With you, Sky.
No, I’m not writing you asking you to marry me.
I’m just saying that, because of you, I can picture myself getting married now.
I no longer have Rock Block.
And, if it happened to be to you, well, I can’t think of anyone else I would rather it be.
Let’s talk about the other side of things with you that I’ve felt, Sky.
Let’s talk about how I like being bad with you.
You bring out something in me that’s just…I don’t know where it comes from.
You make me want to tear your dresses off for no particular reason and ravage you like a wild beast.
You make me fantasize about pinning you down onto a table facedown, and licking your clit and fucking you, bent over, until you succumb to my will. The will of pleasure.
I love making you reach that point that just pushes you over the edge and you Have. To. Scream. And come.
Sky, it’s something about you. Your juices…I want to experience them.
I know how this sounds. I know it’s feral and sexual. But it’s also symbolic for how I feel about you as a person. I want to squeeze out all the pulp from you and see what remains. To know you inside and out is to know the world. And I want you to do the same with me.
And then, yeah getting back to the dirty bits. When you’re nice and wet…I want to fuck you hard and deep and feel you pulse all around me.
I want to fuck you like a dirty whore, call you names that give you pause, fuck you so good and get so crazy that when it’s over, we look at each other and go ‘Holy shit, what the fuck was that?’
And then you lay your head on my chest, we joke, and we talk about how lucky we are to be alive in the modern day, where you can be my whore and my love and we can roll that into one. None of this Madonna/whore complex stuff that you learned in your sexuality class. I want you to be my everything.
And we’ll hate each other sometimes—what kind of relationship would it be if it were always simple and easy?—but you’d know that you’ve shown me that I can fall in love with my best friend.
Really, Sky, you’ve taught me what it is to feel love.
Why you?
Why now?
Why, after all the theatre we’ve put on, am I feeling these real feelings?
I don’t know, Sky.
All I know is that when I see you at the end of a long day, when we go a few days without having an in-depth chat…and yes, touching you…
I feel like something’s missing in me, deep in me.
Maybe that’s too far.
Because love should never be about ‘completing each other.’
Yet I’m complete, and then when you’re here I’m enhanced.
We’re enhanced.
The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.
You are a woman of so many paradoxes, Sky.
You are an adventure for me, and also a resting place.
You’re the one I want to angry-fuck, facedown, into the mattress, spank and lick and slap and fuck so hard it’s too much for you when you feel my cock touch far inside you.
(Isn’t it great that I’m just a little too big for you?)
I want that. And then I want to go on new adventures with you. Go on Road trips. Find new places that neither of us have ever been that we can explore together. And explore more of each others’ inner worlds, too.
I never wanted an exclusive relationship before, because I never knew what it was like to love someone in a way that you actually enjoyed waiting for them.
I enjoy waiting for you, I enjoy being there for you, I enjoy being your rock. I get a fucking high out of being your rock, out of taking care of you. (I’ve got to do something with this stoic demeanor, don’t I?)
As for a list, well, I thought about a list. I never got around to sharing these things—we ran out of time.
I decided I could jot down a few things, for fun.
My list, with you, is everything, Sky.
I’d like to do everything with you.
Watch the sun set on the Mississippi River with you.
Catch you dancing to music in the mirror, when you don’t think I’m watching.
Sky, I love so many things about you.
I could go on and on.
Come with me, to Tampa. There’s good work there in international development. It could be very fun for you.
You might like it.
We’ll try this out. We’ll do things with the list…
What do you say?
I look at the closing greetings I’ve crossed out:
Love,
Your Friend,
Your Best Friend,
Luke
It doesn’t feel like it matters anymore.
Back at the hotel, I gather my things, and reread the letter one more time.
I think about tossing it out.
Bearing your soul to a woman is overrated.
Sky and I just aren’t meant to be.
Not in this lifetime, at least.
She has her life to live, and I have mine.
I’ve never been that emo guy, but William Butler Yeats was right.
You learn how to love someone, and then they go away. A man’s not meant to be with their true love.
I grin though, as I walk out of the hotel with my bags and into the sunny Florida weather.
I’m happy for her, no matter where she ends up. As long as she’s happy.
I’ll never be the same man. She’s changed me forever, for the better.
And isn’t that love?
Epilogue - Luke
Three years later
“I’ll have another Yuengling,” I say to the bartender. “And a whisky.”
Forrester’s Bar is a local dive spot just up the road from the luxury condo my agent told me I needed to move to this winter in D.C. For security purposes.
I pull my black cap low and keep my green hood half-pulled over my head as the bartender Mitch slides me both of my drinks nonchalantly. I come here all the time, and I like it because Mitch doesn’t make a big deal about me coming in here, just lets me have my own space to decompress after games. Forrester’s is the last place you’d expect to find baseball’s highest paid pitcher on a Tuesday night.
It’s a low key bar, and Chicago is playing the late night game on TV tonight, so I space out and watch Jake Napleton on the mound.
“Hi, Luke Rutledge?” a female voice asks me. I take a swallow of my beer, and slowly turn my head toward her.
She’s a cute, black haired girl in jeans and a tight blouse. Probably a D.C. college girl—or maybe an intern. I offer her an obligatory smile.
“Luke Rutledge? I’ve never heard of him.”
“Oh come on.” She rolls her eyes playfully. “Have one drink with me. I won’t bite you. Unless you’re into that?” She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively, turns her mouth down in an exaggerated frown, and saddles up to the bar seat next to me.
I refrain from massaging my temple.
Once when I was little, I wanted to be a famous baseball player. I told this to my dad, and he told me that fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Famous people have problems too, he said. Actually they have more than the rest of us because their lives are more complicated.
They’ve got all the same problems as any man or woman, and they can’t just go to the bar and have a drink in peace, he said.