute. “I really hope you’ll come. I’ll buy you the first round.”
I find myself frozen too, watching his chest heave slightly as he breathes. Time suspends awkwardly until I find myself saying, “Sure. I’ll let you know.”
He smiles, pats the window with his hand and then turns to go. I watch him traverse the parking lot. He waves again when he gets to his car, and I wave back.
Still watching him, I blindly grab for the journal, until his car disappears around the corner.
I unwrap the blue string and pull the notebook out, drop the envelope in the passenger seat and flip through the pages.
The section after my own entry is filled with my favorite sloppy blue penmanship, still avoiding the lines and ignoring the margins.
I close the book partway, debating whether or not to read it now or wait until I get home to dig in.
Who am I kidding? Of course I’ll do both: read it here and again at home—and maybe a third time in-between.
It seems my challenge has been accepted! What I have in front of me is the most open-hearted thing I’ve ever read.
“You ever been afraid of something? Well, that’s me,” the sloppy blue writing reveals from the start. “That’s what no one knows or could ever guess about me. I’m scared to lose everything for a chance at something that just might be better.”
“I’m inspired by your courage to be the real you, William, and so I’m taking you up on your challenge.
To be real. What I wanted was an adventure for you, but you seem to be the one sending me on my own tasks, asking the very questions I’ve been avoiding.
This might just be a dare that you regret, but I’m taking the risk. It’s all because of you.”
I read this paragraph again slowly, out loud to my truck.
I feel like my secret person has become something different.
They are not the all-knowing, powerful creator of tasks in their realm of mystery, but they are just as driven by the adventure as I am, enrobed in the mystery of what the next task will bring for both of us.
I’m moved by my part in this exchange, like I’ve created something unexpected for my secret person, too. My worldview shifts.
“Have you ever had something perfect, but wished it could be more? But the consequence of elevating it could be losing it all? That’s where I am.
Afraid to lose everything if I take action, afraid it can all disappear if I do nothing.
Scared a little. I feel like most people see me as a no-regrets person.
Not like I’m impulsive or reckless, but I hold moments against their value all the time, so I think people would be surprised that, inwardly, I’m tentative and apprehensive about some moments.
It’s something inside I haven’t really shared with anyone, because the sharing might just be the action that could be the end of all that is perfect.
And so I hold that fear internally. Until you.
The courage you’ve demonstrated in being you makes me want to overcome.
I want to share that with you for some reason. ”
I really thought when I got the journal back, whatever was written here would flip me into forensics mode, like I would analyze handwriting and fingerprints and details to try to work out the identity of my secret person, but I am wrong.
I don’t care who this person is, whether I know them in real life or not, or who they might be.
I just feel connected, like we fit together in our strange anonymous way, like we can share something important because we’re the only two people who have this notebook.
I find myself just breathing it in. I’m not trying to fix it for them, or figure it out, or over-analyze things.
I just feel warm inside knowing that we share this part of our lives together.
For several pages, my secret person pours their heart onto the page and I get a glimpse of how the scavenger hunt is changing us.
Both of us. It started out as something simple: send me on a few tasks for fun.
Then, as the tasks have changed, I’ve set myself up to overcome personal challenges to become the truest me possible.
And so have they. In a way, we’ve done this together. But separately.
Ironically, the force that drives us both seems to be the anonymity of our secret relationship. It’s like a place we both feel safe to be ourselves. I’ve never felt more like myself and I don’t want it to stop.
I find myself rubbing my hand over the words, feeling the heart of each syllable in my fingertips, the messy blue scrawl pulsing through my nerve endings until they make their way to my core.
The entry ends with more dead-drop instructions, this time the lost-and-found at the coffee shop where I got my first flat white clue, and a request to relate my experience at being a kid again in the next journal entry.
I drive home with the notebook open in the passenger seat, so I can steal a re-read at stoplights or straightaways, and I plop myself down at the dining table for one last read before grabbing my pen and diving into my story.
Where to start this time? I feel like we’re an a new plane.
The welts on my back sting again in a good way as I replay the events of the park in my head.
I find myself smiling so hard it hurts, and laughing in spite of myself.
Two grown men playing in the park, shoes flying, sockless sprinting, ammo gathering, and grassy wrestling.
I can still feel the thick muscles of Martin’s back against my fingers, the squeeze of his thighs against my core, the electricity of his arm in my side.
The memory resides in my body and travels up my spine in a way I can’t express.
Or shouldn’t, I guess, in a letter written to my secret person. Or even to myself, for that matter.