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Headmaster Nolan’s personalized letter paper was embossed along the edges. There were golden swirls dancing around his printed name on the bottom right corner and a beautiful inscription of Wellton’s motto at the top. The paper was expensive, Neil knew by touch alone, and though he had folded and unfolded the letter a thousand times, it was still in one piece.
He smiled upon recalling the delivery of it.
Todd Anderson, wearing his graduation cap and gown still, had pulled him into the shadows of Hellton’s intricate architecture, away from the crowd of peacock-chested parents, for a proper goodbye.
“You’ll write, won’t you?” He had asked.
His hair was styled back, slick blond locks tucked under the black cap. He looked so handsome Neil couldn’t resist kissing him before giving him an answer.
“Of course I will. I’ll write and call as much as I can.”
“Every day?” Todd wondered.
“If you want,” Neil said, hands fumbling with the fabric of Todd’s gown. The blond boy made a sound of agreement in the back of his throat, and his hands tightened around Neil’s arms. “A call every day and a letter every Sunday. How about it?”
Todd’s hands drew him closer until Neil’s body was flush against his, Todd’s own back to a stone wall, still damp with morning dew. His eyelids fluttered as he looked down, mesmerized by Neil’s lips. He nodded dumbly.
“I have something for you,” Todd said before he could forget.
“Oh?” Neil could barely keep from kissing him again.
The boy dug into the pocket of his gown and produced a folded piece of paper.
Neil plucked it from between his fingers and made to unfold it, but Todd stopped him.
“No. Read it when you’re on your way home,” he asked.
His request wasn’t all that strange for someone as shy as Todd, so Neil agreed. He sealed the promise with a kiss.
They should have had more time. One night simply wasn’t enough.
“Why didn’t you say anything sooner?” Todd had whispered the night before, enveloped in the warmth of Neil’s arms. “We could have had so much time together.”
The joy of returned feelings had inevitably been dampened by how shortlived it was doomed to be. Neil had only confessed the night before graduation, in a drunken stupor, scared out of his mind that the morning would come, and Todd would leave him not knowing what he felt for him.
“I should have known better,” Neil mumbled into Todd’s hair.
Todd burrowed into the boy’s chest and sighed, “Me, too.”
They had woken in each other’s arms for the first and perhaps the last time. Neil’s bed was still made, cold and stiff, untouched by the morning sunshine. Todd’s, in turn, was dishevelled; a jumble of sheets, covers and boyish limbs, lightly melting in the sun.
The ache to reach, to touch, to kiss, stayed with them throughout the morning and well into the ceremony. Every graze and brush, all of them intentional, kept them grounded on solid terrain. Especially when it came the time to greet their families.
Neil shook his father’s hand, and the only thing that kept his hand from trembling was the sight of a certain blond boy out of the corner of his eye. And when Todd’s brother had freed himself from the adoring faculty and made his way toward his little brother, Neil was right there beside him, a sneaky hand at the ready. It pressed lightly against the small of Todd’s back as the older Anderson ruffled his hair condescendingly.
And once all other goodbyes had been delivered—to Keating, and the rest of the poets—, and Todd had pulled Neil aside, the time came, at last, for the most painful and unwanted of farewells.
Among kisses and longing and a few stray tears, Todd had handed Neil a letter containing a single sentence; all-encompassing. And when he’d opened the letter in the car, not knowing what to expect, Neil’s devotion to Todd Anderson increased tenfold.
Todd had, in the end, ransacked Nolan’s office. The paper in Neil’s hand—thick and elegant and stately—could come from nowhere else but the principal’s study. Todd Anderson, always so taciturn and shy, had committed one last silent act of defiance. The thing no other pledge had dared.
I would not wish any companion in the world but you, the scribbled words read, Nor can imagination form a shape besides yourself to like of.