Page 33 of Jake and Conner
"Are you trying to get me drunk?" I asked.
"I don't think I have to," he gave back, some of his usual confidence returning to his voice.
"No?"
"Nope." Forgetting about his burger, Jake got something else from his bag and sat next to me on the couch.
Curiously, I peered at what he was holding in his hands. It almost looked like... some sort of book? It wasn't unusual for him to gift me books, so I didn't think too much of it until he gave it to me and I noticed that the cover was a crude drawing and the author listed was Jake. I turned it over in my hands. "What is this?"
"That's me and you," Jake said, pointing at the stick-figures on the covers, one of whom had red hair. They were standing next to each other, holding hands and smiling. Above them, written in crayon, it said, 'Jake + Conner'.
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Conner
"It's a scrapbook," Jake pointed out. "I spent all night on it so you'd better tell me how amazing that drawing is."
He wasn't being serious, of course, but I praised him anyway. "It's a very good drawing." I struggled to keep a straight face as I said that. It was a sweet idea, though, the scrapbook. It was so very like Jake. I could just so imagine him being struck by this idea out of the blue and deciding that he just had to, even if he had only one day to get it done.
"Open it," Jake said as if he just couldn't wait for me to take a look at his creation.
"Okay. Let's see." I expected photographs when I opened the scrapbook--and there were photographs--but it wasn't only that.
On the first page, there was a red piece of string. It was only when I tried to turn the page that I noticed it spread to the one, and the one after that. I shot Jake a questioning look.
"You were reading a book once, remember?" he told me. "About how there's a red string that connects two people."
Oh, was that what this was supposed to signify? I traced a finger along the coarse material of the string. It was kind of cheesy, but also sweet.
"Look," Jake said, pointing to something on the second page. "That's from when we snuck into the movie theater to watch that horror flick."
I looked at the movie ticket. It wasn't for the movie we'd actually seen. We'd purchased tickets for a PG-13 rated movie and then went into the other cinema, where the horror movie was playing. A fool proof method, or so Jake had said. I'd seen through his bravado, though. He'd been just as nervous about getting caught as I was. I felt myself smile. It was a good memory. We'd laughed about it all night.
Below the movie ticket, there was a picture of a set of snow angels we'd made only a few weeks later, celebrating the first snow of the year. Jake always got excited when it started to snow. I'd never had much of an appreciation for the cold white stuff that led to ice that made walking difficult, but now, watching the first snowfall of the year always made me smile if only because I knew it made Jake happy.
Turning the pages of the scrap book, I found more things that reminded me of good times. There was a picture of the gingerbread phone box Jake had given me for Christmas one year, a picture of teenage Jake all covered in flour--"My Uncle snapped that one," Jake explained--dried mistletoe leaves, a postcard I'd sent Jake when I went to Los Angeles with my family that one summer in high school. Scattered among all the photographs of birthday parties and snowmen and shared summer days in the mountains, Jake's tree house or our backyards, there were post-it notes with little messages I'd left in Jake's locker at school, an unused Band-Aid with Batman on it, and the wrapper of an ice cream cone from an ice cream parlor that had long since changed its name.
"I had no idea you kept all this stuff," I muttered, leafing through the book. There were so many things, I had no idea what to focus my attention on first. Just then, I was looking at another stick figure drawing Jake had made of us. It showed us standing in front of this very cabin, Jake wearing a graduate cap on his hat. I knew immediately what moment of our lives he wanted me to remember. As if I could ever forget. He wanted me to think of the night before he'd left for college. We'd met here and... Well, suffice to say that was the first time we'd needed condoms. Also the first time I'd thought that going into heat wasn't all bad. Sharing that with Jake had been my parting gift to him.
"The long-distance thing was hard," Jake said from his position on the couch next to me. He was studying the drawing too, but I could tell that in his mind's eye, he was seeing something else.
"It was," I agreed. We'd started fighting a lot during that time. It wasn't just the distance, though. We'd both started living our own lives and what we wanted and expected of each other didn't always line up. Not being able to meet much only contributed to our struggles.
"We got through it, though."
I nodded, my eyes scanning the next page. Jake had stuck plane tickets in the scrapbook. A sticker of the Skype logo. A picture of a stash of European candy he'd brought back for me. Somehow, I felt nostalgic even for these times. Being apart for so long only made each time we reconnected that much sweeter.
We had our first full-blown fight one spring when Jake returned to Oceanport and I couldn't make the trip. Looking back now, I couldn't even remember what had kept me at college. Maybe exams. Maybe a lack of planning on Jake's part. Our school schedules didn't always line up. In the end, it didn't matter. As Jake said, we got through it.
"Are you trying to remind me of how good we were?" I asked, skipping ahead a few pages. It was a nice idea, really, but this was all in the past, and I wasn't sure how to feel about it. This book was tugging on my heart, yes, but it was painful.
"I know what you're thinking," Jake said.
"Yeah?"
"That there's no point in getting stuck in the past." He reached over and turned a few more pages for me. "It's not all about the past."
"Oh?" I studied the page Jake had opened for me. It said 'Part Two' in the upper left corner in red crayon.
