Childhood Crushes

Chapter Fourty-Two - Olive Garden

I shook my head, coming back to the present, and opened the book right away, sliding the box and tape off the bed with my feet. When I opened it to the first page, I felt my eyes water once again. Written on the first page, next to the title, was:

My Dearest Annabelle,

"Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost,
No birth, identity, form--no object of the world.
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing;
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain.
Ample are time and space--ample the fields of Nature.
The body, sluggish, aged, cold--the embers left from earlier fires,
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again;
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual;
To frozen clods ever the spring's invisible law returns,
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn"

Love,

Your Father

Joyfull tears crept down my face, reading my favorite poem again and again. It's been my favorite since he read me this book. I remember him getting lost in the poem, just like I had, and he sounded like a different man. I knew my daddy was smart, and a kind man, but he sounded wiser; like he had lived through everything Noah Calhoun had. I grinned once more before going to the very first page.

The large yellow sun coasted through the bright blue sky, moving from the east to the west within moments it seemed. I lost myself somewhere in the worn pages of this book, at some point kicking off my shoes and laying on my stomach, grinning wildly to myself at times and tearing up at others. I never finished the movie with my mom, and I never finished the book with my dad. Now the ending was up to me, and I had to finish it and find out for myself. Daddy refused to tell me the end, but I was glad he wouldn't.

Some things just need to be left a mystery, for now at least.

When I got to the part where Allie went back to Noah, and they...got together, I laughed out loud when I saw the Post It note stuck to it, saying 'not until you're 50 years old!' I remembered Dad coming to that part as we read together and clearing his throat nervously. "We'll just skip this part for now. Maybe after you're married...or after I'm dead and won't know a thing."

I took off the Post It note to read the page, laughing even if it was the most serious thing you could read, just because of the memories. Once I finished, I put the note back.

"What's so funny?" A voice asked from the doorway.

I whipped around, noticing it sounded nothing like Mellisa, and saw a tall, lean, blonde man standing in the doorway, easy, relaxed, not noticing he didn't belong there. With one leg crossed over the other, he grinned smoothly at me. I sat up, putting a bookmark in my book before setting it down. "Hey, Craig."

"How are you, Miss Annabelle?" He asked.

"No need to add the 'Miss', just sit." I laughed. He nodded, accepting my invitation and sat down in my desk chair across the room. I looked over to Mellisa's bed, but saw she wasn't there. She must have left while I was reading. Wow, I was really into that book.

"What are you reading?" Craig's voice called, lurring me to look back at him.

I shrugged, "Just The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. It's the best book I've ever read...my dad sent it to me this morning, it's kind of our book. We spent last summer reading it together. Every night we'd sit in his recliner and he would read it to me...and I don't know why I'm telling you all this, you don't really care." I ran a nervous hand through my hair, realizing I was rambling.