“Having a family. Having Brett.”
I sigh. “I’m glad that all worked out for you.”
“You deserve to know what it feels like to be someone’s whole world.”
“Is that how it is with you and Leyla?” I ask.
Matt scoffs. “I was talking about Brett,” he says.
“Oh.”
“Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
He exhales. “So, Leyla announced she was leaving, right? And I was still in the hospital at the time. When she came to drive me home, on the fourth day, she was in a shit mood. I asked her what was wrong. She was quiet for a bit but eventually she told me that when she went to pack, she took my suitcase because it was bigger than hers. And in the back of my closet, she found something.”
“What was it?”
“I’ll just show you.” Matt rises and walks down the hall. Moments later, he returns with an old Nike shoebox, which he sets down on the table. “Open it.”
Confused, my fingers lift the edge of the orange cardboard lid, revealing stacks of envelopes. Letters.These are mine. This is my handwriting.“Oh,” I mumble. I lift a stack of envelopes with postmarks as old as 2005 out of the box, and I find other treasures: a framed prom photo, a prayer card from my mom’s funeral, countless movie ticket stubs, and the playbill fromBilly Elliot, which we saw for my 16thbirthday. There are also two Ziploc bags: one filled with beach glass, the other filled with photographs. I can feel Matt’s eyes on me as I carefully sift through the contents of the box. “I can’t believe you kept all this.”
“I could never throw it away.”
I hold up a photograph of us at around age 12, posing in front of a giant green John Deere tractor at the farm. I have braces and wildly frizzy hair. “Really? You couldn’t bear to part withthis?” I ask, laughing.
He grins. “Nope. Not even that one.”
I ground myself back in the present. “She must have freaked out when she found this.”
“Yeah. But really, it was just the final nail in a coffin that had nothing to do with you. It made me realize that I deserve better than someone who feelsstuckwith me. Brett does, too. So I didn’t try to stop her from leaving for California.”
“Did you guys have a fight?”
“Not really. She just left. And then, not long after—” He pauses to clear his throat. “You showed up.”
I bite my lip, unsure of what to say.
He pulls an envelope off the stack. “You handed me this letter, and it scared the crap out of me because for the past seven years I’ve done nothing but try to get over you and move on with my life.” He hands me the letter. It feels like just yesterday I was parked in my car, holding it in my lap. “And, I don’t know, it just felt like…fate, or something.”
“I can understand that.”
“I wasoverit, Taylor.”
“Really? This shoebox tells a different story.”
He closes his eyes. “I mean, until you showed up on my doorstep.”
I scramble to understand the implications of what he’snotsaying.
“It’s like you said in this one.” He pulls a different envelope out of the box and removes its contents. He flips over the first page, looking for something. “Ah, here it is. ‘You could live a whole lifetime and never say or do anything that really matters. You could be breathing, but waste your whole life away. I can’t do that. I need to really live; I need to say thank you and I’m sorry and I love you until I’m blue in the face. Because this day is a gift.’” He folds the page, placing it in the envelope.
“That was after my mom died.”
“You were right, though. I need to focus on living the best life I can.” He swallows. “Right now. This minute.”
“I agree. You should.”
