For All You Have Left

Chapter Three Graduation Night

“Marry me,” he whispers.

His hat and tassel are long gone, but his black gown is still draped around his body.

“What?”

I keep my eyes planted in the black sky and the sea of stars as I lace my fingers in his and make myself comfortable against the metal grooves of the truck bed.

“Marry me,” he says again.

I don’t say anything. I just smile. And out of the corner of my eye, I watch him turn over onto his side and play with the quilt beneath us.

“Logan, remember when we were kids, and I always used to say that even if you were the last girl in the world, I’d never marry you?”

I laugh softly.

“Yeah,” I say, meeting his eyes.

“Logan, I said it, but…”

He pauses, then reaches behind him and pulls out from the darkness a little journal and holds it out to me.

I stare at it for a second before I slowly reach for it. The journal is small, and its edges are worn away, and down the front of its soft, leather cover in big, block letters are the words: KEEP OUT OR DIE!

My eyes dart to his. “Andrew, I don’t have a death wish.”

He rolls his eyes and sighs playfully.

“It was for the little brother. It worked…I think.”

I watch his gaze wander off as he seems to get stuck on a thought. Then, all of a sudden, his eyes snap back to me.

“Go ahead,” he says, gesturing toward the book.

He’s wearing a boyish grin. I keep my stare in his for a second or two longer. Then, I slowly pull back the journal’s faded cover and look back up at him for further instruction.

“Read.” He holds his phone’s light to the book.

I turn the first, blank page and then stop. I stop at the big, sloppy handwriting that scrolls crooked down the next page. There’s a date at the top. It reads September 2, 2000. I take a second to add up the years. He was nine. We were nine.

“Andrew, is this really yours?”

I just can’t bring myself to believe that Andrew Amsel kept a journal. I mean, he had his moments — those moments when I could maybe find it believable that the spirited, little boy I knew when we were nine wrote his thoughts down. But a journal?

I watch his eyelids fall over his eyes as he lowers his head.

“My mom made me keep it. Believe me, I protested. I even tried to flush the first one she gave me down the toilet.”

He stops and laughs.

“I flushed it six times without it going anywhere before she caught me. And in the end, Mom won, and I remember her telling me that someday it would be fun to read it. I didn’t give a shit about that back then, but now that I think about it, I guess she was talking about today — that maybe today, it would be fun to read it.”

I can’t help my eyes from turning suspicious.

“Go on.” He gestures toward the little journal again. “Read it.”

Again, I force my eyes to his little-boy words barely hanging on the page:

There’s this new girl in my class. She lives down the road. Her name is Logan. It’s a funny name. Anyway, she can’t hit a ball. Her hair stinks like flowers, and she’s too tall.

I finish reading over the words and look back up at him with pretend narrowed eyes.

“My hair stinks…like flowers?” I ask.

He laughs.

“And apparently, you could be too tall,” he says.

“There’s still more.” He gestures with his eyes toward the bottom of the page.

I look closer. I wouldn’t have noticed the tiny letters scribbled upside down along the bottom of the page if he wouldn’t have pointed them out.

I turn the journal upside down and squint my eyes to see the writing:

She can hit a ball. Flowers don’t smell that bad, and I wish I was as tall as her.

I peek at him through my eyelashes. I’m pretty sure there’s a questioning look plastered to my face.

“I never wanted to find out what my mom would do to me if she caught me being ugly or worst yet, in a lie,” he explains. “She promised she wouldn’t read it, but you know my mom.”

I shrug my shoulders and then nod my head in agreement. Over the years, Mrs. Amsel has become like a second mom to me, so I do know her. And I know she loves her boys, but I also know she could never resist the temptation to learn more about them if an opportunity in the form of, say, a discarded, open journal presented itself.

“Go on, keep reading,” he says.

I laugh and turn the page. It’s dated the next day, September 3, 2000:

I told Logan today that I wouldn’t marry her even if she was the last girl in the world. She’s annoying, and I hate her.

I suck in a big breath but then notice the tiny letters again at the bottom of the page and quickly train my eyes to them:

I would marry her. She’s not so bad, and I don’t hate her. I don’t hate her at all.

I look up at him again.

“It kind of goes on like that for another hundred pages or so,” he says. “Every once in a while there’s a rant about how much I hate the lunch ladies’ beef stroganoff or how much I wish my brother was a puppy, but for the most part, it’s all about you.”

He stops and chuckles to himself.

“And there are no disclaimers about the stroganoff or the puppy brother either,” he adds. “I wasn’t lying about those things.”

I shake my head and laugh before I catch his stare again. And in that short moment, his eyes seem to have turned serious all of a sudden.

“But there’s one more I want you to see.”

He pulls out another journal. And from what I can tell, this one isn’t so tattered. Its edges aren’t really worn, and it still has a bright-colored cover.

“Yeah, so it’s kind of addicting,” he says. “I’m still a hard-ass. Don’t be fooled.”

I give him a sarcastic look and then carefully take the journal from his hands.

“The last entry,” he says.

I fall into his soft, brown eyes then, and my heart melts a little. I really do love this boy — even more than I did a moment ago. How is it possible to love someone so much and then to love them even more? And it’s not just any love either. It’s that kind of love where you know you would do anything for him, go anywhere, even take on his pain if you could — that kind of love.

I return my attention to the journal and flip to the last page with words on it. It’s dated June 5, 2009.

My eyes quickly venture back to his.

“That’s today,” I say.

I watch him slowly nod his head before I find the words on the page again and follow over them:

I’ve known this girl Logan for nine, miserable years now. Her eyes are too green. Her smile is all wrong. I wouldn’t marry her if she were the last girl in the world. And she still can’t hit a ball.

I playfully narrow my eyes at him before I catch the tiny letters again at the bottom of the page:

I’ve known this girl Logan for nine, happy years now. Her eyes are beautiful. Her smile is perfect. I would marry her every day of my life if I could. And she can still hit a ball — better than I can.

I can feel my heart breaking into a million, little pieces as I follow over his tiny words at the bottom of the page one more time. And I think it’s those same, tiny words that remind me that he’s no longer the little boy I shared a childhood with.

“I know in my heart that you’re the one,” Andrew whispers low and near my ear.

His words are breathy and passionate. And instead of seeing his perfect, boyish grin when I look up, I catch a box. And inside the box is a ring. And above the ring are two longing eyes.

“I know I’m going to spend the rest of my life with you. Please, marry me, Logan Ada Cross.”

I search his eyes for a moment, but only for a moment. That’s all the time I need.

“Okay,” I whisper.

“Wednesday,” he adds, with a hopeful plea in his dark brown eyes.

I press my lips together, until I just can’t hold back a smile any longer.

“Okay,” I whisper.