fight slowly leave his face as he sits on the front stair and watches us drive away. Tosh and I pull away and drive to the storage unit. After a few wrong turns, I find my unit and shakily open the door.
It’s rather lackluster, staring at the things that used to highlight who I was. A wing-backed chair I picked up at an antique store and put in here when I decided I didn’t want kids wiping things on it, and bookshelves and boxes of books that wouldn’t fit amongst the wall space Eric claimed as his. I never argued it. What would have been the point?
I walk to the back to stack a few garbage bags of my winter clothes on top of some other clothes when I see it. A box labeled “Ryker.” I can’t pretend I wasn’t keeping my eye out for it, but now I’m unsure if I even want to touch it.
“Whatcha looking at?” Tosha asks as she steps over a few boxes and meets me in the back.
“Oh . . . you know . . . a box of Ryker’s letters from war.” I roll my eyes as I sardonically pour the words from my mouth.
“Of course,” she deadpans. “Well, you can ignore those . . . or take them back to my place and we can get piss-drunk while reading about the last guy who deserved you.”
Her words shock me. “What? I thought you hated Ryker.”
She puts her arm around my waist. “No. I hate Eric. Always have. What I hated about Ryker was that he wasn’t getting help, and you were self-medicating with a razor blade. And that wasn’t even his fault, or yours. You two had something special—it’s the circumstances that were shitty.”
Her revelation—opposite of what I’ve spent the last ten years thinking—has me reaching for the box.
“We’re gonna need a huge bottle of vodka.” I brush past her and put the box in the back of her car.
“I’ve got you covered.”
“Did you ever think of getting rid of these?” Tosha asks as we neatly unpack the box forty-five minutes later.
Pouring our vodka tonics, I don’t look up. “Not ever.”
“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.