The Love Letter I Should've Thrown Away novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Wrong Name
Cora finds a photocopy of her own love letter in Brady's blazer with her name whited out and the new girl's printed over it, hands it to the new girl in front of her seminar, and ends it.
Brady liked the new girl's photo on a Tuesday night, and within minutes four people had sent me a screenshot.
I was working the library night desk, stamping a cart of reserve books.
The photo was on the campus gossip page, under the caption "Who is she??"
It showed a girl with a black bob and silver rings, laughing in a coffee line.
She had transferred into the seminar next door to mine two weeks ago.
Under her photo, nine hundred people could see that my boyfriend of two years had tapped the heart.
I texted my roommate.
She wrote back right away. "He likes everything, Cor. Yesterday he liked a picture of a sandwich. Stay at your desk, I'm bringing tea."
Kendra came twenty minutes later with the green mug I'd lost in September and sat on the counter until I was laughing about the sandwich.
At ten she went home to bed.
At ten past, Brady's voice memo arrived.
"Hey, babe. I left my blazer in 212, on the bench outside. Grab it for me? Love you."
In two years he had never written me so much as a sticky note.
His hand cramped, he said, so I got voice memos.
I walked to the seminar building with my coat open, because it was warm and because I wanted to see him smile when I handed it over.
The hallway outside Room 212 was dim.
Only the exit sign and one bulb were working.
Through the door I could hear the evening seminar still going, and the blazer lay across the radiator bench, as he'd said.
When I lifted it, an envelope slid out of the inside pocket and landed on my shoe.
The front said "Phoebe" in Brady's block capitals.
It wasn't sealed.
Inside was a photocopy, gray at the edges where the copier lid hadn't closed.
At the top, "Dear Cora" had been covered in white-out, and "Dear Phoebe" was printed over it.
The next line was still there.
I have read your margins for a year and never once been brave enough to say your name.
I didn't need to read the rest.
I had it in my wallet, in the real handwriting, soft from two years of folding and unfolding.
Brady had borrowed it last month. He said he wanted a copy to frame for our anniversary.
I stood by the stairwell trash can with the envelope in my fist.
I held it over the opening for a long time.
In the end, I didn't throw it away.
The seminar door opened, and twenty students came out into the hall.
The girl from the photo came out in the middle of them, hugging a canvas tote of paperbacks.
Her name was Phoebe Stockton, and I had never spoken to her.
The teaching assistant, Micah Ketterman, came out last, a tall man in a gray coat with a stack of papers under his arm.
From the stairs, Brady's voice said, "There she is."
He came up the hall with his phone in his hand, smiling, and stopped when he saw the envelope.
"Babe. That's only a draft."
"Then it's a lazy one," I said. "You forgot to change the part about the margins."
I turned and held it out to Phoebe.
"This is yours."
She took it and read the first page while everybody watched.
She touched the white-out with her thumbnail and looked up. "Who's Cora?"
"I am."
I took my wallet out, unfolded the original, and held it beside the copy so she could see.
Mine had no signature at the bottom, and in two years I had never asked him why.
"He asked to borrow this a month ago," I said. "For a frame."
Phones had come up all down the hall.
"Cor, it's a template," Brady said. "People use templates. You're making a scene."
"I'm making one," I agreed.
So I took his dorm key off my ring and put it in his hand.
The teaching assistant had gone very still at the end of the hall.
He was looking at the handwritten page in my hand, not at me.
Then he said, quietly and clearly, "Everyone go home, please. Now."
Phoebe caught up with me on the stairs, still holding the copy.
"For the record, I was going to throw it away," she said. "I haven't even spoken to him."
"I believe you."
"He told me last week he'd never finished a whole book."
I laughed once, and it came out wrong.
By the time I reached the dorm, the video was on the Confessions page, two thousand views and climbing.
Brady's comment was already pinned at the top.
"Cora isn't okay tonight. She needs space and she needs help. Please don't share this."
The first like on it belonged to Kendra.
I told myself she was only being kind to him.
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