Page seventy.
I'm not good at this. I want you to know that I know that. I am good at hockey and I am good at reading rooms. I am good at staying in control. But I am not good at this. At saying things out loud. At letting people see what's actually there. You made me want to be good at it. That's new. I don't know what to do with new.
I press my lips together and turn the page.
Page eighty-three.
Week four. I bought strawberries at the market. They tasted like you. I threw them away.
I put my hand over my mouth and chew my bottom lip.
Page ninety-one.
I read to you when you were unconscious in the hospital before you woke up. I don't know if you could hear me. I read for three hours because it was the only thing I could think of to do. Your voice wasn't in the room and I needed something to be okay. This book specifically. Because it's ours. Whatever else is true — this is ours and I needed something in that room that was.
The burning behind my eyes gets worse.
I breathe through it.
I turn pages.
Page one-hundred-and-four.
Week five. I almost called. I picked up my phone forty times and put it down forty times and on the forty first time I opened a new page in this book instead. I think that's what this has become. Every thing I can't say out loud. Every thing I would have written in your margin if you were still sitting across from me. You're not sitting across from me and I'm still writing. I don't think I can stop.
Page one-hundred-and-twelve.
I think about the park. I think about it every day. Not the kissing — though I think about that too, I think about that more than I'm going to admit, but I think about the moment before. You lying on your back looking at clouds. I have been trying to find words for what I felt watching you and I can't. I've been trying for six weeks and I can't. That might be the most honest thing I've ever admitted.
I close the book.
I sit with it closed in my lap, and I look at the kitchen ceiling. I breathe and feel everything that has been sitting in my chest for six weeks move and shift and rearrange itself into something I don't have a name for yet.
Something that is not anger.
Something that is not grief.
Something that has been underneath both of those things this whole time, waiting.
I open the book again.
There’s one more note. Different from the others. Written larger, like he needed the space, like the smaller, careful hand wasn't enough for this one.
I know what I did. I know what it cost you. I know I don't get to ask for anything. I'm not asking. I'm just telling you the truth in the only way I know how to tell it because you deserve the truth even when I'm bad at saying it out loud. You deserve everything. I hope you choose it. I hope you choose all of it. Whatever that looks like. Whatever you decide. I just needed you to know that what happened in that library was the most real thing that has ever happened to me, and I would burn every other thing down before I'd take it back.
— T
I close the book.
I sit on the counter in the quiet for a long time.
Then I get down.
I walk to the front door and pause.
Is it locked? Are they keeping me hostage? I’m afraid the knob will shock me or something. I wrap my hand around it and twist.
It opens.
