Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (best memoirs of all time TXT) 📕

against her calves. She had her hair pinned back, exposing her neck and just the edge of her collarbone. She looked stunning, prepared, innocent—all for him. DJ held out his arm like he’d seen men do in movies, and Loretta linked hers through it with a shy smile.

The dinner passed with an animated discussion about their classes and classmates, debates about the merits of string theory, and the necessary overview of their individual histories—which for DJ’s part, was heavily edited. By the time he walked her home, he was convinced she was the One.

They began spending every spare moment together, preparing for exams and quizzing each other with flash cards. After a few months, he convinced her to quit her job at one of the college cafés so they could have more time together. That gave them several more hours each week, outside of classes and DJ’s after-hours security job on campus.

By the time they entered their third year at Harvard, DJ was saving for a modest ring and looking for a place for them to live together. He sat down one night in October and wrote a letter to his father, the first in a long time. Fueled by half a bottle of scotch, he laid out all the ways Josiah had wronged him, everything DJ had done to prove himself. He told his father he had found a woman who loved him, a woman who was smart and pure and beautiful. Then he selected two photos to send with it: one of him and Loretta together, and another of just her—a yearbook photo that highlighted her gorgeous features and soft eyes.

When she visited him for their date the next day, DJ left her for a moment to retrieve his coat, and when he turned around, she was standing by his desk with his letter in her hand.

“What is this?” she asked, turning to him.

“It’s nothing! What are you doing reading my private letters?”

She drew back as if slapped, glaring at him. “I saw my picture, so I looked to see why it was there. Your letter was so . . . mean, DJ. I’ve never known you to be so cruel.”

He took a step toward her, getting close enough to see the tiny muscles around her lips tremble. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. You have no idea what my life has been like. Now, let’s go.”

But instead of going with him to the movies as planned, Loretta whirled around on her short heel and stalked out of his apartment.

It was the biggest fight they’d ever had. His friends advised him to let her cool off and she would come to him, but after three days, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He went to her dorm with a dozen roses and told her he’d thrown away the letter, which wasn’t completely true. He had “thrown” it in the mailbox. Eventually, she relented and let him inside.

Their relationship changed after that. When he saw her, DJ’s stomach dipped and rolled, but not from infatuation the way it had when they first met. Now it was pure anxiety. He found himself following her on campus, hiding behind trees and buildings to observe the way she interacted with other men. Was she being unfaithful? Why did she look at him that way? Was she getting ready to leave him? He tried to talk to her about it, but when he told her he felt that things had changed between them, she dismissed it.

Like him, Loretta was planning to go to graduate school and was researching programs at the same time as doing her coursework. She started to put off dates, claiming to be swamped with assignments. Every time he asked which universities she was looking at for grad study, she avoided the question. DJ could see her whole life formulating in front of her, and he was becoming less and less sure that he would be a part of it.

On Loretta’s twenty-first birthday, DJ stood outside a restaurant on the Charles River that her parents had booked for the celebration, with sweat trickling between his shoulder blades and the lump of a ring box in his pocket. Through the glass, golden light illuminated thirty or so people milling about with drinks in hand. Serving staff weaved between them, balancing trays laden with finger food. Loretta’s mother had organized everything, but DJ had advised on her favorite foods. Apparently, her tastes had changed since she left her parents’ home in South Boston nearly four years before, and he was proud that he knew things about their daughter that they did not.

With a swipe across his upper lip to clear away the sweat, DJ reached out and opened the restaurant door. Loretta greeted him in a vivid red dress. It was so unlike her, so much more alluring than her usual clothing, that the air left his lungs for a moment.

“New dress?” he murmured, placing a kiss on her cheek.

“Yes, you like it?” Her fingers pressed into his shoulder as they embraced.

“It’s a bit . . . much,” he said, before he could think better of it. Loretta blinked, stunned, and then he was swept away by her father.

“Does she know?” Loretta’s father asked. He’d given DJ permission to ask for his daughter’s hand only two days ago, on the condition that he would support whatever graduate school she chose to attend. DJ had been nervous asking, not just for the obvious reasons but because he suspected Loretta had been planning to break up with him. Obviously, she hadn’t expressed any such plans to her parents—a fact which made him wonder if he was imagining her distance in recent weeks.

DJ shook his head. “It’s a surprise. I was thinking I would ask her when the cake is served, after we’ve all sung but before she blows out the candles. I want a photograph of the light dancing in her eyes when she says yes.”

Loretta’s father chuckled. “You really are something, aren’t you?”

Not knowing whether that