Lover excerpt

Another piece of my Lover story:

I made quite a bit of money during harvest time, and the work left me strong, tanned and a bit wiser, ready to face whatever the winter months decreed. I gave the money to Mama, but she refused to take it for herself. She instead deposited in a savings account she had opened when Daddy first left home and until then, she hadn’t told me about. I returned to school that eighth-grade year a different man. I was myself beginning to find a few scraggly hairs under my armpits and down below where I thought  nothing would ever grow, but growing was happening there and all over my body as muscles began to replace baby fat and my voice almost overnight went from a squeak to nearly baritone; I found I could carry a tune but vowed no one would ever hear me sing it. Instead of looking much like an oft-used soap stick, I had broadened my shoulders and was beginning to resemble an adult human. I wanted so much for Darla to be there so I could show off my muscles to her. During all that time, I heard nothing about her and didn’t know if she was well and as happy as possible or if she was pining away for the lights of Paris, or worse, found another boyfriend which was a soul shattering thought. Then one day in mid-September as I returned home from school and checked the mailbox, in it was a postcard addressed to me. On it was a pretty photo of Virginia Beach and the Atlantic Ocean. It was postmarked in Salem, Virginia, the town they had moved to. On the back Darla simply wrote ‘Wait for me. xoxoxo’.