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“You know,” he murmured. “You’re beautiful.”
Somehow, I smiled through the tears.
Chapter Eight
Seventeen Years Later
I created a new Word document, ready to write the next letter. I had a collection now. All addressed to the same person.
Dear Jamie,
It’s been… eight months since they buried you.
Another humid Portland summer come and gone. Another beautiful fall season upon us… you used to like the fall. I remember that. I guess this year, you won’t get to see it, will you?
You’d probably laugh at me for writing this if you were here. Ask me what I hoped to accomplish by writing to a person who no longer existed. I guess… I’m not hoping to accomplish anything.
I just know it still hurts.
I just know I never needed to talk to you this much…
Until you were gone.
Eight months later, and the pain only seems to grow. I long for a time machine. Or some miraculous way to go back to any daybeforeyou did it. The emptiness sits in the pit of my stomach. I see your face more than I ever did. I want to smack myself. I ask… why didn’t I try to reach out to you? I ask myself… could I have saved you?
I think over all of our memories. I think… were there any clues?
But, then, this isn’t the first time I’ve written these words.
But, then, you wouldn’t know about any of that. I never did tell you about my dad.
I never told you a lot of things.
I paused. Inhaled. Set my hands flat on the keyboard. Then, began typing again.
How is it possible to only realize how much you love someone… the moment you know they’ve been permanently taken from you?
Chapter Nine
The Agent
“Umm, what?” My mouth hung open mid-chew, and I dropped the muffin onto the white dish.
Rocking into my bucket seat inside the coffeeshop, I stared at the phone resting on the top of the wooden tabletop. This counter stretched horizontally across the middle of a floor-to-ceiling window.
The wall of the café served as my line of sight into the outside world as I worked on my latest manuscript. I’d been here a good hour when my literary agent, Meghan, called to drop a bomb in my lap.
“Can you please repeat that?” I tugged on the headphones that stretched from my iPhone to my ears to make sure there wasn’t any kind of interference on the signal.
“Your ending isn’t going to fly with Kratchette.” Meghan’s firm voice sounded through the phone. “You’ll need to trash it and start over.”
“Really?” I asked incredulously. “Trash all of the final part of the book. The entire, oh, twenty-thousand words?”
Meghan had been my literary agent for the last five years. Sometimes best friend. But, usually, the person who drove me to copious amounts of alcohol.
Like right now. And, boy, am I going to need a strong one after this.
Cars whizzed down the street in front of me. A couple on the outside strolled past the café and studied me like I was on display inside of a fishbowl. All nonchalantly. Like a piece of terribly fucking shitty news hadn’t just been dropped into the universe.
