Page 50 of XOXO, Yours

She nods, a small tight motion, and takes a breath.

"I wrote you something," she says. "Which I recognize is—" the corner of her mouth makes a brief, complicated shape, "—ironic, given the circumstances. But I thought you deserved one too. So."

She holds the letter out.

I take it. Our fingers don't quite touch.

"You can read it," she says. "I'll wait."

I unfold it.

Payton,

I've never written a letter before. I mean, I've written things—lesson plans, countless notes to parents, texts I've typed and deleted seventeen times. But not an actual letter. Not on purpose, to someone who matters.

You matter. I'm starting there because it took me too long to say it and I don't want to bury it.

You asked me once, early on, what I was looking for. I said I wasn't looking for anything, which was true and also completely beside the point, because looking has never been how I find things. I find things by accident. The job I love. The sisters who became my family. You.

Here is what I know:

I look for you. In the hallway at school before first period, in the parking lot at the end of the day. I look for remnants of you in my house. Taking myself on daily scavenger hunts in hopes of finding a note from you. I look for you, present in my life, and it took me a shamefully long time to recognize that.

When you’re not with me, I miss you. I hate even admitting that because I like to think I don’t actually need people. But there it is.

The truth is I love you. I have been in love with you. I have known this and have been actively running from it since about the third week.

I want tomorrow. I want the ordinary version of this, the one that doesn't have an arrangement or a category or a door that only opens out. I want the whole inconvenient, uncontainable thing. Even though it shares the living hell out of me. I’m terrified, Payton. Terrified that I’ll hurt you. Terrified that you’ll come to your senses and leave me because I’m just not worth the trouble.

But in the midst of that fear I’m choosing you. The way you've been choosing me, quietly and steadily, this whole time.

I'm not going to run. But I might ask you to hold my hand every now and then when I feel like I should run.

I even love you despite your obvious flaw of not recognizing that the best Indiana Jones is Raiders of the Lost Ark.

XOXO, Yours (if you’ll have me)

Jules

I read it once. Then I go back to the beginning and read it again, slower. Somewhere around I look for you the second time through, an emotional lump forms in my throat.

I fold it back along its creases when I'm done.

Jules is watching me. She hasn't moved. Her arms are crossed over her chest, not closed off exactly—more like she's holding herself steady, the way you brace against something you're not sure you can hold.

"Okay," I say.

"Okay?" Her voice is careful.

I clear my throat. “The letter. It's—yeah." I look at her. "There are things I want to say back, but I think I need a minute, because you just—" I stop. Press the folded paper briefly against my chest, which makes something flicker across her face. "This is a lot, Jules. In the best possible way. This is a lot."

"I know." She uncrosses her arms. "I have more. Things I need to say out loud. If that's—if you want to hear them."

"I definitely want to hear them."

She takes a breath that's slightly unsteady.

"I love you," she says. Out loud. To my face, in my family’s front yard, with my entire family forty feet away eating chips and arguing about something. "I'm in love with you and I've known it for weeks and I kept telling myself I was protecting you from me, but really I was just protecting me from this. From how much I want it." She pauses. "From how much I want you."