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Clipped to the photo was a letter, written in Xander’s slanted chicken scratch that passed for handwriting and dated ten years ago. Summer.
Mara, I don’t know where you are in this world but I hope you’re well. No, I hope you’re better than well and I hope you know that my heart is missing you like crazy. Things are different now. I’m different and I wish you could see how much I’ve grown up and matured. You’d be proud, at least I tell myself that when I’m lying awake at night and wondering if you’re looking up at the stars in the sky and wondering about me.
I’m sorry, Mara, for whatever I did wrong to drive you away.
The letter was hard to read and that was only partly because of the tears blurring my vision. But it wasn’t just one letter, the other envelope was filled with more letters from Xander, addressed to me, giving me insight into the man he was becoming.
Basic training is over and I’m headed to the big vast desert that we’re not supposed to talk about, not that it really matters since I have no idea where to send these letters. Even if I did, I guess you wouldn’t read them because you left for a reason.
I just wish you would have told me the reason and given me a chance to change your mind. I think I could have.
Back then, he could have changed my mind on just about anything. But breaking out of juvie hadn’t been an option and those letters would have only made things harder.
Sometimes I think I made a mistake, joining up the way I did. Killing isn’t something I ever had a desire to do, but now its my duty and I hope I can fulfill it to the best of my abilities. Do you think I can do it? Most days I’m not sure, but then I see your smile, wide and confident, telling me that I can do anything I set my pretty little head to doing.
The memory of how often I said those words to him and how I’d believed them with my whole heart back then. I thought Xander was the best guy ever. The smartest and most athletic. I really had believed he could do and be anything he set his mind to. And he had.
Spectacularly.
There were at least a dozen letters in the second envelope, each of them giving me snapshots of Xander’s time in the desert. His fears and hopes, his dreams and his every waking thoughts were captured beautifully in those letters, bringing more tears to my eyes. Those words reminded me of why I’d fallen so hard for the boy with the sapphire blue eyes. He was open and honest, so free with his thoughts and dreams, his words. His feelings. I found it so beautiful and so intoxicating, and I fell for it. Hard.
I miss you so damn much, Mara. I’m still in love with you and when I get back to Tulip, I’m gonna find you and make you tell me what I did that was so wrong that it drove you away. I promise.
I could barely see through the tears and had to walk my bike home rather than ride it, prolonging my time with Xander’s words. His painful words that made the ache in my chest grow bigger and bigger, expanding until I could barely breathe when I walked inside my rental.
His honesty, once again, the was the instrument of my undoing. My chest heaved as big, body-shaking, soul-crushing sobs burst out of me, echoing in the empty kitchen and bouncing back at me as I reached inside the fridge for a beer. The icy brew gave a little sting as it went down but not even that could ease the ache that I felt at Xander’s pain.
All the beer did was bring forth more memories of our time together. I had never been so happy, not even under the loving guidance of Helen Landon, or the brotherly affection of Will. With Xander, I had finally understood the emotion behind all those love songs that other girls sang along to with such zeal. I understood them because I felt them, and that was because of Xander.
I’d been so in love with him that I actually started to see a real future for not just us, but for myself. A future that included more than some uniform that included shift work. My love for him had clouded my vision, had me believe I was something other than what I was, something other than a poor foster kid with no actual prospects for more.
He made me believe.
He made me want.
And then he’d given me the betrayal of a lifetime, and it was that betrayal that had taught me a valuable lesson. Emotions were fleeting and they couldn’t be trusted, so I closed myself to all emotions. I refused to see Helen when she visited me at juvie because I loved her too much to lose her the way I’d lost Xander, so easily. I shut down after that, and I hadn’t opened up until I found a group of women I could trust, here in Pilgrim.
