Just Friends(82)

As Roshi and Faye gathered their luggage from my trunk, we promised to start doing weekly calls to keep up. Long distance would become our new normal, and our commitment to staying close would be the testimony to what we still had despite the miles between us.

I drive back to the cottage in a contemplative daze. Would Declan be home at this hour? And if he was home, what would I say?

The hilly road spits me onto my new street before I’ve decided the answers to any of these questions. I park at the curb and walk through my overgrown front yard. There’s a letter laying on my doorstep. That’s odd, I think to myself. I have a mailbox at the front. But when I bend down to reach it, I notice my name written on the front in small, black letters.

I feel the thud of my heart in my chest.

When I pick it up, I notice how soft it feels in my hands. Wrinkles run through the envelope like it’s been crumpled and flattened out multiple times.

I check over my shoulder like someone is watching me, fish my keys out of my purse, and stuff myself inside as quickly as humanly possible. I plop down onto the cream couch and begin tearing into the letter. Like a bear, I think to myself. Like a boy. Like I watched Declan do with his college acceptance letter.

I reach inside and pull out a piece of composition notebook paper. Its edges are frayed like it was torn out of a journal. Inhaling a shaky breath, I read:

Dear Blair,

Let me start this letter by saying I am sorrier than words can describe. I haven’t seen you or spoken to you in 250 days, and I can’t stand to go one more. The last time I looked at you, you were in the stands at the championship game. You didn’t see me, or maybe you pretended not to, but you looked beautiful. Slightly aloof, as always, with a weary look on your face. And in that moment, I promised myself I would apologize to you after the game, to beg for you to come back. I swear it. If you had caught my eyes maybe you would have understood. But I never got the chance to because, well, we both know what happened.

I heard you tried to see me at the hospital, but they were only letting family in. And when I was out of surgery and back at the house, I heard you waited on my porch for hours. I was probably in one of the medication-induced sleeps I was in almost every day, but when I woke up, my mom told me you were at the door. I told her to turn you away. I told her I didn’t want to see you. I know she told you to leave. I know you did. And I didn’t text. And I didn’t call. And for that, I will never forgive myself. But I beg you to read the entirety of this letter so that I can explain. I don’t expect your forgiveness, but I will never be able to live with myself if I don’t try. So here it goes.

The way we ended was my fault, Blair. I regret asking you to give up your dreams to be with me and rely on mine. I thought I was being the person you wanted me to be, providing for you and your mom, but it was arrogance disguising itself as nobility. Truly, there is nothing I look back on and shudder to think about more. I regretted my words before the accident, but after, the shame multiplied to a suffocating degree. You were right. And I knew you were right before I woke up in the hospital.

But afterward, when standing up to use the restroom required two nurses and ended with me screaming in pain, I couldn’t imagine letting you see me like that. Like I still am. You were right not to rely on my future career when it still had a good chance of existing, but now, it is completely gone, for good. I felt embarrassed. I felt pathetic. I felt worthless. And above all, I felt ashamed of myself for ever suggesting you trust me with your future in the first place.

But I’ve been sitting in my childhood bedroom for eight months straight, recovering, thinking. I have so much time to think in this stupid bed. Some days are okay. Some are boring. Every day I try to walk and get angry all over again. But one thing is always the same.

I think about you. How much I miss you. How dumb I was for turning you away when you wanted to see me. I would give anything now to let you see me. Crutches, and pain medication, and hopelessness, and screaming in pain while trying to walk, and all. I don’t care if I look pathetic. This is me right now, and I’ve always known you loved me for more than football. For more than just what I could give you. I don’t know where along the way I started believing you saw me like my dad does. Like I’m worthless if I’m not bringing home achievements. Like I’m unlovable if I’m not giving you something to show off.

You were always the opposite. So much so, that the one time I did try to offer you my accomplishments, we ended up here. So, why, in my right mind, would I ever block you out? I don’t know, Blair. That’s the horrible thing. I don’t know what I was thinking.

I didn’t want you to see me out of control, and in wanting that, I took away all your control. I stripped you of any say in us having a relationship.

And that’s not what love does. Love doesn’t choose itself. It doesn’t only consider one side of the story. And love doesn’t shrink back from pain either. Which definitely isn’t something I need to be explaining to you. You have such a big heart, I actually get concerned sometimes. It must be bursting at the seams of your chest, Blair. I don’t know how it stays in there. Seriously, see a doctor.

But anyways.

I assumed bad character of you by thinking you wouldn’t be here for me since I have nothing to give you in return. But there’s practically a photo of you in the dictionary next to the word selfless. Gosh, that was cheesy. I’m cringing reading it back already. But it’s true. You’ve centered your entire life around giving back to your mom. What teenage girl thinks about those things?