The Waiting Game

The Sixth Letter

He asked me to come here.

I looked up, squinting into the sun. It was the time of day where the sun hadn’t quite made it far enough into the sky so the light was partially cut off by the buildings, reflecting off of it and using it to send its rays throughout the area. I looked steadily at the old building before me, a building that had once been so many things but was now a private liberal arts college four hours away from my home, set in a historic city in the middle of the Spanish Quarter. I glanced around at the tourists admiring the gates, the spires, the history all composed in one place.

They were looking at the building with awe, finding inspiration in the age of the structure. I was looking at it with a sinking feeling of fear in my chest, knowing who I would find inside of it.

It felt like it took the weight of the world, but I pushed myself forward.

I stepped past the tourists snapping pictures of the statue of Henry Flagler, the ones standing in the middle of the courtyard and gazing around in wonder at the fountain bubbling in the middle, at the life that continued to go on at the small college even during the summer months. Sometimes a student slipped from the locked doors of the dorms and bypassed the tourists, used to their constant presence outside of the place where they sometimes called home. I wondered how surreal that would be, knowing that the place you live is one of the reasons that people come to visit the city around you.

A city that constantly breathes life.

I glanced up at the architecture, having seen it all before. About two months ago, I had been here with him. Now, I would forever return to this place by myself, wondering where it all went wrong.

Every step my feet took felt like my feet were sinking into the ground, the movement growing harder and harder. I pushed myself forward, ducking through the front doors of the college.

I started over to a desk behind a set of glass where I knew security was centered out of. One of the officers was sitting there now, lounging in a desk chair and lazily watching the tourists milling about in the only part of the college where they were allowed entrance. His eyes turned to me as I made my way to him, feeling like I was underwater.

He straightened up, smiling at me. Maybe he thought I was a student. It didn’t matter to me.

“I have a question,” I said.

The man, probably in his thirties with an unshaved face, smiled kindly at me. His simple kindness knocked me back a little. I hadn’t had anyone look at me like that in over a month now. “What can I do for you?”

“I was wondering . . . I have to get in touch with someone in Lewis House, and I know girls aren’t allowed inside, so . . . I was wondering how I would go about that.”

“I’ll walk you over and help you find the RA,” he immediately offered, springing to his feet. He grabbed his keys and told me, “It’s pretty uneventful around here in the summer. Especially since classes officially ended yesterday.”

“I imagine,” I commented, trying to hide my nerves. He walked around and into the hallway with me, taking me aback by how tall he was compared to me. I tilted my head to look up at him as he guided me down a set of stairs off to the side of the front hall, leading me to a breezeway in between buildings and underneath of what I knew was the dining hall. We broke into the sunny air, crossing in front of Kenan Hall, the main building of classrooms and heading toward Valencia, Lewis House in sight. I had always admired how small the campus was, how close everything was. It was one of the things I loved about this campus when we came up here last.

There weren’t a million memories of him here, even though we had spent a day prowling this campus with a third party, making jokes and doing questionable things and just being teenagers. It didn’t feel like I was walking on coals when I was here.