“Not even once?” She crooks her eyebrow.
“Not even once.” I add a little more vodka to my glass.
Despite everything that went down, I held on to those letters for dear life. They were the only things that reminded me that the good times were real and the bad times were the nightmare, not the norm. I smuggled them home with me when my dad brought me home from the hospital, and begged him to put them somewhere my mom would never find them; she would have trashed them for sure. So, my dad hid them where he hid his cigars in the garage. I took them with me when I returned to school.
“Does Eric know about them?”
“Yeah. He knows they exist, but I told him I left them at home, in P-A . . .”
Tosha and I drink loads of vodka while we sift through Ryker’s handwritten letters, sent to me from Afghanistan a thousand years ago. We pour over every single word; some funny, some sad, all full of the love he had for me. I think she switched to water, but an hour later I’m on my third drink when I pick up yet another letter.
February 1, 2002
Natalie,
Pretty lame that I bailed before our first Valentine’s Day, huh? I hope this gets to you before then. Sorry I haven’t had a chance to call in the last few days. Hopefully we’ll have talked before you get this.
Thank you for your letters. I know I say it every time, but they never get old. It feels like a lifetime ago that I was saying goodbye to you, even though it’s only been a little over two months. I’d ask how school is going, but I don’t really care. I just want to know how you are doing. Some of the guys have wives and girlfriends that seem to be falling apart. If you’re feeling like that, please talk to someone, Nat. Promise?
God, I miss you.
I love you so much, Natalie, and when I get home I’m going to keep loving you until you tell me to stop. But don’t, please. Don’t tell me to stop.
I love you.
With everything.
~ Ry
Vodka burns my throat as I recall that he hated anyone else calling him Ry, but me. He signed every letter “Ry” like it was his way of sealing it with a kiss.
“Well, this is fucking brutal.” My gums are numb. “Why did you suggest this, again?” I slur at Tosha.
“I figured we ought to cleanse your entire aura at once, instead of piece by piece. Are you ever going to pick up your phone? Eric’s called a thousand times.”
I ignore her question. “So. I loved Ryker. He loved me. PTSD came in and fucked us both royally over and, somehow, here I sit.” I look around her apartment. “Maybe I should have stuck it out with him—”
“Stop right there. The point of this exercise is to remind you that you did the right thing. You agreed to be in a relationship with the man who wrote those letters. Not the one who came home—”
“It wasn’t his fault, Tosha!” I snap.
She takes a deep breath. “I know it wasn’t, Natalie. But what was his fault was his choice not to seek out help, and lying to you that he had . . .”
“He was sick,” I whisper.
“Mmhmm,” she stands up and sits back down next to me, wrapping her arms around my neck, “and so were you. Given the last time you saw each other, we’re lucky either one of you are alive. You can’t keep beating yourself up over it, Natalie. You didn’t ruin his life. You probably saved it. You saw him, he looks great. It’s time to leave the guilt behind.” She tucks my hair behind my ear and kisses my cheek.
I lean my head on her shoulder as she continues. “I don’t mean that Ryker is the only person that can love you that way. I mean you’re worthy of the kind of love found in the pages of those letters, Nat. You hear me? But, it needs to come from you, first. You have to love you, again. Got it?”
Leaving my head on her shoulder, I sit in eerie silence until I fall asleep.
Chapter 27
I’m not ready to talk to Eric. Or to stop drinking. This morning Tosha and Liz had to take off to visit her parents for a few days, leaving me to my own devices. I think she took the vodka and dumped it out. Oh, no, I drank it. I’ve filled my morning with organizing Ryker’s letters by date. Maybe I’ll get them bound into a book.
Or throw them away.
I spend the afternoon analyzing what the healthy thing to do would be, when I’m interrupted by a knock on Tosha’s door.
“Who is it?” I ask, walking toward the door.
“Natalie, it’s me, let me in.” Eric sounds thoroughly exhausted.
Well, I’m out of liquor and, it appears, luck. I open the door.
“What.”
Good, he looks like shit.
He seems to be struggling to make eye contact. “Can I come in?”
I leave the door open as I walk away and sit on the couch. Eric moves to sit next to me.
“I didn’t ask you to sit.”
He stands without protest. “Will you at least look at me?”
“I don’t think I can.” I’m honest, and am tempted to remind him that he likes that about me.
“Nat . . .”