Although definitely no poet, I spoke from my humble heart, the boy inside me desperately needing the love of the girl inside her.
After traveling the long journey back to the States, I finally pulled the rental car into an empty angled space in front of Sweet Dreams during what I knew would be a slow time for them. Her fastback was parked out front in its usual space. My heart ached at the sight of her car, at a cherished piece of her.
Knowing how to open her front door without triggering the squeak that she’d been meaning to oil, I slipped into her shop without giving away my presence. I approached the front counter, deposited my message on the center of it, and gave the letter one last glance.
A rolled parchment page with a slender red bow stood inside of an empty wine bottle that the flight crew had been gracious enough to give to me. A cork they’d politely provided had sealed my message inside.
For a split second, I contemplated ringing the service bell on the counter, but decided against it. My needs were spelled out inside, and I wouldn’t ask for anything more, not even to disrupt her day. Hannah, or one of her employees, would find the bottle sometime this afternoon when a customer needed help.
I could wait. I’d been suffering for almost a week. I was willing to wait a whole lot longer.
So I left.
I should’ve gone to Kristen’s place to let my sisters and family know I was back and geared up to piss them off on a regular basis. Tired and hungry, however, I went back to my place.
I couldn’t find my keys and had to knock on the door. The Jeep was parked in the driveway, and it was a weekday, so I hoped Mase was home. The inside entryway light flicked on. The door opened.
I laughed at his shaggy hair and wild-eyed expression. “Damn, I’ve missed you, Mase.”
“Holy fuck, dude.” A hundred and ninety pounds of lean surfer tackled me to the concrete on my front landing. “You disappeared with only a note. That’s bullshit.”
I grunted. “Get off me, cretin. And didn’t Kristen tell you?”
He climbed off and stood. “A note from you and a cryptic voicemail from her that you’d be gone awhile. Lame. Next time I expect a call from you.” He glared at me, then offered me a hand up. Ava barreled through the open front door and jumped onto my chest before I fully grasped his hand. Her weight knocked me back onto the ground, as if seconding Mase’s complaint.
Mase laughed, pulling his hand back. “We both missed you, you stupid fuck. You don’t get to just up and leave your life. You worried the shit out of us.”
Ava kept licking my face. “Hey, girl.” I laughed. “I missed you too, ya’ little menace.” I looked up at Mase. “Yeah, sorry. Just needed to physically and mentally check out for a while.”
I scooped Ava off my lap, shooed her into the entryway, and rolled up off the ground. Then I followed them into the house.
“Do me a favor and order us a pizza? I need to text everyone and let them know I’m back.”
“Of course, man. Whatever you need.”
I nodded and disappeared into my room, shut the door, and collapsed onto my bed. I wanted the first text to be Hannah, my fingers hovered over her name, but I held back. She had my letter. That would be better than anything else I could do. I created a group text and added everyone in.
Hi, guys. Back home now. Exhausted. Eating then passing out. Will get together with everyone soon.
I closed my eyes while I waited for the pizza to arrive. When I woke, it felt like a few hours later. Turned out, it was almost sixteen hours later. Bright sunlight streamed through the windows as I stumbled into the kitchen.
I scrubbed my hands down my face, getting my bearings before I opened the fridge. I grabbed a bottle of water and a takeout pizza box that had edible-looking contents.
As I sat down at the table, half a pepperoni slice shoved into my mouth, my eyes drifted over to the corked empty wine bottle sitting on the center of the table. Inside the bottle was a crumbled wad of paper. Not rolled like mine had been, or folded like the one from Hannah, just a crushed note sitting in a sad heap on the bottom.
My heart sank.
Chest heavy, it was everything I could do to pull another full breath into my lungs. I chewed my mouthful carefully before doing anything further, thinking it would be ironic for me to choke to death on cold pizza before I read my death sentence.
Then, as if the tragic comedy thus far hadn’t been ridiculous enough, it took a full five minutes to manipulate that damned wad of paper through the narrow bottle neck and tiny opening without destroying it. I mentally sent out every positive vibe and thought possible while trying to breathe, praying that good things came to humble men who’d wronged, suffered, and were determined to be better.
I finally pulled the crumpled mass free.
Nothing on its surface indicated a fatal prognosis. With care and hope, I pulled the corners free, flattening out the paper with my hands (only after I’d wiped my sweating palms on my jeans.) The side facing up was the letter I’d written to her on the connecting flight to Boston from Dubai. I took three deep breaths to steady myself before flipping it over.
To a blank page.
I blinked.
I flipped it over again, back to the side of my letter, scanning it thoroughly to be certain I hadn’t missed a note in the margin or an underlined word. But nothing new had been written.
So that was it then. My heartfelt letter crushed
was
the reply.
I flipped it back over, closing my eyes, fighting back tears.
A door opened. I heard shuffling and the rapid clicks of puppy claws running across the wood flooring.
“Hey, man. Welcome to the land of the living.” The fridge door opened. Shut.
Hardly.
The land of the living dead was more like it.
Mase sat across from me.
I sighed and opened my eyes, shoving the rest of the pizza slice into my mouth, even though I’d likely puke it up in a few minutes with how my stomach churned.
“What’s that?” Mase pulled the note out of my reach.
“Nothing,” I grumbled. He didn’t turn it over, just stared at the crumpled blank page, so I didn’t get too territorial over what might as well serve as my obituary.
Mase pointed to the center of the paper. “Doesn’t look like nothing.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, then the paper.
Asshole better not be fucking with me.
I swiped the page back from under his pointed finger. When I leaned over to have a closer look, all the air wheezed out of my lungs.
On the reply to her note that I’d left in her door almost a week ago, I’d written a huge “no” on one folded side.
But on the wide expanse of my wine-bottle parchment letter in which she could have written her reply—an entire blank side of paper for her to let me know how she felt about my request—she’d only sent back one tiny word.
A very small “yes.”
I exhaled a relieved lungful of breath, grateful for the tiny sliver of hope.
(And realized I needed fucking reading glasses.)
***
The next morning, sitting at a table at the coffeehouse felt like déjà vu. Only this time, Madison walking toward me had been my idea. Closure.
Coffee in hand, she sat down across from me, a somber expression on her face. She knew what this was about, even though I hadn’t spelled it out in so many words. My heavy tone had been enough.
“Hi, Cade.”
“Thanks for meeting me, Madison. We have a few things to discuss.”
She nodded. Said nothing.
“Please understand why we’re meeting like this. I’m giving you this time because we grew up together. But it has to be the last time that we see, or even communicate, with each other. I’m not your therapist, even though you came to me all the time to fix your problems when we were kids. I think that’s why you’re so attached to me now. But it needs to end. You need professional therapy.”
She took a deep breath. “I know. I need help.”
“I hope you truly understand what you need help with. It’s not just sexual addiction. You seem to have replaced sexual addiction with obsession. And I was your target, for whatever reason.”
“I discovered too late that you were the only one who ever really loved me.”
I gave her a nod. “I did. I loved the woman I thought I knew. But you’re broken right now. You need to get fixed. Not for someone else. Not to ‘get’ something out of it. For you.”
Tears welled in her eyes. It seemed my words were getting through to her.
“I mean it about the no communication. This is it. You can’t contact me again. Or interject yourself into any part of my life. Ever. You need to move on. Learn to be better for you. Alone. Once you’re healthy, someone who sees and loves you for
you
will come along.”
“I’m so sorry. I regret what I’ve done, how I’ve hurt you. And Hannah.”
For a fleeting moment, I saw the little girl I once knew in the eyes of the woman sitting across from me. “Thank you. Please know I always want you to find happiness in your life.”
I stood. The meeting was done. But she looked up at me with the eyes of a lost little girl. I pulled her up from the chair and gave her a fierce hug. She had a hard road to travel. And she wouldn’t have me to run to anymore. The least I could do was give her a solid memory of the boy who’d once cared for her as she worked toward finding another.
I pulled away and gave her a hard stare. “You can do this. The Madison I knew growing up was fearless. Find her again.”
The following afternoon, I walked along the curving sidewalk in our tucked-away section of Fairmount Park ten minutes early and spotted the empty park bench. My pulse kicked up a notch from excited to frenzied, and I broke out in a cold sweat. Anxiety and I had never gotten along very well.
“Calm the fuck down, Cade,” I muttered. “You’re no good to her dead from a coronary.”
Ava trotted alongside me, happy to be in the middle of so much activity buzzing around, but amazingly mindful due to Mase’s new leash training. And I couldn’t decide which I wanted more: Ava running in every direction chasing grasshoppers and butterflies or the pup on her best behavior. The latter seemed easier on me, however, and I was grateful. Besides, best behavior seemed to be the theme for the day.
I sat down on the park bench, watching the sidewalk in the most likely direction Hannah would come from, and Ava sat beside my left leg. Not even thirty seconds ticked by before I stood and began pacing. Misunderstanding my actions, Ava scampered up and followed for two circuits of pacing, before giving up, sitting down, and watching me wear a groove in the sidewalk.
A gravelly deep voice sounded out behind me. “Have a seat. She’s going to say yes.”
Blinking, I turned around. An elderly man leaned on the top back slat of the park bench. “How do you know—”
He snorted. “A man this nervous? Only a woman could make a man so crazy. Relax. Breathe. And speak from your heart. Women understand that language.”
Distracted by the man, my erratic pulse began to calm. I arched a brow. “You seem wise.”
A hard laugh was followed by a rattling cough. As I took the seat he suggested, he clapped me lightly on the shoulder with his frail hand. Ava settled next to my leg again.
“Only fools play the game of love. The lucky few get caught by it and never let go.” His bony finger pointed along the sidewalk. “There she is, my boy. Go get her.”
And there she was.
I sucked in a breath, my heart jumping at the sight of her walking toward me in a bright yellow sundress. Her hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, a few dark wisps catching in the breeze, teasing across her pinked cheeks.
In the first brief second, I could see she fared well, if perhaps a little on the thin side, but my focus lingered on her tentative smile. Ava broke all her good behavior and bolted toward her, yanking the leash out of my hand. I laughed and stood, glancing behind me to thank the older man.
He’d vanished. I scanned the park behind me and off to the side where I’d come from, but he was nowhere. Furrowing my brow for an instant, I wondered if he’d been real.
Soft laughter chimed out from the sidewalk reunion, and I spun my attention forward again. Hannah’s megawatt smile struck me.
She knelt down, then laughed as Ava licked her face. “I’ve missed you too, girl. Yes, I have. Oh yes, I have.”
A pang of jealousy speared through my heart. But I banished the nuisance feeling as quickly as it had come.
The innocent deserved unconditional love.
The rest of us had to earn it.
Ava’s new red leash trailed along the cement as Hannah lifted the gangly puppy into her arms. “She’s almost too big to pick up now.”
Unsure if I’d be able to keep my hands to myself if I let them hang free, I shoved them into the pockets of my jeans. “Yeah. Mase’s been feeding her some kind of premium organic puppy chow.”
She nodded. Her smile softened as her gaze lifted to meet mine. Hesitant hope reflected back to me in those bright green eyes. She threaded her hand through the loop of the leash before plopping Ava down onto the sidewalk. They walked the rest of the way to the bench. “Don’t forget how he loads his plate with extra food, just to be able to drop her table scraps.”