Page 45 of XOXO, Yours

For a while he signed all of them —P. Here lately he’s changed it to XOXO, Yours. And reading those letters never fails to make my heart race.

This is good, that he said no. I’m clearly getting too attached. Booty calls are simple and uncomplicated. Which is exactly how I like things.

I pour another glass of wine and open that drawer. I even take the drawer itself off the tracks and carry that and my wine glass into the living room. I take a nice, long gulp of the wine, noting how smoothly it slides down my throat.

My plan is to read the notes one last time and then dispose of them. Because I am not a lovesick teenager. I am an adult woman in charge of her own feelings. I nod to myself in confirmation.

I go through them slowly, in random order. Many of them make me laugh, but by the end of the stack, I realize my cheeks are damp. Through my wine-fogged thinking, I can very clearly see what's been happening to me for the last several weeks. While I was aggressively holding on to the “booty call” nature of our relationship, he snuck into my heart like a government operative.

I'm in love with Payton Blankenship.

I'm in love with him. Despite the fact that he’s twenty-two, and I’m thirty-two. And despite the fact that I have done everything I know how to do to prevent this exact outcome. Yet here I am, eight forty-five on a Thursday, holding a stack of notes that I kept because I couldn't make myself throw them away. How did I let this happen? And what do I do next?

I do nothing with this information.

I'm going to keep doing nothing with this information for as long as humanly possible. Because doing something means admitting it's real. And there’s still time to save myself. And to save poor Payton from my broken and battered heart.

So I take my glass of wine, leave the notes on the couch and go to bed.

I don't sleep for a very long time.

chapter

eighteen

Payton

She's not at school on Friday.

I noticed before first period. Her classroom door is closed, lights off, the little paper pumpkin one of her students made still taped to the window. I send her a text somewhere around lunch.

Me: Hope you feel okay. Let me know if you need anything.

She responds three hours later with a thumbs up emoji and nothing else.

I stare at the thumbs up for a long time.

Then I go home and I sit at the kitchen table, intending to make a snack, but I never manage to do more than take out two slices of bread.

My mom finds me there and I’m not even sure how long I’ve just been sitting and thinking.

She doesn't say anything at first, just refills her iced tea, refills mine without asking, and sits down across from me.

"How long have you been sitting here?" she asks.

"A while."

She nods, wraps both hands around her glass. She's got the same easy patience she's always had, the kind that doesn't push but makes it very clear there's room if you need it. After all, she’s raised five kids and kept my dad in line for the duration of their marriage.

"You've been different the last couple of months," she says. "Happier for a while. Then quieter. I wasn't going to say anything, but—" she shrugs, one shoulder. "Do you want to talk about it?"

I look at my tea.

"I met someone," I say.

She doesn't react beyond a small softening around her eyes. "At the school?"

"Yeah." I turn the mug in a slow circle on the table. “Well, before that, actually. But she is a teacher. She's—she's it, Mom. I know that sounds insane given that I've only known her a few months, but I know what I know. She's the one."