September 10,1967
Tommy saidtoday that he wants a future with me.He says it like he’s already seen it—like he’s memorized the house and our life inside it.
And I believe him.I feel it too.
I know it sounds impossible, but I think some loves come pre-written.
That line slices through me—notwith sharpness, but with something worse: the quiet ache of recognition.
It doesn’t just hurt, but lingers too long.It presses into the places I’ve kept sealed off, places I didn’t know were waiting for her words to slip beneath my skin.
She believed in something enough to hide it.
And now I’m here, decades later, trying to understand a girl I only knew in pieces, reading her confessions in the margins of records and the spine of a worn purple journal.What else did she bury under politeness?Under smiles and Sunday dinners?What dreams were locked away so quietly no one even knew they existed?
What am I supposed to do with this?
With her truths, her heartbreaks, her ghost pressed between vinyl sleeves and loose paper?
My breath stutters.
Tears hit too fast, too hot.I don’t try to stop them.I just press the heel of my hand to my forehead like that’ll hold me together long enough to finish grieving whoever she was—this girl who wrote about Thomas like he’d hung the stars, who believed a mixtape could hold a future, who thought love might actually be enough.
And maybe it was.
Maybe it was, and the world swallowed it before she had a chance to live it.That thought undoes me.
I call Ari, because if I don’t, I’ll spiral right into another box and find another letter and not know how to come back from it.
She picks up on the first ring.
“Please tell me you kissed the guy next door,” she says by way of greeting, like she’s been waiting for drama all day and has just sensed her moment.
“No,” I say, dragging my sleeve over my cheek.“I didn’t.”
“You’re crying,” she says instantly, her tone flipping from mischievous to mom-friend in under a second.
“I’m not.”
“You have the crumble-voice, Mara.Don’t lie.Did Alec disappear?Did he freak out?Did Mila guilt him into playing dolls and he ran for the hills?”
“No,” I whisper.“It’s not Alec.I found one of Lina’s journals.It’s horrible.”
A pause.Then, gently, “Worse than the letters?”
I shake my head, forgetting she can’t see me.“It’s not worse.It’s just ...different.Raw.Younger.She sounds so fucking young in this one, Ari.Like she thought the world would rearrange itself if she just loved hard enough.”
And I don’t know what breaks me more—that she believed that, or that part of me still wants to.
“You want me to come up?”Ari offers, voice soft now.“I can cancel the gala, bring wine, chocolate—whatever survival kit we need for this week.”
“No,” I say too fast.“I’m okay.I just needed to hear someone who doesn’t live in this penthouse and make my pulse skip like I’m a teenager again.”
Another pause.Then she exhales.“You’re allowed to fall apart.”
I nod even though I don’t want to admit it.“I know.”
But I don’t know.Not really.Not when falling apart makes me feel like I’m unraveling into a version of myself I can’t recognize.The girl who cried at a journal.Who missed a man who probably wasn’t even hers to begin with.
