A Letter from Home
Dan's email had made her
smile return, and she felt inside like she did on the first day of spring.
Claudia called her, and she nipped from her bedroom down to the kitchen, where
her flatmate was straightening her hair in the only socket that was close
enough to a mirror to prevent accidental incineration. "Ah, Sammy, cherie,
you couldn't just help me with the very back could you?" she asked when
Sam's footsteps echoed on the hardwood floor.
"Sure," she said,
taking the straighteners from her.
"I'm going to miss you
so much," Claudia continued. "You will keep in touch, won't
you?"
"Of course I will. You
guys have been so great," she beamed.
When Claudia's hair was
straight as spun gold, Sam excused herself to go and change. It was drizzling
outside, and she would rather have stayed inside on the sofa and played Boarderlands
or something, but her inner geek would have to be suppressed in favour of
Sociable Sam.
"You have half an hour, before I come and
collect you..." Claudia laughed.
"When have I ever taken
longer to get ready?" she retorted playfully. Chuckling,
Sam closed the door with a wave and a quiet, "See you in a bit."
She crossed the room to her bed, flicked the
radio on to find it half way through a song by Coldplay, and picked up her
iPad. There was a single red notification next to the mail icon, and she tapped
it. Her heart lurched when she saw the name, and then began hammering away
against her ribs, the blood pounding in her ears, masking her sight from
everything, except that name, for a good half a minute. From: Alexander Norwood.
Gathering her courage, and fighting down acrid
bile in her throat, she touched his message and began to read.
Dear Sam,
I cannot tell you how many times I have begun
this letter, or finished it and then deleted it. It’s the hardest thing in
the world to write something which apologises and explains, without sounding
like you’re just coming up with excuses. That is what I have tried to do
here; to explain to you a bit about why that incident happened, and what it
really was. This message is not one of those "this isn’t what it looks
like" excuses from the cheating asshole from any film or novel you might
care to mention; it is me telling you why you found me the way you did and with
whom.
As you probably know, Rachel was someone I
grew close to in rehab. She was also recovering from a life-changing event,
though she was many months further down the line than I was, and was not a
full-time resident. At a time when I was very low, my friendship with her
helped me to adapt to my new life. Losing your legs is not an easy transition
as I'm sure you can appreciate, and when you’re a guy and you lose
most of your abilities below the belt, it makes you feel like you’re no longer a
man, in any aspect of the word. You lose your reference point for your
sexuality when you lose feeling there – no longer a man because you no longer
feel what you thought made you a man. And you think you can’t be with a woman
because there’s no way you’ll ever satisfy her or be enough for her. I’m sorry that’s all rather
blunt, but there's no delicate or 'politically correct' way to explain it. And
then I met Rachel, who wasn’t in any kind of rush. She wasn’t trying to push
me in any direction, towards ‘healing’ or ‘acceptance’ or anything; she just
sat with me and chilled out with me while I floundered around trying to work
out who I was supposed to be from now on.
I’d only spent about seven
weeks in hospital before I was packed off to rehab, so I was still dazed when I
got there. I don’t think the reality of having an SCI had really set in until I was
there, surrounded by all the other people in wheelchairs, some of whom were
perfect minds trapped in broken bodies, who could only move their chairs with
their mouths, their atrophied limbs strapped up like matchsticks, or other
people who had to have feeding and breathing tubes… you get the picture. I was
a lucky one, and Rachel gave me the space and the support I needed to see past
my resentment and anger and guilt. The guilt is something I'm still riddled
with today. I'll tell you why one day, maybe, but for now, it's not
relevant.
Towards the end of my time there, we started
a relationship, and for a very short time it was great. I’m not telling you
this to make you feel anything in particular, just to tell you what she came to
mean to me at the time. And at the time, she meant a great deal,
and, until eight months ago, I would
have regarded her as a friend, but nothing more. We’ve not seen or spoken to
each other since that day.
Once I left rehab full time, she and I
drifted out of contact over the course of a couple of years. Towards the end of
June last year, we ran into each other at the gym, and she told me about her
fiancé's long-term cheating on her, and how she left him, and I figured I owed
her a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. We reconnected. I’m not sure why I
didn’t share this with you at the time. Maybe because it involved 'me' as
'disabled me', which I was constantly trying not to show around you (idiot that
I was), maybe because I knew it wasn’t quite right
because I think I’d guessed she had other intentions. I don’t really know the
exact reason, but I do know I was a coward, and that I should have talked to
you more, about everything.
Finally, I get round to that afternoon. She
had called by the flat unexpectedly after doing some shopping in town, and
found me having a pretty bad day, physically. She had done a couple of physio
courses, intending to go into physiotherapy herself, before deciding that
teaching maths was a better career for her. After I'd taken some more meds, she
offered to give my shoulders a rub – as you know, the life of a wheeler isn’t kind to
shoulders, and they were pretty gnarled up. I can’t deny that it was maybe
inappropriate for me to have taken my shirt off, but at the time I figured that
she’d seen me before, and I suppose I didn’t think too much of it
because for me there was nothing else. I can see just how it must have looked
from your standpoint though, and I’m so deeply sorry that I hurt you. I keep seeing
your face when you came through the door, and it cuts me to the quick every
time knowing that a sequence of my decisions and actions caused you such pain.
I don’t know whether you’ll be hurting more from the lack of trust or the physical closeness,
but I am equally sorry for both.
I’m also ashamed of the way
I behaved afterwards. My regret quickly turned into that awful and unforgivable
monster ‘self-pity’. It seemed easier to give myself to it rather than face what the
thought of what I might have made you feel, and since you came and shook me out
of it, that has been all I can think of. I think of you all the time. I wonder
how you’re getting on in Canada; what you’re doing; whether you’re alright;
whether you’ve made new friends and have a new life out there; whether you’re looking
forward to coming home, and when that will be. And of course, whether I'll ever
see you again.
I know that the word “I” appears more in this
letter than “you” does, but this is a chance, possibly my only real chance, to
let you know how things look from my side, and how much I miss you. God, I miss
you so much, Sam. I miss the fun we have together: the goofy, wild fun of two
people in love; the fact that we didn’t have to go out and buy
into the cheesy stereotypes to have a good evening together – we could just
curl up on the sofa and just be two people in love; the fact that when I was
with you, that was all I felt - like I was just one of two people in love.
If you don’t reply to this, then
although it would break my heart, I won’t contact you again, but just know that if ever
there’s anything you need, I will be there – I will be there in a
heartbeat, Sam – no matter what, or where, or in what capacity: as
listener, as friend, or as more, whatever you need me to be, I will be, for the
rest of my days.
Ever yours,
Alex.
The world spun and, behind the empty, ringing, tundra of space in her reeling mind, her heartbeat hammered on her eardrums. Then suddenly she was in tears, and they took a very long time to
stop flowing, and it was even longer before the screen came back into focus.
The radio was still playing but she couldn't really hear it; a lilting guitar
or something. Her insides were a writhing mess of feelings, and she didn't know
whether she was predominantly angry, frightened, moved, relieved, in
love, or any number of other emotions. Above the image that kept flashing
across her mind's eye - that of Rachel all over Alex on the sofa - was a clear,
ringing kind of silver sound: it said 'Alex is innocent: he may have been
stupid, but he wasn't disloyal.'
It took real effort to resist the sudden and
unexpected urge to type a hasty reply to him to tell him everything was ok and
that she wanted nothing more than to fly home and see him. Especially since she
now realised that the song playing was John Mayer's 'Comfortable'. Half
a second's more thought however brought a second voice in her mind, which said
'Yeah, but he still let himself get into that situation. He didn't stop. He
could have done, but he didn't.' With the returning pangs of anger and hurt,
she retracted her hand from the iPad and sat a while, staring at the words of
his email without taking in their meaning, her mind switching faster than
alternating current between forgiveness and hurt.
Claudia knocked on her door and found her like
that, about half an hour later. "Cherie, you ready?" she asked,
her French accent on ‘cherie’ resounding in
the empty room. She must have realised that something was wrong from the way
she was transfixed to the spot. “Ça va?"
"Huh?" the sound startled Sam and she
whipped around, tears still staining her face.
When Claudia saw the blotches on her cheeks, she
moved swiftly to her side and put an arm around her. "What's
happened?" she asked kindly. She let her big blue eyes scan the screen in
Sam's lap, and she saw the name. "Is that the guy you left behind in
England?"
Sam nodded. "It's from him. Giving me a bit
of background to what I saw..."
"Right before you’re due to go home… Let me
guess," she said sourly, gripping her shoulders with a tightness that was
incongruous with her tiny, bird-like hands, "He told you that what you saw
didn't mean anything, and that he wasn't cheating on you...?"
"Is that what Kyle told you?"
she countered, still feeling a bit blurry round the edges.
Claudia nodded. "Fresh from Katy's
bedroom..."
"But Alex didn't sleep with Rachel,"
she argued. "As far as I know he didn't even kiss her..."
"As far as you know... Cherie, if you ask
me, you let this one go. You've been carrying him around with you since you got
here, and it's time to let him go."
The thought of never seeing him again, of not
hearing his rich, dark voice, or feeling his arms around her ever again filled
her with a new and deeper kind of terror, and she fixed Claudia with a
horrified and slightly crazed look. "No," she said, "I can't do
that. I can't."
To her surprise, Claudia smiled, and sat back a
little on the bed. "You still love him, don't you? Even after all this
time…"
Without a heartbeat's hesitation, she replied.
"I do."
Claudia had softened and looked a bit sad as she
said, "The moment I found out about what Kyle was doing, I didn't love him
any more, and I knew I wouldn't ever love him again. Seems
like maybe this guy might get a second chance out of you, if he
proves himself, that is..."
"You serious?" Sam asked
incredulously. "You basically just said he was a scumbag and that I should
ditch him!"
She smiled. "I'm sorry. I just wanted to
see how you felt about him. If you really love him, then maybe you should
listen to what he has to say. You know him better than I do, obviously. I knew
Kyle, and I knew he'd cheated, no doubt about it. Maybe Alex didn't do anything
serious after all..."
"Should I reply?" she asked, feeling
like a lost teenager, not a capable grad student.
Claudia shook her head. "No, not tonight.
You're going to wear that sexy
grey dress, and you're coming out with us and we're all
going to have a fantastic evening.
And you're not going to spend the whole time worrying
about what you're going to write, ok?"
Sam nodded. She took one last look at his
message, the 'Ever Yours' making her heart lurch up to her throat and back, and
then closed the iPad cover firmly over the screen. "Ok."
Their usual bar, on Adelaide St West, was nicely
crowded that night, the tiled walls and comfy seats looking welcomingly full,
with enough room for their small party to join without filling up the space and
making it over-full.
Jake was there she noticed, and as Claudia and
she approached the small group of
friends already seated, his eyes danced when she caught his
gaze. With a mere lift of an eyebrow and a twitch of the lips, they shared a
silent joke about the successfulness of their 'date' as she approached, and as
she sat down beside him, he said, "Hey there, how are you?"
"I'm good," she smiled, pulling the
hem of her warm, woollen jumper dress down more towards her knees over her
black tights.
Jake leaned forward with a cheeky,
conspiratorial smirk on his handsome face. "Have to say, I was nervous
when Jenny texted me about this evening..."
"Thought it was Sam and Jake vs. Jenny
and Mel: Round Two?" she grinned back, crossing her legs and leaning
back into the chair.
He laughed, his coppery-blond hair shivering as
he tilted his head backwards. "I might have done... Don't get me wrong
though, I had a fantastic evening with you that time."
"It was just so painfully obviously a
set-up, right?"
"Yeah." He ran his hand through his
hair and said, "Well, since I was so painfully awkward last time,
can I get you a drink this time?"
"Sure, that'd be lovely," she smiled a
fragile little smile, still thinking of Alex, and said, "One of their dark
ales would be great." Alex would approve, she thought, the corner of her lips
twitching.
"Alright then," he said, standing and making
his way over to the bar. At around six foot, he was about as tall as Alex was
when he was on his feet, and he was built similarly, with broad shoulders that,
even Sam had to admit, filled out his blue plaid shirt beautifully.
After a few minutes, Jenny sidled up to her, her
sharp green eyes boring into Jake’s back as he ordered the beers at the bar. With her short dark,
Cleopatra hair falling forward as she leaned inwards conspiratorially, she said,
"Hey Sam, you two forgiven us for trying to set you up yet?" There
was a glint in her eyes that told Sam she would still love for them to get
together.
She smiled, with her very English, long-suffering humour
written loud and clear on her lips, and said, "We're thinking about it,
Jenny, but we're still not sure we can bring ourselves to forgive you for such
an awkward evening..." Tyler's friend smiled and Sam added, "He's a
really nice guy though."
"Who's a really nice guy?" Jake asked,
returning with two pints of dark ale. "I hope you're talking about
me." His smile was broad, confident, even sexy, Sam thought as he set the
drinks down on the table and reclaimed his seat from Jenny, who promptly parked herself on his knee like
a resting budgerigar.
"We were, as it happens," Sam
chuckled. "Jenny was trying to get us to forgive her for playing
Cupid."
Jake shook his head in mock condemnation and
said, bobbing her on his lap once
like a small child, "I
don’t know, Jenny… It’ll cost you."
"Alright, alright," she giggled.
"Well, you two seem to be getting on just fine now anyway," she
added, springing to her feet and
moving round the table to park herself in an empty seat
on the other side.
"We're working through it," Sam
grinned. "It's tough, but when there's ale, it's not so bad." She
raised the glass, chinking it with Jake’s. "Cheers, and thank you."
His eyes met hers over the foamy head of his
beer, and he smiled. "You're welcome."
Sam never had to buy herself a drink that night,
and more than a few of them came from Jake,
though Tyler and Harry chipped in a fair few was well.
Whether Jake was trying to make up for being so awkward before, or whether he
had decided that he actually did like Sam after all, she couldn't be sure, but
she wasn't about to turn down free beer from a handsome acquaintance on one of
her last nights in Toronto.
At around ten, someone behind the bar cranked
the volume of the music, and Jenny, Mel and Claudia leapt to their feet with a
whoop, hauling several of their guy friends to their feet as they left. Harry bellowed, "Sam!
Come dance!" and so they dragged her towards the open space a few yards
away. It had a heady beat that filled her whole body, and though she wasn't
really used to dancing in bars, she closed her eyes and let her body sway. It
wasn't just their party who had responded to the raised volume, and there was
soon a pretty large crowd moving, hands in the air. She was well into her fourth or fifth pint by
then, so when she felt two large, strong hands on her hips, and the presence of
a fairly huge guy behind her, she whipped around and inevitably lost her balance.
Jake steadied her and said with a laugh,
"Steady there Sam, it's only me."
She laughed in relief, and put her hands on his
chest with a gentle smack. The heat radiating off him was incredible, but he
still smelled so good. His hands found their way to her hips, lingering on her
sides.
She began to dance again,
feeling the beat in her chest, thudding against her ribcage like a second
heartbeat. He was close, so close. His height was a bit of a challenge, because
she only came mid way up his chest, so she turned away from him and put her
back against him. They moved together like two blades of grass in the wind, his
body pressing against hers like a protective outer shell. As the track pulsed,
nearing the end of the song, he took her raised hand and spun her around like a
jive dancer.
“Maybe we were wrong last time?” he said, his
deep voice carrying over the tail end of the Swedish
House Mafia track.
Her head felt light and her heart was racing.
Bella’s girly voice rang in her head as Sam imagined her friend telling
her to go for it; to let go; to have fun. She was only there for a few more days anyway. He
was leaning in before she could reach the end of the imaginary tape in her
head, and his good-looking but slightly sweaty face was right in front of hers.
The kiss that followed wasn’t quite how she would have imagined it. He was a
damned good kisser, their was no denying it, but it felt empty. She kept
expecting him to move like Alex had, to nibble her lip like Alex had, to cup
the back of her head, like… She pulled back with a clear ‘this isn’t quite right’ written all over
her face.
His foot took half a step backwards and his eye
searched her face. “Too
much?” he asked kindly.
She blinked a couple of times. Whoever was in
charge of the music had changed the mood. Snowpatrol's 'Set the fire
to the third bar' whined above the murmur of
voices and the clink of glasses. "I'm miles from where you are / I lay
down on the cold ground / I, I pray that something picks me up / And sets me
down in your warm arms…”. Sam choked up. Jake was painfully obviously not
Alex.
As gracefully as she could, with one of those 'I'm sorry, it's nothing to
do with you' excuses, she left with a watery
smile, and made her way to the bathrooms, in search of a moment alone. Closing
the evergreen-painted stall door behind her, she sat down on the seat and
suddenly began to ball her eyes out in silent, shuddering sobs. She knew that
she was ready to listen to Alex. She missed him too much and she was still comparing
perfectly nice, technically compatible, guys to him – a screaming neon warning
sign if ever she’d seen one – and above all she couldn't bear the thought of them
both being in the same country, the tiny island of the UK, like this, with a broken heart each. People change,
people grow apart, but they had been wrenched away from each other, leaving a
gaping hole between them which time was not going to fill for either of them,
she sensed.
Sorting her eyeliner out with tear-blurred
vision took another few minutes, but when she returned to the group, there was
only the vaguest tint of pink in her eyes, and, with a new sense of decision
and purpose, set out to enjoy the evening as best she could, but maybe a little
further from Jake. Two final beers later, things were still blurry, but for an entirely different
reason. They all laughed, shared embarrassing stories about their time together
– usually of Sam’s linguistic or cultural gaffes, but the odd story of her falling
over in the winter and disappearing like
a stoat in the snow might also have surfaced, until
closing time.
Jake’s parting hug had a good deal of feeling, but
drunk as she was, Sam made sure they parted as friends with a chaste kiss on the cheek. Harry and Tyler walked Claudia and Sam back to their
apartment, one girl on each of the boy’s arms for support.
Once inside, Claudia came into Sam's room and
sat down on the bed. With the solemnity of a drunken seventeen year old, she said as Sam
picked up her iPad, "Sammy, do I have to change the wifi password so you
don't email Alex tonight?"
Hurt that
she'd felt the need to point it out, Sam retorted, "Of course not! I'm not going to email
him until the morning." That wasn't strictly the truth; she had planned to write
the email that night, and then send it in the morning, when Sober Sam
could vet what Drunk Sam had written, and take out the mis-types, mis-spellings and misplaced 'I love yous' that her fumbling fingers would no doubt have worked into it. She
blinked and added, “Besides, you wouldn’t remember what you’d changed it to, and then
you’d
never have internet again…”
As Claudia left with a laugh and closed the
door, Sam began a fresh email to Alex, and gave it the subject '\n', hoping she
was making the right Python reference for 'new line', and that she wouldn’t look like she’d made a typo.
Dear Alex,
Thank you for your email.
No, that sounded like she was considering a job
application and was about to turn him down.
Dear Alex,
Thank you for sharing what was going on
No.
Dear Alex,
I miss you too.
God no.
"Sleep on it," she scolded herself,
slamming her iPad cover shut again. "Write it when you actually have some brain
cells that aren't pickling in ethanol."
Her coordination was a little off, so brushing
her teeth proved a little tricky, but eventually, she was fit enough to put her
pyjamas on and climb into bed.
When she woke, her head stuffed with
hangover-infused cotton wool, it was ten o'clock, and Claudia was knocking on
the door. "Sam? I hope you're feeling as awful as I am, and if not, I want
to know why."
She smiled groggily. "Stop hammering on the
door..."
"I have my answer." Pushing in, she
asked, "Breakfast at Madeline's?"
"Let me humanise myself a bit first,"
she croaked.
Claudia blearily ordered the coffees, and walked
slowly over to where Sam had chosen to sit in a dark corner at the back. They
both began to feel a little more alive as the caffeine washed through their systems, and the power of full
sentences also returned gradually.
As Sam nibbled at her chocolate cake, Claudia
said, "I don't know how you can even think of eating, let alone that,
after last night."
"Chocolate is the cure for all
things," she said, wiping the corner of her mouth with a serviette,
"From hangovers to ghosts from the past."
"Oh that's right," Claudia said, her
blue eyes widening, "Did you reply to his email?"
She shook her head, slowly. "Wanted to, but
didn't know where to start. I'll do it when I get home. Only trouble with doing
it in the morning is that they're only five hours ahead, so I might get a reply
straight away..."
"And you're not ready for that?"
"Not with a head this fuzzy," she
laughed.
After three quarters of an
hour they'd drunk their big mugs of restorative coffee,
so the two
friends made their way back to the apartment, the clear, bright Canadian light working some kind of
photosynthesis-like magic on the pickled, tired cells of her body, and bringing
them back to life.
In the stillness of her
room, Sam sat down apprehensively at her desk. A good
twenty minutes of blank screen time elapsed before she even started to write
anything. Intending to copy her
reply into an email when she was finished, she huffed a
laugh as the empty Microsoft Word document reminded her horribly of undergraduate
essays she hadn’t known how to start.
She puffed the air from her cheeks and said to
herself, “Well, how do you feel about it?” Her fingers wrote her answer
on the keyboard: I love him and I want to give him a second chance. “Now
to write that in a way that sounds like I’m still pissed off with him!” she chuckled,
feeling better and more alive than she had in a good many months, but maybe
that was the intense caffeine rush and the nerves talking.
***
Alex would have been lying if he’d not leapt for
his phone or iPad each time it made a noise. But each time it proved to be just an email from
the department, and there was even one from his grandpa.
However, just when he’d abandoned all hope, he
picked it up from habit and could hardly believe his eyes – or his good eye, at
least – and his heart felt like it stopped beating when he read her name. Samantha
Fey. His brain stalled too, unable to process the words or the facts. His
finger hovered above the screen, loath to touch it in case her message was
finite and would cut her off from him forever.
He was sitting in his chair beside the window in
the living room of the flat. The afternoon light was clear, bright, and he
hoped, prophetically optimistic. His knees were still as he sat in his chair,
but his heart was pounding thunderously against his ribs. Suddenly his finger
tapped the screen and he began to read her email. It was short, which he hoped
wasn’t
a bad thing. He took a raspy breath for courage, but it did nothing to stop the
sweat flashing across his nervous palms.
Dear Alex,
I have to say your email caught me off guard
when I found it last night, but I’m glad you sent it to me. I don’t have time to
write a proper reply right now – I’ve got to pack to come home – but I will say that
you were on the right track: the things that struck me most about all of this were actually both “the lack
of trust” and “the physical closeness”.
Thank you for explaining to me what happened
and what was really going on. I didn’t know – I didn’t really want to
know – who she was, or what she meant, to you, but now that you’ve told me how you met
her and what kind of relationship you forged together, I find it easier to
believe that what I saw was indeed what you described to me.
My flight leaves tomorrow, so I’ve got a lot to
do, but when I’ve had a bit more time to read your email through and think things
over, I hope we can talk some more.
Sam.
Alex blinked. The screen swam. It wasn’t until he’d read it through
five times that he realised what it really meant. She hasn’t written me off
completely.
With his blood pressure probably somewhere
around 170/80, he typed a quick reply.
Dear Sam,
Thank you. I look forward to hearing from you
whenever you’re ready.
Yours,
Alex.
What he had wanted to say was how much he missed
her, how much he wanted to meet her at the airport, to sweep her off her feet
when she got off that plane, lay a million red roses at her feet and tell her that she is the only one for
him, but somehow that felt like overkill…
He set his iPad down, not expecting a reply, and
wheeled away towards his room. A nice long session of complex coding would take
his mind off her. As he woke his desktop up again with a shake of his mouse,
his near photographic memory replayed her message over and over. Had he climbed
the first metaphorical mountain? Did she believe him? “Stop it,” he snarled
aloud. “Just stop thinking about it.”
“Thinking about what?” Will’s voice rose above his
swirling feelings from the doorway.
His head snapped round and he said, “I heard
back from Sam.”
“I didn’t know you’d actually sent that email to her…”
“Yeah,” he said, scratching the back of his
head. “It was my last-ditch attempt at a peace treaty…”
Will’s smile hitched up at one corner, becoming a
cheeky grin. “And your efforts paid off then?”
His hands fiddled with the rims of his chair and
he turned to face his brother. He glanced back at the screen and leaned back
against the backrest of his chair. His code was still compiling; it would be
perfectly possible to procrastinate for a little while longer, and he had the
authority of XKCD to back him up too. “I think so,” he said cautiously. “She’s flying back
tomorrow, so she said she didn’t have time to write a proper reply, but at least I
got one…”
“You think that’s girl-speak for ‘I don’t want to
deal with this right now’?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.
Alex smirked. “Who knows…” Suddenly, he sat forward and said, “You know what I
really want to do? I want to meet her at the airport. I want to be there when
she gets off that plane.” And every day after that, he thought, but was
too much of a guy to say it out loud.
“You should.”
Will’s response surprised him more than his own crazy
idea had.
“You should go and meet her,” he repeated. “Otherwise
she’ll
get on a train, or her parents will whisk her away, and she’ll have time to
overthink everything, or chicken out, and you’ll never see her again.”
He tipped into a wheelie and said, “Will, this
isn’t
some chick-flick – I’m not standing at the airport with a boombox and declaring my love
for her.”
“Well thank fuck for that,” Will laughed,
clearly happy enough for his brother to ignore the wheelie. “Because then I’d have to say you’d cracked. I’m not asking you
to do that.” He pushed himself off the doorframe and said as he left, “Just let
her see you. She’ll know you meant it.”
A little frown tugged Alex’s brows together for a
second. Before he could work out what his brother had meant by that, his
attention was drawn to his phone on the desk. It had vibrated briefly to alert
him to an incoming message. Wondering whether
it was too much to hope that it was another message from Sam, he reached for
it. The Android nearly slithered from his fingers when he saw that it was.
Dear Alex,
So, against the advice of my flatmate, I took
a grand total of ten minutes to reread your email, and I want to meet up with you.
I’ve missed you so much. This year was hard enough – being on a
different continent, where although everything is in English, it’s all alien, or
maybe it’s more alien because it’s all in English, I don’t know – but
without having you there, without having you to Skype and share stuff with, it
was just that little bit harder. I worked myself harder than I’ve ever worked in
my life, and that was because I didn’t want to give myself
time to think about those few months of heaven with you in Cambridge. I figured
if I could just throw myself into studying, I would forget that I left a little
piece of myself with you in your living room on that day I ran away.
I want to come and collect that little piece
of myself from you, but I’m not sure I’m entirely ready for it,
but you never know if you don’t try, right? I’m writing this email
straight from my heart, and I’m not even going to check it through before I send
it, because I know that if I stop between typing and hitting send, I won’t send it.
Love,
Sam x
“Yes!” Alex roared triumphantly. “Fuck, yes!”
“What?” Will’s voice was muffled,
coming from another room in the flat. “What is it?”
“She wants to see me,” he said, repeating it in
a whisper to himself. “She wants to see me.”
He lost no time in writing back and saying that
he would be at the airport to meet her when she landed and drive her home. The
next quarter of an hour proved the tensest he had lived through in a long time,
but when her reply eventually came, his heart sank a little bit.
It’s a late flight from
Toronto which lands sometime around 10am (your time) I think. But I've booked a train
ticket from Heathrow because mum says the car is playing up… It might be better
to wait and see you when I haven’t been in the air for seven and a half hours? It’s a long way to
come when I’m going to have to dash off…
He wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip out of his
fingers so easily. Getting to see you for even a minute is worth the
journey. If you’re ok with seeing me, I’ll be there.
Ok, be there then.
Her four word answer sent adrenaline flooding
through every artery and vein in his body. He was going to see her. After eight
months, he was going to see his Sam in just two days’ time.
To be continued...
Yes! Yes!
ReplyDeleteOh, Rose, you made me cry again! I don'n know since when I've become such a whine-screamer!
I hope the last two Chapters won't be too short! :(
Aww, thanks Andrea! Not to make you cry more, but there's only one more chapter... Hope it doesn't disappoint though...
Delete\o/
ReplyDeleteYay!
Thanks :D
DeleteThe build up is phenomenal.
ReplyDeleteSo good!
Thank you!
Thank you, Anonymous. What a lovely comment!
DeleteAaahh - that's all so sweet, so emotional too! I even had a tear in my eye when I read Alex's first and long e-mail. It really came so much from his heart, that I was sharing his emotions too.
ReplyDeleteI tried to go for a Captain Wentworth in Persuasion feel to his letter, which always makes me tear up a bit.
DeleteI keep enjoying this, the more you write for us. Thanks for the regular updates.
ReplyDeleteGlad you like it so much!
DeleteAh!!!!!! Yes!!!!!! Finally!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYes, I abused the explanation point. It was completely worth it!
Well done,
Havocfan
I also was so busy exclaiming that I wrote "explanation" point.
DeleteYou're just that good!
Ha, I'm so dyslexic I didn't even notice you'd said that! Glad it was that good.
DeleteOh wow! THIS IS WHAT I NEEDED TO READ! I'm glad she got her education, but I'm glad they are meeting up!!! Please, please, please is the next chapter the meet up?!
ReplyDeleteTc
It's the last chapter, so........
DeleteHave meant to comment since you posted on Friday, but things have kept coming in the way.
ReplyDeleteAmazing chapter!! So happy to see that Alex and Sam seem to be on their way to making amends, but sad that this story is coming to an end. I have enjoyed each chapter and will miss it.
Thanks Mille. I'm loving your story, so I'm glad you like mine! I've been crazy busy so I've not had a moment to comment on yours for ages!
DeleteIt has taken be days to comment on this chapter only because I've read Alex's letter eight times or maybe more. Your story is like a painting of a person, know matter wear you stand looking at the picture the eyes follow you. Rose your story follows me everyday and it will be a part of me forever. You've shown us battles and conflicts of true life. I sincerely thank you for you story and hope there be many more to come.
ReplyDeleteLynn, I read your comment via the email notification system while I was doing the same journey that Sam did from London to Cambridge today, and I nearly cried. I was so touched! You're very generous with your praise, and I hope I can do your support justice in my final episode on Friday. I'm particularly glad that you liked his letter so much, because it's something I've had written for ages before I'd even got to that point, and it's inspired (as I think I said in an earlier comment) by Captain Wentworth's letter to Anne in Persuasion, which is a letter I have read through many, many times.
DeleteI have a few more stories which are nowhere near completion, but which I fully intend to post up here at some point.
Great emails exchange. Glad Sam is going back to England and never forgot who she left behind and what he means to her. They both needed a break and some thinking. Now we are ready for their sweet reunion. As I am eager to read the next chapter I am upset it will be the end of this romantic and complicated love story. Rose, you really should have the book published!
ReplyDelete