“You guys, it must be midnight at this point. I can’t just barge over there in my pajamas and bang on his door,” I argue.
Roshi checks her phone. “It’s only eleven twenty-three. You’re going over there. And you’re right. You can’t wear pajamas. Put this on.” She rips the first black dress she sees from my closet and hands it to me.
“You’re kidding me. I am not wearing a dress to walk across the street.”
“Oh, but you are,” Faye says matter-of-factly. “Arms up.”
And that’s how I end up in a little black dress at eleven thirty-five, crossing the street with Roshi and Faye peeking through my living room blinds. The second I step outside, the ridiculousness of the dress hits me. I try to turn around andrun back inside, but Roshi and Faye barricade the door. I roll my eyes, secretly grateful for the excuse not to chicken out. Faye gathered the top section of my hair into a half-up hairdo and curled my curtain bangs to frame “the petite features of my face.”
Crossing the street and onto Declan’s lawn takes no time at all, and it feels like I blinked and appeared at his doorstep. The memory of me waiting on his childhood home’s doorstep reverberates through me like a dissonant note and internally, I cringe. But I forgave that. Now, I had to hope he would forgive me for running away. I raise my hand and knock.
Silence.
I turn around and squint my eyes at Faye and Roshi’s not-so-subtle window peeking and throw my arms up. They wave frantically as if to say, Just try again! So, I lift my hand once more and knock. Still, nothing. No footsteps. No television sounds in the background. Not a sound.
Disappointment ricochets through me, and I suddenly feel naive for thinking Faye and Roshi’s plan would work. This isn’t some grand romance book ending. He’s probably entering REM sleep at this very moment like a normal person at eleven thirty-eight.
The bitter sting of rejection spreads through my limbs as I cross the street, but the moment I walk through the cottage’s front door, they smother my encroaching shame with emphatic coos, shoulder pats, and assurances.
Padding into the bathroom, I lock myself inside to peel off my black dress and hop into bunny-printed pajamas. Even with the door closed, Faye and Roshi are shouting encouragements. I laugh them off like they’re a nuisance but secretly they are helping.
On Sunday morning, Faye and Roshi are leaving, but theywould leave me with more confidence than I felt all summer. I hadn’t witnessed myself being open with people often, but I discovered they were a soft landing. It was confirmation that the people in your life could only be as close to you as you let them. Which I hoped to apply to Declan, in ways that were closer than friendship allowed.
Loving Declan came naturally to me. It was, potentially, the one thing in my life I never had to try at. The one place where feeling came more naturally than thinking.
“Promise us you won’t chicken out once we’re gone.” Faye blocks me from retreating to the bedroom the second I unlock the bathroom door.
“You can trust me on this. I’ll sit on his doorstep all week if that’s what it takes for him to let me in,” I promise, and the proclamation takes root inside me.
We decide to call it a night, but before the hands of sleep claim me, I think about the nearly finished manuscript on my laptop, my best friends beside me, and the cottage that holds them all. I fall into the deepest sleep I’ve slept all summer.
For the first time, I could sense that I hadn’t just returned to my home again, but I had returned to myself, too.
Chapter 25
Car rides after dropping off loved ones at the airport have always struck me as particularly eerie. From loud, trilling goodbyes and tight hugs to abrupt silence. Alone in the car with my thoughts as their journey began and mine with them ended.
As Roshi and Faye gathered their luggage from my trunk, we promised to start doing weekly calls to keep up. Long distance would become our new normal, and our commitment to staying close would be the testimony to what we still had despite the miles between us.
I drive back to the cottage in a contemplative daze. WouldDeclan be home at this hour? And if he was home, what would I say?
The hilly road spits me onto my new street before I’ve decided the answers to any of these questions. I park at the curb and walk through my overgrown front yard. There’s a letter laying on my doorstep. That’s odd, I think to myself. I have a mailbox at the front. But when I bend down to reach it, I notice my name written on the front in small, black letters.
I feel the thud of my heart in my chest.
When I pick it up, I notice how soft it feels in my hands. Wrinkles run through the envelope like it’s been crumpled and flattened out multiple times.
I check over my shoulder like someone is watching me, fish my keys out of my purse, and stuff myself inside as quickly as humanly possible. I plop down onto the cream couch and begin tearing into the letter. Like a bear, I think to myself. Like a boy. Like I watched Declan do with his college acceptance letter.
I reach inside and pull out a piece of composition notebook paper. Its edges are frayed like it was torn out of a journal. Inhaling a shaky breath, I read:
Dear Blair,
Let me start this letter by saying I am sorrier than words can describe. I haven’t seen you or spoken to you in 250 days, and I can’t stand to go one more. The last time I looked at you, you were in the stands at the championship game. You didn’t see me, or maybe you pretended not to, but you looked beautiful. Slightly aloof, as always, with a weary look on your face. And in that moment, I promised myself I would apologize to you after the game, to beg for you to come back. I swear it. If you had caught my eyesmaybe you would have understood. But I never got the chance to because, well, we both know what happened.
I heard you tried to see me at the hospital, but they were only letting family in. And when I was out of surgery and back at the house, I heard you waited on my porch for hours. I was probably in one of the medication-induced sleeps I was in almost every day, but when I woke up, my mom told me you were at the door. I told her to turn you away. I told her I didn’t want to see you. I know she told you to leave. I know you did. And I didn’t text. And I didn’t call. And for that, I will never forgive myself. But I beg you to read the entirety of this letter so that I can explain. I don’t expect your forgiveness, but I will never be able to live with myself if I don’t try. So here it goes.
The way we ended was my fault, Blair. I regret asking you to give up your dreams to be with me and rely on mine. I thought I was being the person you wanted me to be, providing for you and your mom, but it was arrogance disguising itself as nobility. Truly, there is nothing I look back on and shudder to think about more. I regretted my words before the accident, but after, the shame multiplied to a suffocating degree. You were right. And I knew you were right before I woke up in the hospital.
