Dear Sully

by Jill Cox

  Let’s start with the obvious: I am so sorry for what you saw this summer at Dún Aonghasa. That was goodbye, plain and simple. Please don’t let it mess with your head.

  On a related note: I suppose I should care that you and Brooks have such a colorful past. And yeah, maybe I should feel betrayed that you downplayed your history with her all these years, but in this case, I understand. In another life, Drew was Brooks and I was you.

  Same song, different verse. Only my verse sounded a little more Taylor Swift (the country years), a little less Justin Bieber (the lost years).

  What? Don’t try to claim you’re not a Belieber. I’ve seen your iTunes, mister.

  By the way, you know what glaring flaw comes through loud and clear in both your letters and my novel? You and I are terrible communicators. Let’s work on that, okay?

  No secrets. No lies by omission. Because when you look objectively at the reasons we’ve spent all this time apart, it’s painfully obvious we both share the blame.

  Promise me we’ll never do that again. I miss you whenever you’re not around.

  Speaking of promises, I swore not to cheat this time (no texting!), so I’m posting this letter before I fly to New York tomorrow… er, today. I like this old-school letter-writing tradition. You think there’s a chance we could do it again sometime?

  Love,

  Sully

  Three Years Later

  Monday, May 7th

  Dear Sully,

  Happy third anniversary to us! I looked it up, and the traditional gift for a third anniversary is leather, which means it’s time for another journal. Third time’s the charm, right?

  Don’t blame me, Sister. You’re the one obsessed with all things three.

  And three squared is nine, so I picked nine more Sully/Pete stories. I’m aware that you know them all. But they were fun to retell all the same.

  Love,

  Pete

  Autumn Leaves

  You stayed in Paris for four and a half days after the Centre Lafayette anniversary shindig. Which meant that I only had one hundred and eight hours to convince you that the handsome young devil holding your hand was actually Pete Russell 2.0 – the upgraded, limited edition.

  Wednesday, we went to the Musée Marmottan. You’d never been there before, which is just wrong considering how much you love Monet. But what you didn’t know was that the Marmottan has an early sketch of Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Day. That little surprise earned me enough points that you stuck around ‘til Thursday.

  That day, you came with me to class. The doodle notes you took on the left-hand (back) side of the page were the best ones in my spiral all trimester. And Thursday night, we walked along the river.

  On Friday, we took the train down to Chartres and made out like teenagers the entire hour and a half down and back. That night, even though we were tired from the best day ever, we went swing dancing at Caveau de la Huchette. No one puked afterward.

  Basically, it was the most perfect week of my entire life.

  So when it came time for you to fly back to Ireland on Saturday evening, I’m not gonna lie, Sully: I was bummed. No wait – make that devastated. Shattered. Verklempt.

  “Listen up, frowny face,” you scolded as we stood near passport control – the point of no return – poking the corners of my lips upward with your index fingers. “Nowadays, they have these newfangled inventions called airplanes, and guess what? By some miracle, they fly east and west. So we can see each other as often as we want. Twice a week if necessary.”

  “I know that,” I muttered, pulling you close. “I just miss you, Sully, and you’re standing right here. Why’d you have to go and make my life better this week? When you’re not around, Paris smells like car exhaust but when you’re here, everything smells like pumpkin spice lattes.”

  “That probably has less to do with me than it does your Starbucks addiction, but okay.” You draped your arms around my neck. “Now listen, I don’t like to be bossy, but on Tuesday, you gave me a journal full of letters and then promptly ripped your gift right out of my hands. You promised to give it back before my flight home, so come on. Hand it over, Hemingway.”

  You stepped backward, one hand on your hip, the other outstretched, waiting. So, I unzipped my messenger bag and pulled out a blue journal decorated with dozens of old-fashioned skeleton keys. When I placed it on your palm, you immediately opened it, just as you had earlier that week on the Pont des Arts. Only this time, you read the Post-It note on the inside cover.

  “Dear Sully,” you read out loud. “Night and Day told me your side of our story. I hope the letters in this journal tell you mine. Aw.” Your eyes scanned the rest of the Post-It. “Remind me again why you mailed the other journal to Ireland?”

  “Oh, you know,” I shrugged. “I figured the other passengers on your flight might not want both halves of my toxic soul in such close proximity to one another on a plane. Flammable materials don’t mix well with all of that canned up oxygen, you know.”

  You smiled so sadly at me in that moment, Sully. “Don’t say that.”

  “What? That oxygen is flammable? Hey, I don’t make the rules, sister. That’s science.”

  “Your soul is the opposite of toxic, Pete Russell.” You stepped forward, wrapping your arms around my waist. “Your soul is a beautiful, old warrior who has survived the very worst days and still fights onward. And one of these days, you’re going to believe that, all by yourself.”

  You hadn’t even read my letter about Dr. Keating yet. How is it possible you guys both saw me the same way? Mind. Blown.

  So I hugged you, Sully. I held on so tightly I have no idea how you could breathe. Every single second in Paris that week, the new thing between us – well, the newly renewed thing – had felt unbreakable. Solid. Like nothing had ever split us apart. But also all week, I’d been dreading that moment at the airport. And not just because you were leaving me.

  No. I dreaded the moment those journals left my possession. Because once you read them, my Pete-shaped mask would be stripped away forever.

  But you totally get that hey-I’m-naked-in-the-middle-of-Times-Square feeling, don’t you, Sully? When you wrote Night and Day, you placed your soul on display too. Only I hadn’t made that connection yet the Saturday you were leaving me to head home.

  I didn’t understand my own fears that day. But you did.

  “Thank you for trusting your words with me,” you whispered, lips brushing against my neck. “I promise to keep both halves of your soul safe. Your heart, too.”

  Nope, that definitely was not a tear you saw in my eye when you pulled away. Can I help it that you’d spent all week flicking fairy dust in my eyes, you crazy Irishwoman? Some of it probably landed in your hair and flew up my nose while you were whispering nice things to me. Good grief, Fiona. Real men only cry at bowl games.

  You’re smiling right now, aren’t you?

  Well, fine. I suppose it’s possible that your future husband did go all misty-eyed in the airport that day, but he didn’t stay that way for long. Because you, young lady, are a shameless flirt. Sure, the average person believes you’re an uptight book nerd, but me? I know the truth.

  “So, hey,” you said, slipping my journal inside your carry-on. “Does Addison College observe Thanksgiving, or do they take their French cultural immersion one step too far and ignore all American holidays?”

  “They don’t ignore it. We only have class on Tuesday.”

  “Lucky you. And lucky me, because I have Wednesday through Friday off too.”

  “Really? Huh. I never would’ve guessed you three Irish Sullivans would still celebrate American holidays.”

  “Oh, we Sullivans don’t. But my employer these days is Reardon Publishing, and they specifically told me to take Thanksgiving off. As in, that’s an order, young lady. Go somewhere nice and clear out that cobwebby right brain of yours so we can finally read some new stories.”

  “Somewhere nice, huh?” My pulse began t
o race. “Like Tahiti?”

  “Oh, sure. That’s a swell idea. Let’s invite melanoma to join us while we’re at it.” You flashed the backside of your hands at me, freckles glittering everywhere. “No, instead of Tahiti, I was thinking somewhere in this time zone.”

  “This time zone? Well, that narrows it down. Andorra? Lichtenstein? Luxembourg?”

  “More like Italy,” you replied. “Venice specifically, but I’m not opposed to Florence or Siena either. Possibly Cinque Terre, but not Rome. Okay? We’re too old to chase down pickpockets in the subway, no matter how romantic the Spanish Steps might be at sunset.”

  My mouth quirked into a grin. “Meredith Sullivan, are you asking me out on a five-day date to the most romantic city in the world?”

  “A date? Pfft. This is a research trip. I was commanded by my employer to find some inspiration. It just so happens that I need an assistant to follow me around and fetch me espressos while I work, and since you already live on this continent, I figured what the heck? You can come along too. If you’re not busy, that is.”

  “No, no,” I smiled, tugging you toward me by your waist. “I’m all yours that weekend. I’ll even bring Kelly’s itinerary if you like. We never got to use it back in the day.”

  “Nah. Itineraries are for losers,” you smirked, lips inches from mine.

  You kissed me, Sully – scandalously, I might add, right in front of the gendarmes. And for the rest of the day, I could still taste your pumpkin spice Chapstick on my lips.

  It wasn’t until I got on the train home that I discovered the tiny drawing you’d slipped inside my jacket pocket while you were distracting me at passport control. On a piece of hotel stationary, you’d sketched your girl Edith de Nantes, the buxom waitress with the winning smile, and her boyfriend Hugh Guennot, cuddled up together on a gondola in the middle of the Canale Grande, both with heart eyes for days.

  You knew I’d never say no to Venice.

  But just for the record, they do say Lichtenstein is terribly romantic in early winter.

  Paper Wishes

  Venice is our town, Sully – maybe even more than Paris. Remember how the sun sparkled off the lagoon and lit up your gray-blue eyes? Well, I guess you couldn’t remember that. But I bet you do remember letting me kiss you in front of the other passengers on the vaporetto from the airport into town. We kissed for so long that we missed our stop. So we rode it another ninety minutes until our stop came around again.

  I figured the whole weekend would swoosh past us in a romantic haze, but that’s not true, is it? Turns out that when you have no set agenda, you end up making the best memories ever. Like when you insisted we eat gelato that first night, even though it was five degrees Celsius and our lips turned blue. Or on Thanksgiving Day, when we noticed cameras trailing some guy through the Piazza San Marco, and it turned out to be Chris Pratt filming a commercial for some luxury Swiss watch.

  I told you there was no way it was the real Chris Pratt. Why would Mr. All-American Family Man skip out on the second most important national holiday? But you ignored me. Then you strutted right up to him during a filming break and convinced him to take a photo with “his real-life doppelgänger.” Never in my life would I have predicted that moment. But Venice is our town, Sully, and in Venice we lived out loud.

  I can still smell the brine of the water mixed with the caramel apple of your hair Friday evening as the gondolier propelled us slowly along the tiny canals of the Castello district. You leaned back against me, tugging my arm tight around your waist. Maybe it was the wintry fog creeping in around us, or maybe it was just your heart beating in time with mine, but that night, I finally believed we could last forever.

  On Saturday, we ended up at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Neither of us had ever been there, and to my surprise, it’s one of the coolest museums in the world. I dug the Giacometti sculptures, you went nuts over Magritte’s Empire of Light. And then you spotted that paper-laden olive tree at the far end of the courtyard.

  “Oh, look! Yoko Ono donated this tree,” you said, inspecting the placard. “How cool is this? You write a wish on one of these pieces of paper, then you tie it on a branch for safekeeping.”

  I watched the silvery leaves fluttering in the breeze for a moment, then smiled. “This seems like the exact level of formaggio to warrant your contempt, Little Miss Cynical.”

  “What do you mean, formaggio? Making wishes isn’t cheesy!” You punched me softly in the stomach. “I think we should do this, Pete. Separately, of course. I don’t want any of your silly wish germs hopping onto my paper.”

  “Only you could insult my wishes and get away with it.” I grabbed us a couple of stubby golf course pencils from the stack, two sheets of paper, and two ribbons. “I’ll go over there, and you can stay here, but take a picture of yours, okay? We’ll text them to each other tomorrow night.”

  “But that’s cheating! What if I want mine to come true?”

  I glanced around. “Am I missing the sign prohibiting wish discussion?”

  “Everybody knows that when you make a wish, you’re not supposed to tell anyone.”

  I slid a stubby pencil behind your ear. “You believed in the tooth fairy until you were twelve, didn’t you?”

  You gasped. “The tooth fairy’s not real?”

  “Take a picture,” I said, spinning my finger in front of your paper. “Take a picture, or it never happened. That’s an order, Sullivan.”

  And with that, I skulked away to my corner of the courtyard.

  Guess which one of us texted her wish first on Sunday night? Spoiler alert: it was you.

  Now listen, you’ve accused me several of times of scribbling up a fake wish after I saw yours. I know, I know, it would be easier to believe that my wish would be something basic like “I wish they’d invent calorie-free kettle corn” or something equally nonsensical.

  I understand why you think I updated my wish to be as schmoopy as yours. But you can check the time stamp on my photo, Sully. The image I sent you was the image I took in the courtyard that day.

  It’s not my fault that great minds think alike.

  Here’s yours:

  I wish Pete would come to the

  Juniper House for Christmas.

  (For real though – you busy?)

  And here’s mine:

  I wish I could spend

  Christmas in Ireland with Sully

  (for real though – you busy?)

  All I want For Christmas

  A week before Christmas, the day before my last final, a crazy winter storm hit the North Atlantic. To be honest, I never knew storms like that made it this far east. I thought they hung out in the Caribbean and maybe occasionally hit the northeast coast of the United States. But apparently, this is why the Juniper House does most of its business from May to September, because every flight headed west from Paris was shut down for so many days that I almost missed Christmas full stop.

  But on Christmas Eve morning, I arrived at Charles de Gaulle by five a.m. so I could hop the first flight to Shannon. Ten hours later, I walked out of customs and into your arms. I swear, Sully, I’ve never hugged anyone the way I hugged you that day. I’d missed you so much in that month we were apart that my classmates started calling me Eeyore.

  Please never tell another soul. Thank you in advance.

  The storm that had kept me from you had also dumped two feet of snow on the western coast of Ireland, so instead of the carpet of green I’d been expecting, the road to Doolin had transformed into a magical fairyland of snow and stardust and twinkling lights.

  Jamie and Molly had blocked off the last two weeks in December so there were no guests in the inn. I remembered the Juniper House from those two weeks we’d spent in Doolin with your brother and Kate, of course, but when we pulled up to the canary yellow house built into the side of the hill, I had the distinct feeling that I was home.

  Before you’d even pulled up the emergency brake, your dad was opening my car door, then pullin
g me into a hug so warm that my eyes threatened to leak. Your mom had dinner ready, and even though it was only five o’clock, I was starving (thank you, time change). The two elder Sullivans piled half a kilo of roast on my plate while they asked me a million questions about Paris. I was well on my way to a food coma when they started bragging about you and your book.

  “Meredith’s agent Isabelle is an actual angel,” Molly cooed. “Why, just last month, she negotiated three new foreign rights’ deals.”

  Isabelle? I thought. Hmm. The Highgate magazine said her agent’s name was Michael.

  Blah blah blah, Poland. Blah blah blah, Sweden. Blah blah blah, Estonia.

  Now, looking back, I can think of twenty times that day I should have noticed something was off. But I never did, Sully. Not even when we were late to the Christmas service because you stayed in the bathroom twenty minutes longer than usual.

  Ladies and gentlemen, meet Pete Russell. Dreamy-eyed, oblivious, and stuffed to the gills with Molly Sullivan’s Christmas roast.

  Clueless, I tell you. When that tiny kid nailed the high note on the chorus of O Holy Night at your tiny village church, I took your hand, because in that moment, I believed we’d finally put the past behind us. And when you squeezed my hand back, I bit my lip to keep myself from tearing up again, because oh my word, we were finally back together.

  So, no. I did not find it odd when you nudged me out the back door before the music ended. Nor did I notice you fidgeting while your parents dawdled in the courtyard, introducing me to every townsperson who stopped by to say hello.

  A few moments later, a buxom blonde walked up and grabbed you in her arms like you were her long-lost sister. And when you hugged her back, I felt… well, a little bit sick, to be honest. As I watched you with this woman, I suddenly realized that there were people in Ireland who loved you. A family of your own choosing.