Dreaming of His Pen Pal's Kiss - Jessie Gussman Page 0,19

admit I do like red meat. I suppose a dog and I might have some issues over that.

Regardless, I think talking to a dog is more socially acceptable than talking to yourself. Just out of curiosity, and this is a serious question, do you do it out loud? I mean answer yourself out loud.

I promise your answer won’t go any further.

I told you I was going on a trip, but I didn’t mention that after I get back from the trip, I’m actually going to be starting my job. It’s going to be pretty consuming. It kinda makes me wish that I could tell you what it is, so maybe you’d understand a little better. I’ll still be able to write, but I’ll be busy.

I know your job is hard and stressful at times. I guess mine is too.

Anyway, I just wanted to warn you. I wasn’t kidding about waiting at the mailbox for your letters. You’ve never really said anything about mine, so maybe it won’t matter to you if they’re not quite as clockwork as they have been.

I guess we can cross that bridge when we come to it.

What are you doing with the rest of your summer?

I’ll talk to you when I get back from my trip.

I’m interested to see what kind of letters you write to yourself while I am gone.

I appreciate your sense of humor.

I wanted to say I appreciated what you said to me about doing unto others.

I hope I’m not out of line with this: you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.

Yours truly,

Computer Geek

Chapter 8

As Dante walked down the street of Mistletoe, he was struck by how much the town felt like home.

Not that he ever really had a home. But as he traveled the country playing in different cities, he’d seen a lot of different places.

Born in Michigan, he went to college in California before landing in Galveston and spending his entire professional career there.

Nothing had prepared him for the small-town, down-home, welcoming feel of Mistletoe.

Even if it was all decked out for Christmas in the middle of July.

That actually gave it an even cuter vibe.

Not that he’d ever been into cute vibes.

He supposed his pen pal had a little to do with his new perspective on life.

Funny how meeting someone who wasn’t quite the same as you had a tendency to shift the way you thought about things.

It had for him anyway.

He’d been in a football bubble all his life. Everything revolved around the game.

It still did, but having a friend outside of his normal “friendships” had given him a different perspective. Not that his core beliefs had necessarily changed, just that he realized that everything he had always assumed wasn’t necessarily everything the rest of the world assumed.

His assumptions, and things he felt to be absolutely true, and things he had never understood how other people could think or believe had changed, and he realized that maybe other people were just as justified in their beliefs as he was.

Maybe it was as much the accident that he’d had, where he faced a world that might not involve playing football for the first time in his life, as it was writing to The Healing Pen.

She was in a town like this somewhere in Arkansas.

The thought caused a small hurricane of sensation to skip through his chest.

He wanted to meet her.

And he didn’t want to meet her.

Pulling open the door to the diner, he started to walk in. He was supposed to meet Pastor Race Steiner here, at two o’clock.

Dante was five minutes early.

He almost ran into a woman in scrubs who was waiting for him to go in before going out the door.

Scrubs. Could this be The Healing Pen?

Then he noticed she held the hand of a little boy and a little girl in each of hers, and he dismissed the idea. It was way too coincidental that he’d be coming to the same town she was in. Plus, The Healing Pen had never said anything about having children.

Of course, he hadn’t exactly asked. He’d been more interested in whether or not she had a husband or boyfriend.

It was kind of embarrassing to admit now, because he’d been pretty obvious with his questions. He’d been interested.

He was still interested.

Of course, a person could hide a lot in written correspondence. But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to see if there couldn’t be something between them.

She was different than all the other girls he knew. More of that getting out of