“No, I mean...” He lets out a frustrated huff. “Being with you isn’t about adding some shiny trophy to my collection. It means a lot more than that to me. Despite your terrible taste in music and, apparently, poetry, I happen to really like you, Mill.”
“Oh.” Can your heart beat strong enough to bruise your breastbone? Because my chest aches all of a sudden. “I happen to really like you too,” I say. And I do. I’m kind of amazed actually at just how much. If someone asked me to describe Hollis Hollenbeck after our interaction at the airport, the word “likeable” wouldn’t have been within the first hundred adjectives that sprung to mind. Maybe it’s because he makes me feel like my blood has turned to rocket fuel whenever his lips meet my skin, or because he doesn’t try to argue or manipulate me out of my weirdness. In fact, he seems to look for ways to make me more comfortable init. And I like him so much right now that it feels wrong that there was ever a time—especially one so recent—when I barely knew him.
“Okay then,” he says, and flips open his notebook. “Glad that’s settled. Back to work.” He begins writing, the point of his pen bursting the bubble of emotional intimacy forming around us before it grows too big and we get carried away.
Key West, Florida
July 1945
Being in a proper bed with Elsie felt like an incredible indulgence after months of making do with stolen moments on the beach and pressed against each other on narrow cots.
“I can’t believe you spent so much money on this place,” Rose said for the third time since they had arrived at the bungalow Elsie rented them downtown for the long weekend. “It’s too much.”
Elsie kissed Rose’s shoulder. “Oh Rosie, don’t fuss. Let me spoil you for your birthday.”
“It’s not even until next week.”
“Well, this is when we could both get away from base. Your birthday celebration will just have to last for the next seven days. Is that really such a hardship?”
Elsie slid out of the bed, as graceful in her nakedness as she was swimming in the ocean. Rose watched the way the sun played on her tanned skin and turned her hair into strands of gold. She’d only seen Elsie completely nude one other time before, on New Year’s at Boca Chica Beach. They’d abandoned any attempt atcaution that night, telling themselves that anyone who might stumble upon them at such an hour would likely be too soused to notice. That was Elsie at night, though, the moonlight emphasizing shadows instead of highlighting all of the places she glowed. So distracted by the way the light streaming through the window haloed Elsie’s subtle curves, Rose barely noticed the small package in her hands when her lover returned to the bed.
“Els, what is this? You’ve already spent so much—”
“Happy birthday, darlin’,” she cut her off. “Open it.”
Rose made a show of peeling back the brown paper wrapping, revealing a white rectangular box with an elaborate blackRembossed on the center of the lid. “Is this my own candy stash?” she asked with a grin. “I hope not. I much prefer having the excuse to come visit yours.”
Elsie bit her lip as Rose lifted the box’s lid. “Do you like it?”
Rose gazed down upon a sheet of stationery—a stack of it, she assumed based on the depth of the box. In the top-left corner was a watercolor illustration of a pigeon holding a red rosebud in its beak.
“It’s beautiful. How did you find something like this?” Rose asked.
Elsie shifted beside her, oddly nervous. “I had it made. One of the other nurses is dating an artist who lives beside Pepe’s on Caroline Street.”
“It’s beautiful,” Rose repeated, her fingertips sweeping over the image.
“They’re saying the war will end soon now that Germany’s surrendered. I hope when we go our separate ways, you’ll still send me a pigeon on occasion.”
The reminder that their time was limited—and that Elsie hadunilaterally proclaimed it so—tugged at Rose’s nerves. Bitterness twinged with guilt made the secret she had been keeping for the past week spill from her mouth. “Dickie’s tour of duty ends next month. He decided he’s going to begin school in the fall. In Chicago. He’s asked me to marry him as soon as the war is over and move there with him.”
It was clear that Elsie’s responding smile was an act, but her insistence on this mask of happiness only heightened Rose’s frustration. Some foolish part of her thought that Elsie would change her mind about spending their lives together once the risk of losing her became real. Yet Elsie threaded her fingers into the hair above Rose’s ears, cradling her head in her hands. She brought her lips to her forehead for a long, gentle kiss. “That’s wonderful news. I wish you both all the happiness in the world.”
“How can you say that?” Rose snapped, pulling away from her. “How can you sit there and condone me marrying someone else? Unless you never really—”
“Don’t.Don’t you say it, Rose McIntyre. Don’t you eventhinkabout saying it.” Elsie’s face crumpled, pain flashing in her deep brown eyes. “Knowing I’m going to have to let you go... I feel like I’m dying the world’s slowest death. My desire to survive fades a little each time I touch you, but I can’t stop, even though I know one day—one day soon—there will be nothing left of me. But I’ll be able to go on as long as I know you are happy. So please, Rosie, give me that one small consolation. Promise me you’ll try to be happy with Dickie. Forget about me if it makes it any easier. Just forget—”
Rose’s lips crashed into Elsie’s with silencing hardness. “How dare you. How dare you suggest I forget you. I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” she muttered against the smooth skin of Elsie’s jaw.
As a girl, Rose had always imagined true love as something that would open the world so wide its spine would crack with the abundance of possibility, and she was furious to find that it instead seemed to be nothing but an illusion that she had any freedom at all.
“Even if you aren’t brave enough to let me choose you, you can’t stop me from loving you every single day of my life.” Rose kissed Elsie one last time, then stared into her eyes as she delivered her parting shot. “But as much as I love you, I resent you more right now.”
She climbed out of the bed and collected her clothes, hoping Elsie would stop her from leaving and returning to base. Instead, when she opened the bungalow’s front door, Elsie called out, “I’d rather you resent me now than in ten years, when you realize that the things I can’t give you are the ones you truly want after all.”
And those were the last words between them until a single sheet of the custom stationery arrived, trifolded in an envelope addressed to Ms. Elsie Brown, in September 1946, announcing the birth of Richard Wayne Nash Jr.
15
