Chapter 9: No Letters

We built the speech out loud, because I had made a rule and he kept it.

Every night that week, after the library closed, Micah sat at the third window with his pencil lying unused on the table and talked.

I sat across from him with my feet on the chair and told him which sentences were false.

"'A university is a promise,'" he said, trying one.

"No."

"It's a good line."

"It's every line. Every person in a tux has said it. Say something about a person."

"'On my first night here, a girl at the library desk told me the third window never has a lamp that works.'"

I stopped.

"Who says that?"

"Brady."

"Brady never said that to anyone in his life."

"That's why it'll land." He leaned back. "He'll deliver it as an anecdote. People love a small detail. Nobody checks whose it is."

"And I'm the one who ends it."

"And you're the one who ends it."

He said it softly.

He had the speech memorized by the third night, because he couldn't write it down.

On Thursday, when he reached the line about the lamp, he forgot the next sentence.

He stopped in the middle of a word.

"Sorry," he said. "Lost my place."

"You never lose your place."

"I know."

I didn't say anything.

I watched him look at the table and then at the window and then at the pencil, and I noticed that his ears had gone pink.

It was the lamp, I told myself.

It was a stressful speech.

The lamp flickered, and he reached out to tap it, and his sleeve caught the pencil and rolled it off the table.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Love Letter I Should've Thrown Away from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.