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Charm

Nine days pass without a response.

I tell myself training camp is brutal. I remind myself Ryan never promised to answer every letter and that accepting my accountability doesn’t obligate him to comfort me through it.

On the tenth day, a thick envelope waits inside my mailbox.

Charm,

The last letter pissed me off.

I read it once, threw it across the room, walked away, and came back for it because apparently healing Charm has learned how to cut deeper than El Cuchillo.

For fifteen months, I have asked myself whether anything between us was real or whether I was something you used to feel better about yourself. I hated you for making me question the happiest memories I have.

Your letter didn’t erase that question. It validated the reason I have it.

Thank you for not telling me your intentions should matter more than my experience. Thank you for allowing me to say I was used without making the word an accusation I need to take back because you were sick.

I need you to understand something too.

You did love me.

I knew it when I left you. That was why leaving nearly destroyed me. If I believed none of it was real, I could’ve hated you cleanly. I couldn’t. Your love was real, your illness was real, and the way you used me was real.

All three truths have to fit inside the same history.

Some of our memories still belong to me without your illness contaminating them. The carnival is mine. You asleep beside me while I read is mine. The way you laughed when you discovered my glasses were cheap is mine. I won’t surrender every good thing simply because the ending made me question it.

I don’t know whether trust returns because we finally understand the wound. I know this is the first time I have placed my pain between us without watching you reach for an explanation to move it.

You sat beside it.

I didn’t know until now how badly I needed that.

Ryan

I press the letter against my chest and cry until a customer knocks on my office door to ask whether the boutique closes for emotional emergencies.

I tell her it does now.

My next letter is easier.

By the time I write again, September has begun surrendering its heat. The windows above the boutique remain open during the afternoon, but I close them before sunset when the cooler air starts carrying the first real edge of fall.

Ryan,

No-filter Charm is apparently who I am now. I guess I should’ve explained that healing Charm sounds weak, and no-filter Charm takes no shit. So far, she got us moved to a better table at dinner because the maître d’ ignored my reservation. Aura says I verbally pistol-whipped him. Bliss says the free dessert proves I was right.

I told a customer her husband wasn’t an accessory because accessories improve an outfit. She bought the dress and left him outside.

I informed my mother I didn’t want to attend a luncheon, returned a coffee made incorrectly without apologizing, and told Bliss her favorite musician sounds like a congested goat discovering heartbreak.

Apparently, I have opinions.

Who knew?

Before you become concerned, I have learned the difference between honesty and cruelty. I apologize when I hurt someone. I have stopped apologizing when they are merely unhappy that I said no.