“He’s out.”
“Good,” he replies. “You okay?”
I nod, though the word feels approximate at best. “I think I need to write things down. My brain won’t shut up.”
He gestures toward his office without hesitation. “Use whatever you need.”
The office is neat in a way that feels intentional. Not sterile, but orderly. A place built for thinking through problems and containing them. I sit at the desk and reach for a pen, then realize there isn’t one on the surface. I open the top drawer, expecting paper clips, batteries, or the mundane clutter of everyday life.
Instead, an envelope slides forward. Must have jerked the drawer too hard. The envelope is old. Yellowed at the edges, creased like it’s been handled and re-handled. My name is written across the front. Beneath it is an address I haven’t used in years. My college apartment.
He wrote this back then?
For a long moment, I stare at it, my fingers hovering like touching it might make it disappear. The room feels suddenly smaller, the air thicker. I glance toward the door, half-expecting Aiden to be standing there, but he’s still in the living room, giving me privacy.
I pick up the envelope.
It’s heavier than it should be. Not physically—emotionally. Six years of silence packed into something thin and fragile. I turn it over in my hands, noticing that it was never opened, never mailed. The stamp is missing. The flap is sealed.
Never sent.
He never intended to send it to me. Never wanted me to read it.
Now, that’s all I want in the world. A distraction.
I swallow hard, my heart pounding in my ears. Every possible version of what could be inside presses forward at once. Apologies. Confessions. Explanations I didn’t get when I needed them most. Or maybe something simpler. Something worse.
Whatever it is, it’s none of my business. He didn’t send it for a reason. I respect his privacy.
But…
I slide it back into the drawer carefully, as if returning it to its place might keep the past contained where it belongs. My hands are shaking when I finally find a pen and scribble a few scattered thoughts onto a notepad, the words barely legible as I try to empty my head enough to sleep.
When I step back into the living room, Aiden looks up immediately. “You find what you needed?”
“I think so,” I say, and mean it in a way he can’t possibly know.
He nods, accepting that answer without pushing. We sit in silence for a while after that, the city lights dimming beyond the glass, the day finally loosening its grip.
But even as I close my eyes later, lying awake in the dark, all I can think about is the envelope in the drawer.
My name. His handwriting. And the six years it waited for me without a single word.
AIDEN
It’s the middle of the night when Harper taps my shoulder. She’s standing there barefoot, wrapped in one of my sweaters, her face pale and tight, eyes shining too brightly. Her hands are shaking in the dim light.
I bolt up. “Mason?—”
“He’s fine.”
I scan her for injuries, for panic, for the kind of fear that means immediate action. “What’s wrong?”
She doesn’t answer right away. She lifts her hands. The envelope is unmistakable.
Old. Yellowed. Creased. My handwriting across the front. Seeing it in her hands feels like the floor dropping out from under me, a sensation so sudden and violent it steals my breath. That’s happened to me before at a fire. Third floor burnt out the fourth from underneath my feet.
It felt just like this, except now, my face goes cold instead of hot.
