My heart seized up, ice cold, frost spreading over the prison of my rib cage and piercing my lungs. My hands trembling, I shoved the papers back in the envelope and stood. Se?ora Alvez stared at me, and my blood roared in my ears.
“I have to—I need to—” God. All I wanted to do was scream obscenities, but I was in a classroom full of children. “I have to go.”
I didn’t give an explanation as I bolted for the door. Let them think I was sick. Because I was. To my very bones.
I signed out in the office, this time lying about not feeling well. Then I left for home. I had the strangest instinct to run as I walked the blocks to my apartment. I wasn’t ready for this. I’d pieced together the other parts of my life, but this … this was still so raw. And the body’s instinct when wounded was to jerk away when touched, to run to prevent more injury.
Running wouldn’t have done any good, though, because there was another letter waiting at my apartment. I picked it up from where it had been dropped outside my door. I didn’t know whether to crush it or tear it or hold it tight.
I settled for ignoring it.
But they kept coming. There was another slid under the classroom door when I arrived on Wednesday morning. They came through the mail. My landlord brought me another.
I threw them on my desk unopened, but every time I entered my apartment, they called to me.
A week after the first letter appeared, I came home from work to find the tenth letter on my doorstep. Rather than adding it to a pile, I fished a marker out of my purse. (My God, I kept markers in my purse. I was such a teacher.)
Across the back I wrote, “Still following me? Still not okay.”
Then I left it on my porch where he would presumably find it the next day.
The next letter came from Carlos. He dropped it off at my desk the one day without the pretext of homework this time.
“The American man said to read them, and he’ll stop following you.”
“Carlos, I don’t want you to talk to that man again, okay? If he comes up to you, just walk away. Don’t take any more letters from him.”
I thought maybe that had worked, that he’d finally taken the hint because I didn’t see another letter for a week.
I was relieved for the first day or two. But then I started to look for them. I started to wonder why they were missing, why he’d stopped now. And more than anything … I wondered what they said.
But I couldn’t read them. I wanted to stay mad. It was safer to stay mad. But considering the way the absence of the letters made me feel, there was no way I could actually read their contents and stay strong.
The following week, though, I realized he hadn’t stopped writing the letters—he’d just been waiting. I walked through the school courtyard on Monday, and saw a group of my kids gathered outside the doors, Carlos in the middle.
He was handing something out, and when I got closer, they all switched to whispers and not-so-subtly stared at me as I passed. When the students took their seats that morning, every desk in the room had an envelope, all for me.
I was angry and relieved, and a giant mess of wants.
I trekked home that day with my arms full of envelopes and a head full of frustration.
I thought about doing something to prove a point. I could throw all the letters out where he would find them. I could burn them. I could tear them up.
Or I could open them.
Maybe if I showed that I had opened them, he would stop.
So, I plucked one out of the pile, my skin suddenly buzzing. I tried to swallow, but something knotted in my throat.
It’s just a letter. Just words. Probably words that you’ve already heard.
The shaking spread from my fingers to the rest of my body as I tore open the letter.
A sketch tumbled out first.
Even without having been there, I knew it was Venice. There was a gondola passing by a home that seemed to sit directly on the water. There were balconies with roses, and it looked so impossible and beautiful that I felt myself tearing up.
The letter with this one was short.
I can’t go anywhere beautiful without thinking of you. Hell, who am I kidding, I can’t go anywhere period without thinking of you. I wanted to take you here. I know there’s no excuse for what I did. I could explain the ways I reasoned with myself. I could explain that I needed the money, the job. I could explain that I waited because I was worried about you. But the real truth is that I just didn’t want it to end. I knew you’d leave when you found out. And I just kept telling myself … one more day. But if there’s anything I learned with you, it’s that one more day was never enough.
I sunk down to the floor at the edge of my bed, a noise pulling from my chest that I couldn’t even put a word to. It wasn’t crying. It was something deeper. It unraveled from my lungs, low and keening and hollow. If I had to guess … I’d say it was what it sounds like to miss someone. To feel their absence like a second skin.
I picked up another letter.
This time, the sketch wasn’t of a beautiful sight or a grand city. It was four men in military fatigues. Their faces were detailed, realistic, alive. So either he sketched them from a picture or they were burned into his memory.
I remembered what he’d told me about his unit, and how he’d lost them, and I gave up trying to wipe away the tears that rolled down my cheeks.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you more about me. That I didn’t open up. It’s just … I thought I lost all the parts of me that meant something when I lost these guys. They were family. That’s why I liked to jump off bridges and climb cliffs and do whatever other crazy stunt that could make me feel something. But even that had stopped working … until I met you. You made me feel more with a look than I felt jumping out of a plane. I felt more adrenaline from your touch than when I was moving into enemy territory or taking fire. I know how crazy I sound. I know how crazy this all is. And I’m probably doing it all wrong. But my only excuse is that I’m crazy about you. And life is not living unless I’m with you. You’re my adventure. The only one I want to have. So, if this doesn’t work, I’ll try something else. If the military taught me anything, it was to be persistent. To weather the storms. So, that’s what I’ll do.
I opened every letter.
My bedroom was a sea of paper, words with the depth of an ocean and sketches with all the power of the tide. When I had read them all, when the words had filled the empty spaces he’d left behind, I wrote a letter of my own and put it outside my door.