Page 36 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

She lifted her arms, holding her hands upward in explanation. If she was talking with her hands, this was getting serious. “I mean, what letters? I never got any letters from you. You sent me letters?”

I hesitated, my mind flipping back through years of half-remembered nights, unsent envelopes, the feeling of my words going out into the void with nowhere to land.

My heart sank to the floor. “No, I didn’t send them to you. I had no way of knowing where you were. I gave them to Buddy, who told me he’d get them to you.”

“When? When did you give him letters?”

“I wrote you for years after you left.”

All the color drained from her face. “Years?”

“You blocked me on everything,” I said, hearing the defensiveness in my voice and hating it. “It was the only way I could communicate with you. Buddy really didn’t send you the letters?”

Sadie shook her head again, and this time it was nearly imperceptible.

The implications of it hit me like a physical force. Buddy loved me, or at least he always said he did. Why would he lie? Why would he keep my letters from her? Unless—unless he thought he was protecting her. Maybe the version of me he’d wanted to believe in didn’t exist, and he’d decided it was better to let Sadie hate me from a distance than to risk her ever coming back.

I had to sit with that for a second, because the image of Buddy as the villain in my story didn’t make sense. He was the guy who taught me how to drive stick and who stood up for me in the middle of the supermarket when Mrs. Hershel accused me of shoplifting. That just didn’t make any sense to me. Buddy loved me, or at least he always said he did. “Why would Buddy tell me he was sending them to you, if he wasn’t?”

“You really wrote to me?” Sadie asked again, as if she were trying to force the pieces into place.

“Yes.” The word was so simple, but it felt like an exhale after a year underwater.

She pressed her lips together, the muscles in her jaw flexing as she processed it. “What did the letters say?”

It was hard even to pick a place to start. How could I summarize what I’d written in those letters, hundreds of pages, poured over late at night, sometimes in despair, sometimes in ache, always with this weird hope that she’d somehow read them and call me, or show up at my door and say she understood?

“There were a lot of them.” I sighed, rubbing my thumb over my palm like I could read the words there. “I said a lot of things.”

“Like what?”

I wanted to tell her the truth, but it was ugly and raw, and I was afraid it would only make things worse. But she deserved the truth, and I owed her more than the thousand half-truths I’d leaned on for years.

I wasn’t sure what I saw in her eyes. Was it hope, or maybe that was just me projecting onto her.

“I said I loved you. That I always would. That I was sorry.” I paused, searching her face for any sign that I’d crossed a line. “I told you that I honestly didn’t remember anything that happened. I was drinking with Donovan and Gio, and then I woke up in bed with Vicki. I know that doesn’t excuse what happened, but it is the truth. I was so sure you’d never want to hear from me again, but I wrote anyway.”

“Wait…What do you mean you didn’t remember anything that happened? You were that drunk?” Her voice was a mixture of accusation and concern, and even now, she was still trying to figure out how to rescue me from myself.

I shook my head, the memory rushing back: the taste of cheap beer, the music pounding so loud I could feel it in my teeth, the blur of faces at the party. “No, I didn’t even drink that much. I only had a few beers. I don’t know how it happened. It was like…I blacked out after just a couple drinks. It never happened to me before or since, not like that.”

She pulled her knees up to her chest in the chair. “Why didn’t you tell me that? At the time, why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know. I guess…I didn’t think it mattered,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper. “I was so out of it when I woke up, and then I went to see you, and I guess I just didn’t think it would change anything. And then you were gone. Does it? Does it change anything?”

We sat in suspended silence. It was like the whole cabin was holding its breath. The fire in the hearth snapped, but otherwise the world felt perfectly, unbearably still.

I could see the battle going on in Sadie’s eyes. She was always too smart for her own good, and I knew she was doing the math, adding up all the possibilities, all the whys and maybes and what-ifs. She’d always believed in facts, in logic, in evidence. I’d never been able to give her that. All I had were feelings, and even those I’d botched up beyond recognition.

Normally, I wouldn’t push her on the subject, but right now, I had to know.

“Does it change anything?” I repeated the question, unable to contain the desperation in my voice.

She looked at me for a long time, her eyes skating over my face, searching for the cracks where the truth might leak through. “I don’t know,” she said finally. “But it makes more sense, I guess. All this time, I thought you just cheated on me and then didn’t care. Like I was disposable.”

“No, never. That was never true,” I blurted, the urge to reach out and take her hand nearly overwhelming. “You were the only thing I ever wanted.”

She laughed, but it was a fragile sound. “You have a real talent for saying the exact thing I want to hear like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, when it’s anything but.”