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“Really…” She sighed. “Well, I’m so sorry.”
I took a bite of my cheese stick—yes, I was eating dairy again. “It’s for the best. I think he had himself convinced he could want a child with me just to keep me. I couldn’t let him go through with something like that when I didn’t truly believe him.” I shook my head. “But that’s not the main reason I couldn’t be with him.” I paused. “I don’t love him.”
“You love Archie,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I do.” I exhaled. “And it sucks.”
“If it’s meant to be, it will be, darling.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I told her. “But seriously, what’s happening out there with you?”
We chatted for a while, and I promised to call more often. Then about a half hour after I got off the phone with Roz, my phone lit up with a text.
Speak of the devil. It was Archie.
My heart came alive at the sight of a photo, followed by a looooong message. I scrolled down before I read it. It had to be the lengthiest text I’d ever received.
My heart raced as I scrolled back up and clicked on the photo. It was a drawing of me, a sketch like the ones he used to create over a decade earlier. He’d drawn me scared before. He’d drawn me focused. He’d drawn me drunk and crazy-looking after massacring a chocolate cake. But he’d never drawn me like this. I looked sad, wearing the pink dress covered in daisies that I’d worn to his wedding. I examined the melancholy expression on my sketched face again. It was the perfect depiction of how I’d felt that day—sad, confused, and desperately in love with a man who’d just married someone else. Ironically, he’d captioned the sketch: Love.
I suddenly felt unsettled, scared of what he’d written. I sat down to read the message. Grabbing a pillow, I hugged it for support.
Archie: This is going to be the rawest thing I’ve ever written, so buckle up. I’m texting it because the next time I see you in person, I might be back to my old blubbering-idiot ways and don’t trust myself to get these words out coherently.
This photo is the last drawing of you I ever created. I drew it on my wedding night. How fucked up is that? I escaped into the bathroom while Mariah was sleeping and drew you—because I had to. I never wanted to forget the look on your face. It was important to me because unfortunately, that was the night I realized you loved me. It was also the night I realized I’d made a huge mistake. If I could go back, I would’ve done so many things differently. I know now that you can’t choose who to love based on what fits into a neat little box.
You tried to hide the fact that you’d been crying that night. But I knew. I felt it. And I’m ashamed to admit that I was in love with you, too, that day. Ashamed only because it never should have been her. It should’ve been you. I knew it not only when I saw the sadness in your eyes, but even when I looked out into the pews at the church and saw you in your pink dress, looking uncomfortable. My heart skipped a beat for you in a way it hadn’t when my bride walked down the aisle. I’d chosen to bury those feelings deep. That was a huge mistake.
The truth is, I’ve loved you since our first summer together. And I can’t say what might have happened if it had ended differently. But I need you to understand that back when I had to take care of my mom after Dad died, it was more important to me to make sure I didn’t hold you back than to admit how I felt. I never wanted you to resent me. You had the whole universe at your fingertips, while I was stuck in California. You had career aspirations and all the freedom in the world. So I made the decision to let you go.
Then life happened. You were with Shane. And then you weren’t. I was with Mariah, and we both know what happened there. Fate and timing were never on our side. And a part of me through all those years believed a false narrative that you were better off without me, which I know now isn’t true. Because you loved me—that’s all that should have mattered. That’s all that does matter.
I also know I don’t just love you because of our time together that summer. That was only the tip of the iceberg. I love you for all the moments in between, when we weren’t physically together but when I knew I could count on you, when I couldn’t count on anyone else.
