A Triumph by Jennifer Griffin

The ghost of contact haunted her skin, but it was getting harder and harder to call up a distinct image of him. Amanda pulled open the bottom dresser drawer and lightly ran her fingers over the cream-colored wool of a turtleneck sweater she hadn’t worn in years. Once she had done this every night before sleep, but time had softened the need—or changed it. Lifting the sweater out, she brought it up to her face and breathed in. There it was: the music, the movement, the light. There was a neatly folded piece of paper as well, which she took out and laid beside her. They helped, protected the memories from the gentle erosion of time, but at the same time they weren’t enough; none of it, in fact, was enough.

She treasured her dreams of him, rare things that they were. In every one he turned away from her, and the peculiar persistence of it made her wonder if, in its sleep-state, her mind was reaching across half a continent and an ocean to touch his.“Does he even remember me?” she whispered.

She hoped he did.

“Do I love him?”

She didn’t know. Infatuations were thing of the moment, like fruit flies; she didn’t know of any fruit flies capable of living for a year. Love, on the other hand, was something more—love was the muse of God. But were a name, a smile, a touch, some words and a couple of torch-lit, whirlwind hours enough for that?

The piece of paper whispered as she unfolded it. She read the memories of the train ride and the ceilidh dance, and the rush of emotions gutted her with the same violence. A year—a year between then and now…She bowed her head into her hands and muttered, “God, what’s wrong with me? I can’t go on like this. It’s sick—twisted.” She looked up, blindly staring at the paper, the sweater. She suddenly stood up, mementos in hand, walked over to her desk and dug out anotebook and pencil. She had tried this nine months ago and been completely unsuccessful. Now it would be different, because—because she needed it to be.

She stared at the letter in her hand and then made a noise low in her throat, closing her eyes to block out the sight of it. This had been going on for the past hour; if she had had daisies to pluck, the living room floor would have been littered with petals. It was ready. His address glared at her on the white paper of the envelope, while the writing it contained had a painful grip on her insides. Opening her eyes, she stood up and walked to the window. The sun was rising, which meant the minute when the post office opened was inching closer and closer. Maybe it was the lack of sleep that was making this so difficult. An image floated in her mind of a four-year old girl refusing to play the silly run-jump-play-learn games of preschool because they would make her look foolish. Her life so far had been faithful to that precedent. It wasn’t the lack of sleep; it was the same thing it had always been. It was the thing that had made her push away Bryan and Tim and Chris and Eric and him, every guy she had ever liked. It was the reason why she was alone, why she had never had a romantic relationship the whole of her young life. What if her laughed at her? What if he thought she was crazy, or worse, pathetic? She bit her lip and groaned softly. Putting the envelope on top of the nearby TV, she picked up the sweater and buried her face in it. The memories in it were all red and orange and golden.

From her seat on the train she watched him get on at Waverley Station just before it left, a young man who had the competent look of one who enjoyed the outdoors. He stood by the doors, for all the seats had already been taken, gripping one of the poles of the luggage hold as the train swayed slightly down the tracks. She looked at him for a minute or two longer, then turned her gaze away, to the outskirts of Edinburgh. But as the outskirts of Edinburgh turned into the fields and pastures of Scotland, then the Forth Bridge, her eyes returned to him, once, twice, each time lasting mere seconds as she studied the lines of his face.

Her hands tightened until she could feel the wool fibers rub against each other. The ghost was burning in her skin. She looked at the envelope and smiled softly. “Even if he did think I was pathetic, it’s not as if we would ever see each other,” she murmured to herself. But he’d still think that I was pathetic. The envelope was cool in her hands, but as her fingers slid across his name, the writing felt warm.

He sat down after the Kirkcaldy stop left the seat beside her empty. She pressed as close against the side of the train as the laws of physics would allow and looked out the window. Closing her eyes to feign sleep, she focused on the nerve endings closest to him and thought she could feel the heat of his body.

The rest of the train ride, about an hour, passed slowly. A few minutes before her stop, she opened her eyes, took a deep but inaudible breath and quietly said, “Excuse me.” He looked at her, clearly startled, and she was too slow; their gazes met. He had hazel eyes, more pale green than brown. I can’t breathe…I can’t breathe! She glanced away and repeated her request.

Careful to not touch as she slid past him, she murmured a thank you. God…Her heart was still pounding. She brought her hand to the base of her throat, willing the adrenaline to dissipate, and her purse slid off her shoulder. She let go of the hand rail next to the door to pull it back up her arm just as the train started to slow. Thrown off balance, she staggered into a pair of warm hands, one at her waist, the other on her arm.

“You okay?” asked a male voice.

She straightened, but the hands remained on her for a couple seconds longer than necessary. “I am. Thanks,” she said, glancing up at his face. He was smiling at her, a smile that somehow winnowed past the frantically beating heart and the constricted lungs to a call a smile, small and hesitant, to her own lips.

There was a post office only a couple blocks from her apartment, but there was another one that involved a fifteen-minute bus ride and a long walk downtown. She chose the latter.

She was wearing the sweater, and the envelope was in her hands. On the bus her eyes blindly watched the greys, browns, tans and blacks of early spring slide by her window. There was a young man a seat away whose profile looked like his.

During the short bus ride from the train station to St. Andrews, they talked. She told him that she was studying for a semester at the university, and he told her that he was studying marine biology there. He asked where she was from in the States—her accent had given her away—and she learned that he was from Lancaster. Each time he smiled there was a visceral, aching rush that swept from her pelvis to her throat. Soon the bus would stop, and they would go their separate ways, but she couldn’t think of anything to say to keep him longer; she had no experience with this, absolutely none whatsoever.

When the inevitable happened, and the bus left them with an exhalation of oily exhaust, she looked at her hands, feeling his gaze on her head as if it was a hand, sliding gently from the crown to bury itself in her hair.

“Well,” she murmured, glancing up at him, “It was nice to meet you, Jon.” Her feet carried her a couple steps back, away.

And just as she turned, he said, “See you later, Amanda.”

Downtown was teeming with people, as usual, none of whom she noticed as she walked to the post office. The red and orange and golden memories floated up from the sweater like perfume and were breathed in through her nose and mouth. He had indeed seen her again, at a ceilidh dance in the courtyard of St. Andrews castle, which was little more than a shell perched on the cliffs.

The music spun them about, their feet gliding over the grass, their torch-lit shadows flitting like birds along the ruined walls. The feel of his hand on her waist was flowing by osmosis through her skin to dissolve her bones. When their hips brushed, and his hand slid to the small of her back, the sensation unraveled her muscles.

The song spun to an end, as did they, and she, weak with laughter, dizzy from the dance, briefly pressed her forehead against his shoulder. Then she felt his hand on her back, gently pressing her closer. It had been so hard to think ever since he had asked her to dance over four songs ago, but now it was impossible. The ability to think meant that you were human, so where did that leave her?

They looked at each other. She was a horse in a bird’s world, staring up into trees she wasn’t built to inhabit. She would fall and break all the bones in her body, and they would have to put her down. And he would sit high above her, just smiling pityingly…She pulled away, out of arm’s reach.

There had been other moments like that, moments when she would pass him on the street and pretend to be interested in something else. Then there had come that night at the pub, the last time she had seen him.

She swirled the shot of Bailey’s around in the glass, no longer listening to her friend, who—she was sure—was too enamored of the Brit next to her to even notice. There was talking and laughter everywhere, university students enjoying a Friday night out, and she smiled as she watched them. One of the guys from her hall was hugging and kissing everyone near him, his shirt undone to reveal the hot-pink bikini he was wearing underneath. A rush of cool, fresh air pulled her gaze away from him, and she looked towards the door to see him come in with a couple others. The glass, spun so gracefully before, was almost tipped over by her suddenly clumsy fingers.

“Amanda?” her friend asked, reaching out to lightly touch her arm, “Are you all right?”

He was looking right at her, and in a rare moment of clarity, she understood what she saw in his face. The shining, heady connection, there since the moment they had first touched on the train, danced across her bones like flames on the branches of a tree. All it would take was a smile, and she would have him. A simple smile, not such a hard thing to do…

“Amanda?”

Her friend’s voice was a dousing of cold water, and she looked away, down at the glass on the table. No longer sure of anything—God, what if it was just her wanting that she had heard in his voice and seen in his face?—she smiled at her friend and said, “I’m fine, but I think I’m going to go back to my room.”

“What?”

She stood up, smiled a goodnight and before her friend could say anything else or Jon could make his way through the crowd to her, left through the nearby backdoor, out onto the dark street, where there was only the wind and the rumblings of the sea.

She was only a block away from the post office, her steps slowing until they stopped completely a couple yards away from the door. She could feel the blood surging through the arteries and veins in her skull. She was breathing as if someone had a gun pointed at her. I’m going to have a heart attack over a letter! I won’t do this—I won’t be a coward, not again.

One, two, three steps forward, almost there. She wasn’t thinking anymore. Her hand reached out, pulled the door open, and the chime from the attached bell washed noiselessly into her ears. There were no customers but her, thank God.

“Hello, miss. May I help you?”

She looked at the middle-aged man behind the counter, unable to focus on him.

“Are you all right?”

She placed the letter between them and cleared her throat. “Yes—.” Her voice stumbled over the lilt of the “y”. It was the point of no return. “I would like to mail this to Great Britain, please.”

* * *

There was a lot in his postbox today, most of which turned out to be trash as he glanced through it—flyers for several university events, a Mastercard offer, cell phone promotions.

“Anything good?” his friend asked.

He shook his head, passing over yet another advertisement for drinks at the Student Union on Special Thursday. Beneath that was an envelope addressed to him in small, exact handwriting. With a little frown he ran his fingers over the postage and turned it over. There was an address on the back, but no name.

“America?” his friend queried, noticing the stamp of the U.S. flag.

Carefully tearing open the envelope, he moved a little away from his friend. There was a piece of notebook paper inside, which he pulled out and unfolded. It was only a couple of paragraphs, written in the same compact hand as the addresses on the envelope, but it was a long moment before he looked up from the letter.

Dear Jon,

I like to think that you remember me, but perhaps you don’t. My name is Amanda. We met just over a year ago when I was studying for a semester at St. Andrews. It was on the train from Edinburgh, then later at the castle ceilidh dance. You’re no doubt wondering why in the world I would be writing to you, and I’ll try my best to explain.

I fell for you that day on the train, and it’s still there, that feeling, over a year later. My actions towards the end, especially that night at the pub, when I practically ran out the backdoor, no doubt made you think that I didn’t like you at all, which couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve done that before, pulled away from guys I’ve liked—it’s a glorious tradition for me. My only explanation is fear, fear that I might suddenly look ridiculous in your eyes and as a result you just couldn’t like me, which would hurt far more than pulling away from you because I had let you get so close. Or, that I had mistaken your liking, and that I might be pushing myself into where I wasn’t wanted. Absolutely no logic to such thoughts, but there it is. I have never done this before, never told a guy that I liked him, but there is something special about you—you’ve stuck with me. Also, I’m tired of being afraid. The glorious tradition is coming to an end.

This is a confession and, more than anything else, an apology. I’m sorry if I caused you any hurt, anger or confusion—I certainly didn’t want to.

-Amanda