When You Think of Me

Chapter One — Now

It had been years since I’d thought about him, but all it took was three chords on a static‑blurred FM station and I was seventeen again, sunburned and weightless.

The summer air was still thick in Westlake, the kind that made the horizon ripple and smelled like cut grass and diesel from passing trucks. My hand rested on the steering wheel, thumb tapping without thinking to a song I told myself I’d forgotten. But my body remembered. My heart remembered.

I should’ve changed the station. I didn’t.

The road curled toward the lake, just like it always had — the cracked asphalt still patched in the same places, the same sagging fence posts swallowed by kudzu. I slowed, more from muscle memory than necessity, and my gaze caught the turnoff to Miller’s Point. I hadn’t been down there in a decade. The dock was probably rotting now. The paint on the boathouse would be nothing but ghosts of white.

But I could still see us there — barefoot, toes brushing the water, that song floating out of his truck’s open windows. His hand warm on the small of my back, his laugh low and certain, like we had all the time in the world.

The chorus swelled, and suddenly my throat was tight. I reached for the volume knob, but not fast enough to miss the last line — the one that felt like it had been written for me alone.

I pulled into my mother’s driveway with the music still spinning in my head, headlights sweeping over the porch where my whole life used to fit. Somewhere inside, in a cardboard box that had waited too long, a folded, unsent letter was waiting for me.

Chapter Two — Then

The first time I saw him, it was too hot for anything but trouble.

The sun had baked the bleachers to a slow burn, the aluminum rails so warm they left faint red lines along my thighs through my cut‑offs. Dust curled off the infield with every step the boys took, turning the air gold. I’d only gone because Anna swore we needed to “do something” before we turned into ghosts of our own small town.

He was on third base, squinting against the light, a smile breaking easy across his face like the game was his to lose or win and he didn’t much care which. When the ball cracked off the bat, he moved—quick, confident—and a cheer went up from somewhere behind me.

Anna was talking, but her words blurred under the hum of cicadas and the rush in my ears. He slid into home in a cloud of grit, popping up with his cap askew, eyes scanning the stands.

I told myself he wasn’t looking for me.

Later, at Miller’s Point, the lake carried the smell of pine and motor oil. The boards of the dock flexed under our feet, water lapping in the shadow of the boathouse. He dropped his Coke bottle cap in the space between the planks and grinned like he’d just given me some secret I didn’t yet know how to keep.

“You from around here?” he asked, and the question felt bigger than geography.

By the time his truck’s radio started spinning that song, the one I’d pretend not to know later, it already felt like the answer was yes.

Chapter Three — Now

The letter was where I’d left it, though I couldn’t have told you when that was. The box sat on the top shelf of the hall closet, wedged between a stack of faded field guides and the winter scarves my mother never remembered to use.

It was just a plain white envelope — no return address, my name written in the careful block print he’d used for things that mattered. The paper had softened at the corners, the glue along the flap curling loose, like it was tired of keeping secrets.

I carried it to the kitchen table and set it down, the way you might set down something alive, something you weren’t sure would bite. The late‑afternoon sun slid across the linoleum, catching on the chipped edge of the sugar bowl, turning the steam off my tea into gold.

If I opened it now, I’d know.

If I didn’t, I could keep pretending the words inside were exactly what I wanted them to be.

Outside, the crickets had started up early, a thin chorus against the still‑heavy air. It sounded almost like that night at the Point — not quite, but close enough to make my chest tighten.

My fingers found the flap. The paper made a sound like a sigh.

Chapter Four — Then

It was late enough that the lake had gone black, swallowing the last streaks of daylight. The air was warm but restless, the kind of summer night where you could smell rain before you felt it.

We were at the end of the dock, knees brushing, a little too aware of how close we were. His truck sat up on the bluff, headlights off, the radio down low so the music floated just enough to blur with the cricket-song.

He had that restless energy, rolling the bottle cap between his palms, starting sentences he didn’t finish.

“Tomorrow,” he said finally, and his voice had an edge I couldn’t read. “I’ve got something I need to… put down. Before it gets too late.”

I laughed softly, trying to make light of it. “Put it down, like a sick dog?”

“Like something worth keeping,” he said. Then he looked at me in a way that made the night tilt.

Somewhere across the lake, a screen door banged. The sound echoed, faded. He pulled a folded sheet of paper from his back pocket, smoothed it against his knee.

“I’ll give it to you when it’s ready.”

I didn’t know whether to be nervous or glad. But I remember thinking — even if I never saw it, I’d always wonder what it said.

The first raindrop hit the dock between us, darkening the wood. We didn’t move.

Chapter Five — Now

The paper inside was folded twice, neat and deliberate, like he’d pressed each crease with his thumb. I slid it free, the way you’d lift something fragile from a box in an attic, afraid it might crumble if you touched it wrong.

His handwriting hadn’t changed. The same squared‑off letters, the same little hook on every “y.” Just seeing it was enough to drop me straight back to the lake, to the wet cedar smell of the dock, to the sound of the rain before it broke.

Halfway through the first line, my vision blurred.

It wasn’t the words yet — it was knowing they’d been meant for me when my skin was still sun‑warmed and my future was still wide open.

Somewhere outside, a car passed, tires hissing against the pavement, pulling me up for air. My thumb hovered at the fold, ready to open it completely.

But I didn’t.

Not yet.

I set the page down, palm flat over the ink, and sat there in the kitchen, feeling the past like a storm massing at the edge of town.

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