We were October people. We liked bars that had pool tables and beer that came served in a glass. I liked oranges floating in my amber, and you liked whiskey, neat, sipped slow and between our words. I liked rubbing my nose against yours when you were expecting a kiss. And you liked squishing my nose down—it always made you laugh. I liked sleeping on the same pillow as you, and you liked it when I fell asleep first so you could snatch it away. We were October people, and we liked when the temperature dropped to the sixties and going to gas stations after midnight to buy red wine, bitter and cheap, and drinking it until 4 in the morning watching crap television on your old faded couch.
***
We met in the summer, but we fell in the fall. The first night we met, you took me to a Lithuanian graveyard. You were so excited to show me the guest book—handed me a pen as if I wanted to sign my name, as if I wanted people to know where I’d been. It was only July, but, outside of your car, it was late and dark, cold without the sweatshirt I left in your backseat. You flipped through the first pages, showed me your name neatly printed on the lines. We used to come here when we were younger, you told me. We, you and your friends.
You took the pen back, wrote your name in the same block print, and I tried to picture it. Teenagers visiting an old cemetery. Drunk, most likely. Stumbling to the box and the guest book and the same pen you were writing with again. That neat print. Not drunk, most likely. Teenagers visiting an old cemetery because it was a small town and there was nothing better to do and they just wanted to write their names down in the summer dark and let people know where they had been.
We didn’t stay long. Even in the night, through the overgrowth and bramble, I could read the headstones, the epitaphs. Edith. Henry. Calvin. Eloise. Loving Mother. Treasured Friend. I could read some of the dates too. The earliest I found was 1859. The latest, 1944. I told you I was cold even though I wasn’t, and we left.
We never visited the cemetery again—I think you knew it made me sad—so we did other stuff instead. We played basketball at your parent’s house and kissed on the back porch. We drove around, sometimes in my car, more often in yours. You told me I drove too fast, and I told you to be quiet and listen to the song playing on the radio. You listened to me talk about my family, and I listened to you play old songs on your guitar. But when nothing was left of summer—when all the days were cold and all the nights came too quick and all the locusts left behind their paper skins and stole away their solstice songs—we fell.
***
A few towns over from your apartment and a few towns over from my college—smack dab between our two lives—there was a beer festival that took place every year. I wore a skirt even though it was forty degrees, and you gave me your jacket without so much as an I told you so. Our friends were still on the road, so we got a couple of pitchers to share. You ordered for me from the concession; I couldn’t pronounce the German lagers. Schwarzbier. Kölsch. I handed you my beer tickets when you handed me my Doppelbock, and we walked through the tents, ordered sausage, on a stick and steaming, to keep us warm when we left the heat for the cold outside. A river flowed through the fairgrounds, and we walked down to its bank, sat below and looked up at the huge, billowing white tents and steaming ovens and people shouting Próst before tilting their pitchers back and letting the yellow and orange and amber run down their chins.
Próst! You turned to me and clinked our beers together, took a drink and warned me to pace myself. I smiled and nodded, and then a woman stumbled in front of us. Her friends held her upright as she threw up her Doppelbock in the grass. We laughed—even though we tried not to—and then our friends were calling and we were walking back up to the tents and the loud music, all accordions and zithers and bagpipes, was ringing in our ears.
***
Your plaid shirt was muted yellow, the color of banana chewing gum, and your cologne was all around me, in the jacket too big on my shoulders. We were in the thick of the crowd, and our friends sang along to the musicians on stage. Eins, Zwei, Drei…then a thousand and one drunk people shouting Oi, Oi, Oi filled up the tent. I was on pitcher two; you were on pitcher three or four. When you stretched down towards me and whispered German words in my ear, I half wanted to make fun of the affected accent, half wanted to rush outside the tent, step into the cool and dark—away from the drunk, hot body and breath—and remember the graveyard and the etched epitaphs and everywhere we had been before.
I need to pee, I turned around and told you. You nodded and asked if I was okay, asked if I needed you to take me. No, I said. I got it. You didn’t look convinced. I’m good. I stepped past you and felt the wind caress my bare legs. Outside, night shrouded me—better than your oversized jacket ever could—and I stumbled, empty pitcher in hand.
***
I stood up too fast, pressed my hand against the wooden stall to steady myself. My phone kept buzzing, but your words were all jumbled up when I tried to read them. I tried to silence it, you, but it didn’t help. More buzzing. I sucked in the smell of fresh pine and exhaled. I wanted to stay a little while longer, but the doorknob rattled. Occupied, I said.
It rattled again, kept rattling, wouldn’t stop rattling, so I flung the door back. Fine. There. I pulled your jacket tighter around me, tried to remember which tent you were in, but they all looked the same, white and loud and exploding. Hey, from the doorknob rattler. I realized I hadn’t moved from the stall. I took an uncertain step forward, but a hand stopped me. Not yours. His. You look cold. Not your voice either. His. I’m fi—
Let me warm you up. He moved closer. I tried to look at his face, but everything was swirling together like paint and water, a rainbow in an oil slick. I felt callouses on my arms, but I wasn’t sure where they came from. Then your smell was gone and I couldn’t remember if your shirt was banana or strawberry flavored and all I could hear was Oi, Oi, Oi and a stranger’s voice—still not yours—in my ear.
What’s going on? I fell out of the stall, and I couldn’t smell pine. I looked up, and it was you.
***
We were October people. In your bed later that night. Both of us drunk, laughing and crying and talking in a foreign language nobody else knew how to speak. The room was spinning, but I saw your face clearly, vivid as blood moons in gray skies. I rubbed my nose against yours, and you smushed mine down with your thumb. That made you laugh. You let me sleep on your pillow, and I woke up in your yellow shirt, yellow as banana gum.
Courtney Ludwick is a current graduate student at Texas Tech University where she studies literature and creative writing. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Watershed Review, Sinister Wisdom, and Willard & Maple. You can connect with Courtney on Instagram @courtlud.