All The Letters I’ve Ever Read

by Gray, Ace

  I turn over again, this time just staring at the roof of my truck until my eyelids grow heavy and close. Mina is the specter behind them, her sadness. I finally fall asleep with the vision of her wide, hollow and sorrowful eyes haunting me.

  “James?” For a minute I think it’s Mina, her soft voice waking me with the soft sunrise. My heart soars and suffers all at once. She’s just now coming to me. “James, are you in there?” But it’s Luna knocking gently on the back window of my truck shell.

  I scrub the sleep off my face then blow out a deep breath before shuffling to the foot of my makeshift bed.

  “Mrs. McLennan?” My voice is gravelly as I open the window. “What are you doing out here?”

  “I should ask you that.”

  “I…” I sigh. “I didn’t want to…” I swallow all the ways to finish that sentence.

  She studies me closely, and for just a moment, I feel the same way I do around Mina. Stripped down to my secrets without me saying anything. I can’t help but turn away.

  “I brought you something.”

  I’m hoping for coffee.

  “Be patient with her. With all of them, okay?”

  I glance up at her just long enough to nod. As soon as she steps out of the frame of my back window, I blow out a deep breath and shove my hands through my hair.

  “Hi,” Mina says, and I freeze, my hand still shoved in my hair. I was not expecting my fiancée.

  “Hi,” I say tentatively back, my eyes meeting hers.

  “Why did you abandon me last night?” She pulls her sweater tighter around her shoulders.

  “Abandon you?” Temper and a sleepless night flares in my voice before I school it. “Mina, I had no intention of being anywhere but wrapped around you.”

  “So you slept out here? Explain that to me.” Tears edge in on her voice and judging by the rings beneath her eyes, they wouldn’t be the first she’s cried this morning, even early as it is.

  Be patient. Luna’s words stick with me.

  “Your brother locked me out.” I don’t have to adhere to all of Luna’s advice and I definitely don’t mind throwing him under the bus.

  “You could have knocked.”

  “You refused to talk to me, to let me touch you.” I try not to let my exasperation at her contradiction break through.

  “I needed space.” Her eyes fall to the concrete.

  “Whelp…” I gesture at the distance between the truck and the house, knowing it’s a little harsh but not being able to stop myself.

  “You could have come in. I wanted you to come in.”

  “How was I supposed to know that?” I lift my hand to rub the pulsing ache at my temple.

  “I’m sorry,” she says softly and the fragility of it makes me crawl toward her and let the tailgate down.

  “It’s okay,” I say as I reach for her. “I know this is a lot. I’m trying to be there as much possible. I’m not great at this stuff but I’m trying, I’m really I am.” I start to pull her into my chest but she stiff arms me.

  “Please don’t.” She might as well slap me. “It’s honestly painful to have your hands on me.” She’s my fiancée, my best friend, but hearing those words makes me heave.

  I rock back with the sucker punch of her truth, wounded reads clearly on my face. I know because it sings from my heart and I can’t tamp it down. Tears, full and hard and fast start rolling down her cheeks. Her deeply sorrowful eyes are tinged with anger. Last night, I would have been certain that it was at the world, not me, but today…

  Today even the soft sunrise is a harsh light of day for us.

  “Is that why you called me Tanner?” I shouldn’t ask—I know I shouldn’t—but I have to know where it came from. “Because my touch makes your skin crawl?”

  “I…I’m not sure. It was just visceral.” She pulls her sweater sleeves over her hands and plays with the edges. Her eyes won’t meet mine.

  “To equate me to the man that didn’t—no couldn’t—love you?” Something locks up behind the wall of my heart when I say those words so succinctly. It’s the hurt I don’t want her to see, but it’s something more too. Something I don’t mean to lock up but my self-preservation does anyway.

  “Please don’t hate me,” she murmurs.

  “Never,” I say firmly. “I don’t know how to make this better, Mina. I don’t know if the answer is dive in or keep my distance.” Frustration fills me, and there’s that cornered animal snapping deep inside me, but there’s no hatred. Not really. I can rationalize her reaction. I just don’t like it. At all. “When the problem was me, and my bullshit, it was a no brainer. It was easy to fight like hell. But this… I can’t force this. I don’t want to.” I sigh as I shove my hands back through my hair.

  “I’m a little lost right now, too.” She shrugs.

  “And you’re allowed to be.” I sigh. “But it can’t be an excuse to push me away, Meen.”

  “I didn’t mean to. It was just a knee jerk reaction.”

  “That’s even scarier.”

  She shrinks under the weight of the words that she knows are true. We are so fragile. We always have been.

  Fresh tears trickle down her cheeks and my heart puddles on the ground with each one. She looks so small standing there, bunched up in her sweater, fidgeting as her tears fall. This time I can’t help myself. I slide toward her and let my legs dangle off the tailgate, grabbing at her sweater hem and pulling her between my legs in one smooth movement. She burrows into my chest, hands clutching at my shirt in that way she has. I’m back where I’m supposed to be, and she fits perfectly there.

  “Let’s start over, okay?” I murmur up against her rumpled hair.

  “I’d like that.” Her words are muffled by my t-shirt.

  “Hi,” I say the first thing I did to her today, believing that this time it will be different. Because I have to. Because that’s what we are, hope that some mistakes can be learned from and love can blossom in the cracks.

  It’s been a few days since the disaster of our Denver trip when I sit down to work on my vows. For the first time, nothing comes. Nothing about us or our love or what I would say to Mina on our wedding day. Instead I question whether there will be a wedding day.

  I still want it. I want it and her and a future with her, more than I really care to admit. I’ve never wanted anything this badly. Bad enough to stick it out when things get hard. Too hard.

  And I want to form that feeling into words, into devotions to her, but I can’t quite manage. So I put my pen down and walk away.

  “Hey,” Mina says as she walks in on me reading in bed.

  “Hey.” I smile as I watch her pull out her earrings and let her hair down. Watching her strip her layers and defenses is one of my favorite parts of my days. Remembering that she’s keeping up more and more these days shoves my heart back into the muck of my emotions. Lately they’ve been dirt. “How was your day?”

  “Good.” She smiles but it’s missing something.

  We’re getting better at this autopilot thing…

  I sigh and let my head fall back to the headboard. This wasn’t what I thought life would be like with Mina. I thought the passion I felt each time I sat across from her would ignite into a flame that threatened to burn too hot. Not sputter into ash.

  Ash like the letters Mina wrote to me that still sit in the bowl at the center of our dining room table. What I wouldn’t give to read them. To know her heart when she won’t show it to me.

  “Whatcha reading?” she asks, and I shake away the letters.

  “Dark Tower by Stephen King.”

  “Again?” She smiles and for a second she’s that Mina from three years ago, she’s my Mina.

  “Yeah, again.” I smile. “Like you don’t reread books.”

  “What?” she asks, not like she’s playing innocent but rather like she’s distracted. I sigh. I thought I had her there for a moment—one of our genuine, sparking conversations about to crackle through the room—only for it all to fa
ll short. The weight on my chest is uncomfortable for a minute then I settle in and remember the feel. It’s been my new normal since her mom’s diagnoses. Speaking of her mom…

  “How’s Luna?” I ask, folding my book back onto my lap, genuinely concerned.

  “Fine.” She turns away and starts collecting laundry from around the room.

  “Didn’t she get test results today?”

  “You remembered that?” She barely gives me her attention. “She’ll have surgery and we’ll see.” There’s no emotion in her eyes, her voice. I can feel mine percolating in my chest and nipping at my voice. We’ve changed places, her stoic and detached, me feeling far too much. We’re foreign to each other this way. I’m foreign to myself.

  When did it happen? How, even? Was it Mina or me that morphed?

  Did this happen before with Tanner?

  I don’t mean to think it but there it is, a question that’s been forming in faded shades of gray in the back of my mind since that envelope arrived. Since she called me by his name that night. What really went wrong there? Not in the end, I know it was the letters, but before that. What happened?

  The question scares me. A fear deep and bone chilling. Because if it happened then, it could happen now. I could lose her.

  I look over to where she’s shimmying out of her dress to add it to the pile. It’s the black dress she was wearing the day she admitted she wasn’t over me. The dress that hugged her each and every curve the first day I thought there might be a way I would get the privilege too. What I wouldn’t do to be back in that moment. When she held me up against the alley wall because I felt too much and she wanted to help shove all the emotion back inside. When she remembered me for me and had kind words for me.

  That night my heart soared. My pulse raced. I jerked off to the feel of her.

  Before I think twice, I shove the sheets aside. There’s one way to get back there. To get back to us.

  I slide my hands along her skin, leisurely exploring before pushing the dress the rest of the way to the floor. The soft thump of the fabric against the carpet makes me twitch.

  “James…” Her voice is strained and dread swirls just below the surface. Will she rebuff me like she has for two weeks, barely able to stomach my touch. Withdrawing far enough that not even kisses and caresses can bring her back. I swallow a knot in my throat. And wait. For what feels like an eternity. Waiting for Mina McLennan sucks. “Be gentle with me,” she finally finishes and I can breathe again.

  I will make her remember all the ways she loves me.

  When I kiss her, each of her kisses back are urgent and timid in equal shades. They each say something but I’m not quite sure what. Is it love me, make me forget, or make me remember? I try and answer each, or any, whatever, so long as it gets us back to where we were two weeks ago. So long as it gets us back to us.

  Her hands curl in, gripping my sides.

  I pull her in, and she rises to tiptoe, smashing herself to me and letting gravity take us a little off-kilter.

  The taste of her…it’s everything I could sustain on.

  Our bodies crash into one another and hold ever so tight. I move my lips down her neck and across her smooth shoulder line to her bra strap. She rolls her head to the side and purrs. My fingers trace the lace lining the strap before I slide it off. I kiss, caress, and nibble along the curve of her shoulder and down to where it hangs loosely.

  She rolls her head again and makes the same sound. My lips hesitate against her skin, at the practiced notes. Maybe I’m just starting to hear her sounds ring in my ears and reverberate in my bones. Maybe I’m imagining it. I’ve had to wonder if I’m imagining everything with Mina anyway—finding her, getting back together, her saying yes, and now us crumbling despite how tight I’m trying to hold.

  I shake it off and move to her other shoulder, dragging my lips across the dips and curves of her chest. She does it again. Same note, same intonation, same gentle rock of her head. Third times a charm and I know. I know she’s phoning it in. Or faking it. Or whatever. She’s not in it with me and that’s what matters. Confusion and wounded pride stills my lips again.

  She moans as if she doesn’t even notice.

  I swallow the thick knot in my throat. Should I call her on it? I’ve tried to snap her out of it the best ways I know how these past two weeks. Logic, reason, even quiet conversation and tenderness. Should we really have another pointless conversation? One about all the things she’s feeling—how she’s falling—and that I want to be the one that catches her. One that ends with her not letting me? Or should I just be gentle like she wanted?

  With a heavy sigh I go back to kissing her tanned skin. She doesn’t notice that I stopped. So I close my eyes and nip at the cap of her shoulder. My hands move up to her bra strap and unhook it. I relish her body the way I want even if she doesn’t move to meet me.

  Tanner chooses that moment to pop into my mind. Tanner and the trouble the two of them had, how things faded. She said they lost their intimacy, that the sex faded, that in the end she didn’t even want him to touch her. My hands automatically grasp her hips as if she might slip away. I kiss her as if it may be the last time. And for the first time since it arrived, I want to open that envelope tucked into one of my moving boxes and see what Tanner McInenary has to say.

  To Mina,

  LET ME LOVE YOU. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, PLEASE. I’LL LOVE YOU HOW YOU NEED. I’LL LOVE YOU HOW YOU WANT. I AM A DESPERATE MAN, BEGGING YOU. PLEASE.

  I refuse to write beloved or dearest wife or something else like that—my vows are to you. To Mina McLennan, soon to be Larrabee. My vows are to who you are at the very core of it all. You and I have stumbled enough times for us to be cut and scraped down to the bone and with that much exposed, I can honestly say I’ve seen all of you.

  And good god do I love you.

  As I stand here today, I can’t imagine a day that I won’t. Through all the bad and all the hard. Even when things get dark or hard, you are a soft light I cling to and I swear those times make me want you more. Love you more. Because it’s all another piece of you. Another day I get to spend with you.

  How lucky am I to be loved by you?

  Even when I’m insufferable while losing at disc golf. (I really don’t mind losing to you. Sort of.) Or laughing at your angry face. (It really is cute, what can I say?) Or even when I’m realizing that I broke your heart and that I have the power to do it again.

  For the record I love you just as much. Maybe more. I don’t know how to tell you all the time but it’s there. Alive beneath my skin and thumping through my veins. I don’t know how to show you all the time but the plans build up in my head. My hands itch to create the world you deserve.

  I love you Mina.

  For three days I thought about everything that may be in that envelope, what it might mean and nothing else. Well, nothing else besides WHY WON’T SHE LET ME LOVE HER? Each breath, each beat of my heart repeats the words until I’m made of that question.

  Now I sit staring at the manilla envelope across the dining room table wondering if it can answer it for me.

  They stopped having sex. Check. They didn’t have anything of depth to talk about. Check. Words filled their relationship in front of other people and went missing when they were alone…

  I lunge for it. Then drop it and shove it back across the table almost as quick. Like I’ve done eight times already.

  Mina is working late tonight so I know she won’t walk in. I wouldn’t want her to see me like this. And if I’m being honest, opening it feels a bit like a betrayal. Though isn’t her behavior one to? She’s shut me out and even with me banging on the door, begging it to open, she refuses.

  The same thought that has been wiggling in the back of my brain since we faked our way through intimacy a few days ago reappears. Is this what ended Mina and Tanner? I always took her word for it when she said that he pushed her away. That his temper, drinking, and inability to love her created this divide that they couldn’t
cross. Or didn’t want to anymore.

  But maybe…

  I grab the envelop again. My fingers tremble as I reach for the little pull tab. I should stop. I know that. But at this point I can’t.

  Instead I rip.

  The first thing that I notice is Mina’s handwriting. The small, stilted letters fill the photographs that fall out of Tanner’s package and slide across my table. The small, stilted letters that write out our grocery lists, that scratch out tickets at her restaurant. That wrote wedding vows to me on the back of a napkin that I keep in my wallet.

  Her words coming from his envelope are disorienting. I stand up and push away from the table. Grabbing a beer makes sense, opening it and taking a deep drink too. I turn back and stare at the table littered in colored photographs of Mina’s notes and try to make sense of anything else. Sagging back into the counter, I take another drink.

  Just because I opened it doesn’t mean I have to dive down the rabbit hole. I could pull them all into a pile and throw them in a shredder. Burn them and add them to the bowl in the center of the table with all the other letters Mina’s written. We can turn that into a bowl of the past, as insignificant as dust as we choose how we build our future.

  But are we really building one? I put bricks into place, feeling that they’re sturdy, that I’m as strong as the stone they’re cut from, that we can weather any storm, only for her to punch holes in both as if made of paper. It leaves me exposed and us withering. I know she’s going through a lot but…

  Maybe reading them will help make sense of all this. It’ll be the reinforcement that I need against this barrage. With my mind made up, believing in hope, I settle back into the bench seat at the table and reach for the one sheet of paper written in an unfamiliar pen and begin to read.

  James,

  Gotta say I wasn’t happy when I saw you and Mina got engaged.