than to see you, talk to you, even for a few minutes, even if we can never be together again. I’ll understand if that’s not what you want. I might write you another letter if I feel the need to tell you something else. If you don’t want me to write you, just send this letter back to the return address. If you do that, I’ll never write you again.
This is getting long. I haven’t written so much by hand since I was a kid. But I did want to say this before I finish. You were right about almost everything you said to me, but you were wrong about one thing. Because I always saw you. You were never invisible to me. I saw how you stopped whatever you were doing any time you saw a commercial on TV that involved an animal so you could watch it and smile at the dog or cat or camel or duck. I saw the way you focused so intently on everything you did, even if it was something little like pouring a cup of coffee. I saw how you smiled and met the eyes of drivers and bellmen and servers in restaurants and strangers who held doors open for you. I saw how you treated them like human beings who deserved your attention and respect. I saw how you spent years taking care of your mother, putting your life on hold in very real ways because you loved her and wanted to take care of her. I saw how sometimes you were taken by surprise by what you felt during sex, like you never knew what a sexy, passionate person you really are. I saw how you looked at me and saw something good. Something worthy. When nothing I’d done in my entire life deserved it. I saw you, Gillian. From the very beginning. I saw how brave you are. How empathetic. How understanding. How forgiving. How smart and funny and sexy and generous and loving you are. I saw you, Gillian. I still see you every time I close my eyes, and I probably always will.
Just like I’ll always love you.
Richard
I’m bawling as I finish the letter. Full-out bawling as I sit naked on my toilet lid next to a tub full of lavender-and-honey-scented water.
I read the letter again. Then again. Then I fold it up and put it in the box in my closet where I’ve put the champagne glasses and everything else Richard ever gave me. I get in the tub and cry some more, but I feel better.
Different.
He means it.
I know for sure he means it.
And I wasn’t wrong about him. Not completely. Maybe it couldn’t work out between us because of the way it started, but I saw something good in him, and what I saw is really there.
Not for a moment do I consider sending the letter back to him. I don’t know if I’ll be able to go to the coffee shop to see him. Not yet anyway.
But if he wants to write me again, he can.
HE DOES WRITE ME AGAIN. The next letter comes four days after the first. He tells me about the coffee shop. About how it’s doing and what he’s learning and how it’s harder than he expected it to be but that he’s enjoying it. Enjoying doing something that feels real.
In the next letter, sent the following week, he tells me about his new apartment, just a block down from the coffee shop. He tells me about his neighbors. He tells me he runs every morning in the park nearby. He tells me he’s been in Boston for a month now, and it’s the longest he’s been in any one city without leaving town for at least a decade.
In the next letter, he spends four pages talking about his childhood, giving me details he never gave me before about how his aunt and uncle ignored him, belittled him, made him feel unloved. The difference in the way they treated him compared to their own son. How it shaped him. He ends by saying this:
This has turned into a pity party when I didn’t mean it to be. I just realize I was always holding back on you, wanting to show you only the best side of me. The parts of me I thought were worthwhile. Not the unloved little kid who was always desperately trying to earn a place in the world. I’m not trying to earn it now.