Ren dipped his head and his hair fell forward in front of his face. It had only been two weeks since we met but it already looked so much longer than it did on that first evening in the garden.
‘At least I got my first love letter,’ he said, nudging my knee with his and sending a thrilling rush all the way through my body. ‘Something to show the nurses in the old folks’ home if I’m lucky enough to live that long.’
Maybe it didn’t have to be so hard after all.
‘Would you like another?’
The words were out of my mouth and away before I realized what I’d said and when he looked up, I was holding the piece of paper out to him. A breeze danced across the lawn and it fluttered as I held it so lightly, almost daring him to take it from me before it blew away forever. Slowly, he moved towards me, crossing into the moonbeam that sliced the space between us, and for a single breath he glowed from head to toe.
‘What is this?’ he asked, opening it and reading before I had a chance to answer. ‘Is it the letter you had at the baseball game? The one Bel didn’t want me to see?’ His eyes scanned back and forth, two, three, four times, before he looked up at me, his hands trembling.
‘Why do you have this?’
‘Because I wrote it,’ I replied, so brave, so scared, so painfully aware I might never have this chance again.
It was only a short letter, just a few lines really, but Ren studied it as though he was going to be tested oneach and every syllable, brow furrowed, lips parted. After what felt like a lifetime, he looked up at me.
‘You wrote this?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied.
‘And you wrote the other letter too,’ he surmised. ‘It’s the same handwriting, same style, the same …’
He didn’t finish the sentence. I wasn’t sure if he could.
‘Bel really liked you but she didn’t know how to tell you,’ I explained. ‘So I offered to write the letters for her because it was easy for me to talk to you and I wanted to help her but—’
‘You tried to help by making a fool of me?’
There wasn’t a trace of a smile on his face, nothing but hurt and disappointment, and it struck me dumb.
‘You were what, her emotional spy?’ he added, every word a challenge. ‘Bel sent you to find out the best way to play me? Jesus, Phoebe, all the things I told you about myself, about my family. How much Ilovedthat letter. And you two used it against me. This is messed up.’
‘It wasn’t like that,’ I said, trying my best to make him understand. ‘She told me how she felt and I just dressed it up a bit. There was no dark agenda or anything, we were doing it because we care about you.’
I was desperate to make him understand but I couldn’t get the right words out.
Ren rose from the bench, shaking as he stood.
‘We?’ he repeated. ‘So what, I was dating both of you only I didn’t know it?’
‘No, that’s not it,’ I groaned. Every thought and feeling I’d ever had swirled around and around inside my mind and I could see the ones I needed but they were justout of reach. ‘Can we start this conversation again? Everything was OK a minute ago, you and Bel already agreed to be friends. There’s no real harm done.’
‘The real harm was done when you and Bel decided to play me for a fool,’ he replied, hurling the letter to the ground. ‘Safe travels, Phoebe, I hope you come back to visit again someday. Glad to say I won’t be here.’
The evening breeze picked up his letter, my letter, and blew it into the rose bushes as he walked away, hiding the piece of paper away inside a cage of thorns. I could have left it there. I could have gone back to the party and pretended everything was fine like I had a million times before. I could have got on the airplane, flown home and tried my best never to think about Ren again. I could have lived my life without him.
I could have.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I took a deep breath in, wincing as I stuck my hand into the roses. Reaching past the beautiful blooms and down into the sharp thorns that protected them, allowing something so beautiful to thrive. The barbs slashed at me as I searched for the letter but I didn’t stop until I felt it in my fingers and pulled it back into the light. Dozens of scratches, the same colour as my dress, tracked up and down my arm. The price of retrieving the letter. And even though my arm throbbed, the stings and scratches on my skin were still easier to bear than the wounds Ren’s words left behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I didn’t tell Myrna, Suzanne or Bel I was leaving. They would understand. The party may have been a once in a lifetime thing but so was Ren.
‘Ren!’ I yelled, banging on his front door. ‘Please open the door. I’ll stay here all night if I have to. Even though I don’t have a coat or any water or anything to eat and there are coyotes and raccoons and Suzanne mentioned a mountain lion the other day and—’
