by Monroe, Max
“I don’t know—”
“You need to read it, Indy,” she insists and gets up from the kitchen table and levels me with a stare. “In fact, you need to read them both.”
“Both?” I ask around a knot in my throat. This is the first I’ve heard of a second letter.
“Both. Another came a few months ago, all beat-up and taped back up. Apparently, it’d gotten lodged in the sorting machine or something. Lost in the mail for years, but finally found again.”
My heart picks up speed as Sally leaves the room to get them without giving me a chance to come up with another reason to refuse.
“You do realize you’re not leaving without those letters, right?” Bill asks and lightens the mood a little bit.
“Yeah.” An incredulous laugh spills from my lips. “It appears that way.”
Adam’s mom is insistent, and before I know it, she’s stuffing two envelopes into my purse and giving me no choice.
“Just read them, sweetie. Not to make you sad, but to give your heart some peace and closure.”
Closure. It’s the word I need to hear and the place I need to find.
It might take a bottle of wine to convince myself to go through with it, but I decide right then, come hell or high water, I will give myself this.
I will give myself the chance to accept the things I can’t change, and I will give myself the chance to move on.
The chance at having something special again. With Ansel.
Indy
By the time I leave Bill and Sally’s, it’s getting close to dinnertime. I grab a burger and fries from a fast-food joint, and when I step inside my apartment, only silence fills my ears.
What a fucking day.
I kick off my boots and head into my bedroom to slip on a pair of flannel pajama pants, and I toss my long locks up into a messy bun.
Emotionally, I’m drained. Between yesterday with Ansel and Matt and Lily, and going to see Adam this morning and the long visit with his parents this afternoon, I just need to sit down and watch some mindless TV while I stuff greasy food into my mouth.
Once I grab the bag of takeout from the kitchen counter, I plop my ass down on the couch and shove a few fries into my mouth while I flip through the stations.
But it doesn’t take long before my gaze is glancing toward my purse. Toward the envelopes inside of it.
Those damn things have been taunting me ever since Sally put them there.
She says they’ll give me peace. Closure, even. But I have a hard time understanding how two letters from people I’ve never met before will have that much impact.
Just read the letters, my mind mocks. Don’t be such a coward.
Two minutes pass.
I eat all of my burger and fries.
An entire episode of Friends plays through on the television.
And still, my mind is fixated on those letters.
Just read them.
On a sigh, I get up from the couch and pull them from the front pocket of my purse.
What’s the use of fighting it?
And what’s the worst reading these letters can do anyway?
With my index finger, I slide my nail underneath the flap of one of the envelopes and open it.
Inside is a piece of pink paper, and when I unfold it, my eyes are greeted with soft and flowing cursive. The handwriting is neat and pretty, and the words written across the page match.
It’s from a woman. And she is thanking Adam and thanking his family and thanking his fiancée—me. Because of him, her life was changed. Because of him, she is able to keep living, she’s able to see her children grow up and she’s able to kiss her husband good night. Because of Adam, the heart inside of her chest is no longer sick with disease. Because of Adam, the heart inside of her chest is healthy and strong and beating.
Her words make my own heart feel full, and I’m starting to understand why Sally was so damn persistent.
Without hesitation, I open the second envelope and start reading the messy and sort of all over the place scrawl on the crinkled white paper.
I know my words could never be enough to ease the pain of your tragic loss, but I figured some words, even if they’re not the right ones, are better than no words at all.
Because of your loved one, I am a man who has received an incredible gift.
The gift of a chance at something other than the eternal solitude of never-ending darkness.
A chance that, when I open my eyes, the world around me is no longer empty and black, but is instead vivid and bright.
The eyes are the windows to the soul, and once those windows are closed, evil and loathing spread their roots like ivy. Without your loved one’s generous, miraculous gift, my windows would be forever shut, and I would never feel the beauty of painting again.
Thank you for finding it inside yourself to give something born of a situation in which you had no choice.
I stop and reread the sentence. I would never feel the beauty of painting again.
My jaw goes slack and my lips part, but I keep reading.
Until I reach the end, and I can’t seem to draw enough oxygen into my lungs.
My eternal gratitude.
AB.
Indy
Time is so much like water. It can pass slowly, a drop at a time, or rush by in a blink. The clock says it is measured and constant, tick-tock, tick-tock, part of an orderly world, but the clock lies.
The last two hours have passed like thousands of camera images shown slowly, one single tiny frame at a time. My brain is fixated on each paragraph, each sentence, every single fucking word inside the letter that’s still gripped between my fingertips and the photos I dug out of the box in my closet to join it.
Over and over again, I read it and glance to the photos that look so much like Ansel’s paintings.
And the acute shock of it all eventually turns into something else, something deeper, something unsettling, something devastating.
First, I feel sick. Stomach-curling nausea that incites my skin to break out in a sheen of sweat and forces me to run to the bathroom and empty everything I ate for dinner into the toilet.
Then, I pace my living room. Back and forth. Back and forth. No destination, just a circuit leading me from my kitchen to my bedroom. And I do that what feels like a thousand times, but all the while, I don’t even feel like I’m inside my body. I am Casper, hovering above the hardwood.
Tears drip down my cheeks in steady waves, and I decide to hop into the shower to wash off the emotion. But after ten minutes of sobbing into the hot water and billowing steam, I realize it’s a shit idea.
A pathetic and unsuccessful attempt at getting myself together.
Once I dry myself off and wrap my robe firmly around my body, I check my phone to find another missed call from Ansel.
I wonder if he knows I’m avoiding him?
It hasn’t been long since we’ve spoken, but the distance and chain of events between us make it feel like an eternity.
I don’t want to ignore him—every cell inside my body is revolting against it—but fuck, I don’t know what to say.
How do I even begin to tell him the truth of our connection?
I grab the letter, his letter, from my nightstand and read the words he wrote to Adam’s family again. The words he wrote to me.
God, how could this be?
I’ve read this letter what feels like a thousand times, and still, I’ve yet to wrap my mind around it.
I trace my index finger over his initials.
And I cry. I cry a lot, actually.
By the time I’ve pored over his words a hundred more times, I feel my heart beating inside my chest, but it doesn’t feel like my heart. I look down at my hands and wiggle my fingers, but they don’t feel like my hands, my fingers. And when I inhale air into my lungs, I might as well be watching someone else breathe.
I’m just…numb. And my body is so fucking tired. My bones ache and my muscles throb and I should probably s
leep, but I know it’s an impossibility. Not with the way my mind races. Like a sprinter jumping out of the blocks at the sound of the gun—only, there is no finish line. There is no destination. Only this never-ending path of uncertainty and disbelief and utter confusion.
I slide the letter into the pocket of my robe and head back into the living room.
To the box I pulled from the very top shelf of my closet. Its contents spill across the coffee table like liquid from an overturned glass.
Wedding invitations.
My engagement ring—the one Adam gave to me while we were on a weekend trip to Los Angeles for his shoot with a popular architecture magazine. The night before we flew back home, he drove us to Santa Monica and proposed to me on the beach.
It was magical. One of the happiest days of my life.
I slide the ring onto my finger and watch the way the glow from the recessed lights in my living room bounces off the center diamond. When Adam put this ring on my finger, I thought it would stay there forever.
But our forever was short-lived.
I slide it off again and place it back inside the box before picking up the stack of photographs.
Adam’s photographs.
With shaky hands, I rifle through them all before settling back on the one that set the last couple of days into motion. My hair is down, and I’m grinning a small, over-the-shoulder smile, the tiny red heart etched into the skin of my lower back.
It is identical to Ansel’s painting, and now…now, I have some understanding of why.
When this photo was taken, I thought Adam and I would grow old together. I thought we’d get married and have kids and, years later, grandkids. When he died, I lost all hope. I lost hope for the future. Hope for love. A robot girl just bee-booping through the motions.
Until hope came crashing back in again.
Until Ansel.
God, it feels so good to be near him. So good to come alive again.
I fear once I tell him the truth, once I show him the letter, his letter, he’ll walk out of my life and take all of that hope with him.
Will he ever be able to stop wondering how I really feel about him? Will he know how he really feels about me?
Four years ago, Adam died. And four years ago, Ansel regained his sight.
Ansel’s eyes are Adam’s eyes.
Ansel
I walk up the stairs of her apartment building and rap my knuckles against Indy’s front door.
Once. Twice. Three times. And I wait.
She hasn’t answered my texts or calls and rather than waiting—rather than denying the almost instinctual feeling that all is not well—I decided to take things into my own hands. To come to her. To see if she’s okay. To just…see her.
This feeling of impending doom sits on my chest, and my heart twists and turns beneath my ribs as I wait for her to answer the door. When footsteps filter out from inside her apartment, a large breath of air escapes my lungs on a whoosh.
And then, she’s there, opening the door in nothing but a robe.
She’s beautiful. God, she’s beautiful. But, in my eyes, Indy is always beautiful.
But something doesn’t feel right. Not in the way she discreetly averts her eyes from mine. Not in the way her teeth bite into her bottom lip. Not in the way she’s yet to say a single word.
“Hey,” I say through a smile, but her responding smile feels foreign and forced. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah.” Indy nods. “What are you doing here?”
She shivers from the coolness of the hallway and gestures me inside before closing her door with a squeak and a click.
Why am I here? Because I feel like something is terribly wrong.
Because I have this nagging anxiety that’s crept inside my veins, and it’s making me feel like, any second, the world is going to end.
I’m here because the night I made love to you, the night we made love, my heart was forever changed. And now, it feels like you’ve just taken it all away and left me floundering for no fucking reason.
“I haven’t heard from you in a while…” I pause and run a hand through my hair. “And I just wanted to check on you, make sure you’re okay.”
“Sorry about that,” she says and moves her gaze to the floor. “Things have been a little busy.”
It’s like she can’t even look at me. Like it’s causing her physical pain.
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” I ask and reach down to slip my fingers under her chin so she has to meet my gaze.
It’s then I realize I’ve shown up unannounced.
What if her boyfriend is here?
Internally, I cringe.
Indy in her robe. Her boyfriend waiting down the hall in her bed.
Fuck. I can’t let my mind get lost in something like that unless I want to drive myself crazy.
“Is this a bad time?”
She shakes her head.
“Have I…” I pause, but I force myself to continue. Force myself to ask the questions that might help me understand why she’s been so distant. “Have I done something to upset you, Indy?”
She scrunches up her nose. “Of course not.”
“Well, I guess that’s good news, huh?” I try to lighten the mood a bit, but the air around us is too heavy and thick with tension and unsaid words.
“Yeah.” Indy forces another smile. “Do you…uh…do you want some coffee?” she asks over her shoulder as she turns on her bare feet and heads into her kitchen.
“Coffee would be great.” Even though it feels like an excuse. A way for you to avoid telling me what’s really going on.
Fuck, this is uncomfortable. We’re basically walking on eggshells around each other, and I don’t understand why.
I want to go back in time. Back to that night. Back to the Indy who was playful and looked at me with her heart in her eyes. But all I can do is follow her lead into the kitchen, where, apparently, avoidance and diversion are being brewed.
I lean my hip against the kitchen island as she fills the coffee machine with water and taps the button to start. But when she’s done, she just stares at the coffeepot and doesn’t turn around to look at me.
It’s a knife to my heart.
“You know you can tell me anything, right?” I say quietly. “You can tell me anything, Indy, and I won’t judge or get mad or any of that bullshit. I’ll just listen.”
But, fuck, don’t tell me you regret that night.
Don’t tell me you’re done with me.
Don’t tell me you want to be with him instead of me.
With her back still to me, she stays silent for a long moment, still staring at the coffeepot on the kitchen counter. Or maybe she’s not staring at anything at all. I can’t be sure.
My fingers itch to touch her, my lips crave the taste of her mouth, and my arms vibrate with need to wrap her up in my embrace and fix whatever it is that’s bothering her. But I don’t push. Instead, I just wait. Patiently. Silently. Giving her time.
At least I’m here. With her.
The coffee machine beeps, and she fixes us up two mugs and turns around to meet my eyes, handing me a warm mug. Her eyes search mine for the longest time, and I watch as she forces a deep, heavy breath in and out of her lungs.
“I have something I need to show you,” she whispers so softly, so quietly, that I barely hear the words leave her lips.
“Okay.”
“Just give a minute.” Indy sets down her coffee on the kitchen counter and heads into the living room.
Four, five, six, I don’t know how many minutes go by before she comes back into the kitchen holding something in her hands, but I’m too busy to notice because I’m searching her eyes, her face, her mouth for some kind of answer.
“Here.” She holds out her hand. “Just…here.”
My brow furrows. “What is it?” I ask, but she doesn’t answer. So, I glance down to see a photograph in her hand and take it into mine.
My eyes scan the picture, and instantl
y, déjà vu and familiarity lift their hands and slap me in the face. Hard.
This photograph is identical to my painting.
And this is her, Indy, with the tiny red heart engraved into her skin. The very tattoo I’ve pictured so many times.
The tattoo is real.
She is real.
“Indy,” I say through a throat full of disbelief and look up to meet her eyes. They are wet with unshed emotion, and her lip quivers. “W-what is this?”
“My fiancé took that photograph of me several years ago,” she whispers. “That was my first tattoo. I covered it with the lotus two years ago.”
“Your fiancé?” I ask, somehow mining the uncomfortable words from the deep recesses of my throat.
“His name was Adam Lane, and he died four years ago,” she says, her voice scratchy with irritation.
“Four years ago?” I ask softly, and she nods.
Indy reaches into the pocket of her robe, and with a shaky hand, she holds out a wrinkled white envelope toward me. “You should read this,” she says quietly, and I watch as one small tear slips past her lid and down her cheek.
Fuck, she’s crying. I want to comfort her. I want to wrap her up in my arms and tell her it’s going to be okay.
“Indy,” I whisper and start to step toward her, but she gently pushes the envelope into my chest. My brow furrows as I watch her step back and put distance between us.
“Please…” She pauses and swallows hard. “Just read it.”
I peel it open and pull out a folded piece of paper.
I look at her as I unfold it, but her eyes never leave the sheet of paper.
When I move my gaze down to the letter, to the words written on the paper, to the signature at the bottom, my heart clenches inside my chest. “H-how did you get this?”
Tears are in her eyes, and I’m so fucking confused.
These are my words. The very personal, heartfelt words I wrote right before my surgery. The words I wrote to my donor’s family. The very words that didn’t feel good enough. This is the first time I’m actually seeing them with my own eyes, but these words are ones I can never forget. They are forever engraved inside of my mind.