Reborn to Love Mr. Right novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: The Letter

"No," I said.

He looked up from my palm.

"Not in either life," I said. "The first time I read it out loud, but I never read it."

"I was doing a voice. I wasn't listening."

"And this time?"

"It's in my desk drawer. Still sealed."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Why?"

"Because you said it wasn't true anymore," I said. "I didn't want to read something you'd taken back."

He let go of my hand.

He lay back against the pillow and looked at the ceiling.

"Read it," he said.

"Wyatt."

"Tonight. Alone. Not in front of me."

"I wrote it when I was twenty-two and stupid and alive," he said. "I'd like it to get one fair hearing."

They discharged him at four.

I sat on my bedroom floor on Chapel Street with my back against the bed.

The cream envelope lay in my lap.

"Annabel," in his neat black hand.

I opened it with my thumb, slowly, so I wouldn't tear it.

It was one page.

Annabel,

You won't remember this.

The first week of freshman year, you came out of the wrong building in the rain.

You were wearing one shoe, and you asked me where the chapel was.

You'd lost the other shoe in a puddle outside the science library and you were laughing about it.

I walked you there.

You talked the whole way about your mother's lemons and how you couldn't make anything taste like her kitchen.

At the chapel door you said, "You're a very good listener, I'm going to forget your name," and you did.

I've known since that walk.

I know what you think of me.

I know who you're with, and I know he's going to ask you something tonight, because he told half the bar.

I'm not writing to stop you.

I'm writing because I can't graduate without having said it once, in ink, where you can't misremember it.

I love you.

Not the girl on his arm.

The one in one shoe, who talked about lemons.

If any of this is welcome, I'm at the boathouse every morning at six.

If you don't come, I'll know, and I'll never bring it up again.

Wyatt

I read it four times.

The fourth time I couldn't see the words.

I'd stood on a stage and done a voice for this.

Three hundred people had laughed at "one shoe."

I put the page back in the envelope and held it against my chest and didn't sleep at all.

At five to six, I was on the dock.

The river was gray and flat and smoking with mist.

I was wearing my father's old Bellmont sweatshirt and jeans, the same as the first morning, because I didn't own anything else that felt right.

The boathouse doors were open.

He was there.

Not on the water.

He was sitting on the edge of the dock in his rowing sweats with his feet hanging over.

A paper cup sat beside him, and his single scull was still racked inside.

The stitches were black in the gray light.

He heard me on the boards and didn't turn around.

"You're not supposed to row," I said. "You have a concussion."

"I'm not rowing."

"Then why are you here?"

"It's six," he said. "I said I'd be here."

I sat down beside him.

Our shoulders touched.

I held up the envelope.

"You said it wasn't true anymore."

He looked at the river.

"I lied," he said. "First thing I ever lied to you about. I was trying to make it true."

"Did it work?"

"No." He turned and looked at me. "Not for one minute."

I took his face in my hands, careful of the stitches.

"I'm here," I said. "It's welcome. I'm three weeks and one life late, and I'm here."

He closed his eyes.

"Say the shoe part," he said.

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