Page 35 of Autumn on My Mind

Agreed.

Can I call you?

My breath catches in my chest when I see the bouncing dots telling me he’s responding. Those dots bounce, and then they disappear; they show up, they disappear, they come back⁠—

“Just say it,” I say when my anxiety is so high I’m starting to feel nauseated again. “Come on.”

As though he can hear me berating him through the phone, Dominic’s text finally pops up.

Dominic

We should probably just meet.

We need to make a plan and come up with some ideas anyway.

“A meeting. Okay. That’s fine. We can meet,” I breathe.

ME

I’m at Bugelbach’s until seven tonight

So it would need to be after that.

Or we can do another day soon

Dominic

I can swing by this evening

My stomach swoops—it’s that corn dog—but I breathe a sigh of relief knowing that we’ll be meeting on familiar ground.

ME

That works. I’ll see you then.

And with that I tuck my phone back in my pocket, stand up, and get back to work.

REESE’S LETTER

Dominic—

I thought for a long time what to say here. I wondered if it was presumptuous to write at all. But ultimately I want you to know I’m sorry. I can’t turn back time, and I can’t say I regret our relationship, because it was profoundly meaningful to me. But I regret pushing forward when I should have waited, the pressure I placed on you, and I regret the way we left things. I hope you can forgive me for my part.

I also hope you know I don’t blame you for anything. I hope we can move forward and look back at our time together as a good memory rather than a bad one. Most importantly, I hope you’re able to flourish and be happy wherever you end up and in whatever you do.

Thank you for everything. Truly.

-Reese

I don’t tell Dominic where to meet, but he finds me there anyway.

It’s a bench swing right inside the entrance to the farm, worn wood with fake strands of fall leaves woven around the arms and back.

Dom arrives with the wind. His shoulders are hunched, his hands shoved in his pockets against the gusts that whip my hair, and his shuffling steps carry resignation. No baseball hat today, but the work boots are present.

He eyes the bench for a brief second before sitting next to me. I’m sure he’s thinking, like I am, of the last time we sat here; we were six years younger and halfway in love, falling more with every second.

A lot has changed since then, of course. But when Dom settles next to me, I can still smell the faint scent of wood shavings I’ve always loved, even with my leather bag propped between us.