by Olivia Lynde
"Thank you," I murmur, pressing against my chest the little bundle he's given me and covering my bra.
"Just hurry and get out of those wet clothes," he tells me huskily. He lets his hand fall from my cheek and makes to go.
"Seth, wait!" He turns back to me with enquiring eyes. "There's something that you need to see." I grab the plastic bag from the washing machine and hold it out to him. "I found this tonight. Take it with you and look inside."
He frowns. "What's this about?"
I smile sadly. "Please just do this for me."
After giving me another searching look, he takes the bag. "All right. Now go shower." He shuts the door behind him.
I look at the clothes in my arms: there's a pair of gray drawstring pants and a comfy-looking, high-neck green T-shirt. Slowly, like in a dream, I lower my face into the T-shirt and inhale the clean, woodsy scent that imbues the fabric. Seth's scent. Another tug at my stupid heart, and this time I turn cold with fear. God, I have it bad!
In the shower stall, I set the water as hot as I can bear. But I still don't quite manage to chase away the cold.
* * *
His T-shirt is enormous on me, reaching down to my thighs, and feels wonderful. His pants are much too big as well, but I cinch the drawstring tight at my waist so at least they won't fall down. I also roll up the pants legs, five times, to avoid tripping on them. Finally I put on my necklace, slipping it under the T-shirt. I brush my teeth, delighted at using Seth's toothbrush again, then wash and dry my face. My hair is still a bit wet after the towel-drying I gave it, so I let it loose to dry naturally.
I can't delay my stay in the bathroom any longer; I've already done everything I could do, as slowly as possible. I force myself to the door but then stop before it and rest my forehead against the cool wood.
I know I need to get out there, to Seth... but I'm so very scared. Scared of his reaction. Scared for myself because I've let myself hope again. To hope for Seth. And what if he tells me that the letters don't change anything between us?
Was it only this morning that I opened myself to him and he rejected me? Or yesterday morning now, I guess. Still, it feels like a lifetime has passed, not less than 24 hours. I feel like I've aged a hundred years.
And now I'm procrastinating again.
Don't be a coward! I chide myself. You came all the way here, didn't you? Yes, I did. I can't back off now. So I pull in a deep breath for courage and open the door.
* * *
He's lost the jacket and the boots and is sitting on the floor in the living room, leaning against the couch. He's surrounded by stamped envelopes, and in one hand he's clutching an opened letter.
His frame is strung as tight as a bowstring on the verge of breaking from the stress. His eyes are scrunched closed and his face... God, his face reveals such horrible anguish it's as if he's suffered a mortal blow. It cuts me deep inside to see him like this; I would do anything to take his pain away.
I approach him slowly and sit down on the floor, just a few feet away from him, and I know he's heard me, but he doesn't open his eyes to look at me.
"This letter I'm holding..." His voice is like scraped sandpaper, rubbing all my senses raw. "This letter is dated the 12th of March, five years ago. I remember that day with perfect clarity."
I remember that letter as well. It was the last I wrote to him.
"That day in the evening, after getting off work, I went to the Andersons', just like I always did every second day during the first year after you left me."
On hearing this, joy and grief clash in my heart: joy because he waited for me like I did for him, and grief because he must have suffered like I did when the wait proved in vain. He still hasn't looked at me and I want—I need—to touch him, but I know that I cannot. Not yet. He's telling me something important to him, and I have to hear him out.
"Jessica answered my knock as always before and told me so-damn-kindly that no, this time too there had been no letter from Summer. There never was any damn letter, and I hated Jessica for the pity in her eyes when she told me this. Most of all, I hated myself for missing and needing you so badly that I would put myself through this useless ritual and have fucking Jessica Anderson look at me with pity in her eyes... again and again and again. And"—here his voice cracks slightly—"I hated you for not needing me like I needed you."
I can't stop my tears anymore, so I let them flow silently down my cheeks. And I clasp my hands together, painfully tight, to keep myself from reaching for him.
"So on that day," he continues hoarsely, "the 12th of March, the day you wrote me this letter telling me how empty your life felt without me and to please forgive you for whatever you had done that upset me, and for hounding me with too many letters; but please could I call you just once at this number, please just one time, you needed to hear from me, even if it was for the last time, even if afterward I no longer wanted to be your friend... You know what I did on that day?" At last, his eyelids lift and he looks at me, and oh God, his eyes are bleeding agony.
"On that day, I gave up on you. I went to a party and got drunk, and I had sex with some random girl. I did it to punish you but ended up punishing only myself—because no matter what I did, I couldn't forget you. But by hell, did I keep trying! I thought you'd betrayed me. And I gave up on you..." His voice, full of torment, breaks again.
My heart, too, flails in anguish. His pain is like my own, only it hurts so much deeper than mine ever could. Like an awful black hole, it sucks all light and hope out of my world. It's more than I can bear; I can't stand to see the hell in his eyes and keep away from him any longer.
So I give in to my need and go to him.
I climb onto his lap and press myself into him as close as I can, holding onto him frantically with arms and legs. His arms come around me instantly, and he rises in one smooth motion, supporting me, while I'm clinging to him with all my limbs wrapped around him. He takes a couple of steps and sits down on the couch, settling me on his lap, gripping me so tightly that I can barely breathe; but I'd sooner stop breathing than tell him to let go, and I try to get even closer to him even though we are already melded into each other. I bury my face in his neck and let myself cry the pain of the five years without him.
His right hand rises and curls around my nape, caressing me, and his husky voice is soothing in my ear: "Shh, Sunny, shh! Stop crying, baby, please stop crying. I can't stand the sight of you in pain."
But tears keep streaming down my face in an endless stream of remembered grief, and my body is wracked with the force of my sobs. And Seth keeps on holding me in a desperately tight embrace, surrounding me with his body, calming me with his touch.
And giving me solace at last.
Chapter 15
An eternity later my tears stop, but I don't let go of Seth. If it were possible, I probably never would; the way I'm feeling right now, I could stay here in his arms forever and die happy. His firm grip on me doesn't loosen either, and his right hand continues to stroke my hair in a lulling rhythm.
With my forehead still pressed into the side of his neck, I start to quietly tell him my story. "After leaving Rockford, it took some time until I could make any phone calls. But once I could, that's the first thing I did—call your number. Only this voice message came on, saying that the line had been disconnected."
He explains, "Mom sold the house just a few days after Grams died. I couldn't do anything to stop her. And when the house was sold, the old phone number was disconnected."
I give a small nod, and my nose slides along the column of his throat. I keep breathing him in, filling my lungs with his familiar, woodsy scent. "I started writing to you. Just like you had made me promise, I sent you a letter every day."
After a short silence, he observes gruffly, "There are 365 letters here."
My mouth twists in a slight smile against his skin. "You counted them?"
"Yes. And I'll read them."
"You will?" My voice is tiny; I feel so terrib
ly vulnerable, all of a sudden.
"You wrote the letters, didn't you? So I'll read them." Another taut silence during which his arms tense around me even more. "Sunny, after you left... I yearned so damn much for even one letter from you. One word. Anything." The emotion in his tone is heartrending, and I tremble in his embrace. Truly, this boy keeps breaking my heart even as he's mending it.
He seems to hesitate before speaking again. "So if you wrote a letter each day, it means you wrote to me for a year. Before you decided to stop." He sounds... conflicted, and I wonder what it is that he really wanted to ask. Why did I stop writing then? Why did I write for so long? Why not for longer? Maybe even: Did I hate him when I never heard back from him? Did I give up on him, as well?
With my face hidden in the crook of his neck, somehow it seems a little easier to try and put my feelings into words for him. "A year seemed like... a punch-in-the-face kind of milestone, I suppose. You hadn't called, hadn't written in all that time. I waited and waited, and I kept hoping... And it was all futile. Only, I didn't want to admit this, didn't want to give up. But that one-year mark, Seth... It was like a turning point where I felt that I had to admit it, I had to take my blinders off and accept..."—my voice hitches a bit—"accept that you wanted to cut all ties with me."
"Sunny!" My name and pain and reproof—all mixed together.
My voice becomes very small again. "In truth, I only stopped writing because I thought that was what you wanted—what you were trying to tell me by never calling back. And if that was how you felt, I didn't want to keep being a nuisance to you." Even so, it had been the hardest decision I ever had to make. I'm upset just remembering that terrible anguish.
I don't know how much of what I'm feeling comes through in my tone... but I fear it's too much. Seth's arms convulse around me, and his accent is gravelly when he says, "Sunny, please, I need to see you. I need to see your face while you're telling me all this. Please, baby, will you look at me?"
After an infinitesimal hesitation, I nod against his neck. Slowly, I unglue my hands from his back, draw them carefully back along his sides and squeeze them in between our bodies. I put my palms on his chest and his arms fall to my waist, still holding me close. The feel of his heart beating strong under my right palm quiets my inner turmoil. I lift my head at last and give him what he's asked for.
I show him my face, overflowing with all my emotions: all my old sorrow, and my new burning hope, and the terrible vulnerability that infuses every cell in my body. Our gazes connect with fierce, nearly unbearable intimacy, and the storm in his eyes flares wilder. Please don't hurt me again, I silently beg of him. I don't know if I'd survive it this time.
"I kept waiting for a letter from you," he says huskily. "I was so damn anxious when no letter arrived—so damn worried that something bad had happened to you! I called social services, but they wouldn't tell me anything. Then I called Ms. Owens, and she told me that you were fine, as far as she knew. So I had that much, at least.
"But she wouldn't help me get in touch with you. I was going crazy worrying because I'd had no word from you, and there was nothing I could do except to keep waiting. But all the waiting was useless and I began to lose hope. Eventually I stopped waiting." Dryly, he adds, "Outwardly, at least."
"Outwardly? What do you mean?"
His lips curl into a tender smile, yet his eyes are still so incredibly sad. "That means, my precious girl, that in my heart I never stopped waiting for you. I would've waited for you forever."
I look at him sadly. "But if you really felt that way, why didn't you want me in your life when we met again? I understand that you felt betrayed—I felt the same thing—but even so I reached out to you..."
His angel's face softens further. "I didn't get the real significance of your gesture then, but I do now, and I'm staggered, Sunny. You thought I'd broken my promise to you, and still you tried to make excuses for me and offer me your friendship.
"But I didn't know this; all I could think was that you had put me through hell five years ago and seemed to not even care." In a lower, rasping tone, he says, " All through our childhood, you were the best part of me: the one pure, perfect part of my life. That you could turn your back on me so easily after you'd left Rockford—thinking that crushed me." His eyes are grim with memories.
In his embrace, my body has turned rigid with dismay. For there are two things in this world in which I ever believed: my parents' love for me and, once upon a time, Seth's love. Coming to doubt Seth's love, after our separation—it made me doubt everything I knew about my world.
And now I understand that he, too, experienced something awfully similar because of me.
He gruffly continues, "That you could dismiss our past together so easily when we met again—it crushed me twice-over. I was furious and disappointed, and that's why I acted like I did." Then, with a wry grimace: "Not that I ever stood a chance of being able to keep my distance from you."
"Truly?" I'm lapping his words up, allowing them to dissolve the last little knots of misery inside me.
"Sunny, from the first moment I saw you again, I've been fighting against myself, trying to stay away from you. But it was a losing battle from the start—because I didn't really want to stay away from you."
"You wanted me back?"
"Of course. But because I thought I was the one wronged by you, I tried to hold on to my anger long enough for you to come to me." He smiles self-deprecatingly. "I'm an arrogant ass, I know."
I grin at him and tease, "So you were waiting for me to come to you and what—beg for your forgiveness with abject remorse? At which point honor would have been satisfied and you would have given me absolution?"
His mouth twists into an apologetic, but oh-so-delicious grin. "Something like that." He shakes his head and adds, "I don't know, Sunny. A plain 'I'm sorry, Seth' from you would've probably done the job too. But I was getting damn close to just saying, 'To hell with who's to blame', and coming after you myself." Then some dark thought crosses his mind, for his face turns somber again. "Forgive me for the hurt I caused you five years ago. And also these last few days. I didn't know, Sunny."
My heart throbs with sympathy and tenderness. "There's nothing to forgive, Seth. What happened in the past wasn't your fault, and in the last two weeks you were just acting in self-preservation, I think. That, unfortunately, is something I know all about. But you were still there for me when I needed you most." My skin crawls at the memory of Josh's attack.
"I should've never trusted Jessica that she'd give me your letters. That fucking bitch!"
I shake my head. "You had no reason to suspect how utterly rotten that girl is. I doubt that she's ever been anything other than sweetness and light around you. But good heavens, Seth, it's because of her that we've been apart all these years!" My eyes are stinging with the effort of holding back renewed tears. "If I hadn't come back to Rockford, we would've never learned the truth about the past. We would have been lost to each other forever!" The idea is much too horrific to even contemplate.
His expression, too, darkens forbiddingly at the thought, and his jaw is clenched so hard it seems carved out of granite. I start to move my hand in a soothing motion on his chest, and his body seems to relax slightly.
Therefore his next words, spoken with calm solemnity, take me aback: "For what Jessica Anderson did to us but most of all for the hurt she made you suffer, thinking I'd abandoned you... I could tear that soulless bitch limb from limb, then see her burn in hell while she's still begging for breath."
I shudder at the gruesome image he's painted. But I don't pause in gently stroking his chest.
He cocks his head slightly to the side, regarding me. "Sunny, how did you even find out that she had our letters?"
"Oh, well, Jessica's made it her favorite pastime to abuse me verbally." My voice is matter-of-fact, but his muscles tense again, his gaze turns a deeper blue with rage. I hesitate before continuing. "Tonight she came into my room before leaving for the pa
rty, to brag about her plans for you. She-had-a-drug-she-planned-to-slip-you-to-get-you-to-have-sex-with-her." My words come out all garbled, but by the incredulous look entering his eyes, I see he's understood me.
"So that's why she was after me all night, trying to force booze on me? I thought she just wanted to get me drunk enough to—" He breaks off with a wary glance at me.
"So you didn't take anything from her?"
Seth shakes his head. "No, I don't take drinks from other people. Besides, I was driving tonight, and even if I hadn't been, I rarely drink anything stronger than beer these days. I had a rough time when I was fourt— a few years ago, swilling way too much. But I didn't like the loss of control. Then I also had football to consider, so eventually I stopped drinking." His gaze sharpens on me again. "But you were telling me about the letters."
I recount how Jessica called me Sunny even though there was no way that she should've known that name. How I kept obsessing about my having written that name in my letters to him and how I started to ponder some things that he had told me which didn't seem to fit. "In the end, I decided to just go and search among her things. Yet still I could barely believe my eyes when I found my letters hidden at the back of her closet."
He furrows his brow. "It's weird, actually, that she didn't destroy the evidence of what she'd done."
"I also wondered about that, but maybe she kept the letters as a trophy of sorts? Maybe took them out occasionally to gloat? Because she totally seems the kind who would do that." I grin ironically. "To have Jessica's own callous arrogance come back to bite her in the butt seems like poetic justice, doesn't it?"
Seth's frown hasn't lessened. "I hate the idea that our finding out the truth about the past depended on something fickle like luck or coincidence."