Chapter 5 The Letter
How fitting that it ends like this. With a letter.
A letter was, after all, the beginning of our end.
You didn't know it then, and neither did I, but the moment my fingers touched those pages, the story began to unravel. It was silent, soft, almost loving, the way paper cuts can be. But it cut me just the same.
Before that, there was us.
I remember the first time I saw you. I was pulled over at a gas station, frustrated, helmet half-off, swearing at the pump that wouldn't take my card, and there you were, shoulders broad under a faded jacket, oil on your fingers, asking if I needed help.
You filled my tank, then offered to ride with me to the next town over. We didn't stop riding after that.
At first, you were distant. You said you weren't one for words, not really one for romance. You'd just chuckle at the sappy stuff and say, "Not my thing." and I believed you.
But then you started reaching for my hand at red lights. You started leaving tools for my bike before I even asked. You made me coffee just the way I like it, even when you pretended not to remember. You pulled over once just to tie my shoelace because it was flapping in the wind.
You let me in slowly and cautiously, but when you did, it was beautiful. Our rides became ritual. Your silence felt safe. I would wake up to the sound of your breath, and fall asleep knowing you were just an arm's length away.
You made me feel like a princess in a fairy tale that had oil stains and motorbike engines for a soundtrack.
You'd lift me onto your bike like I was something delicate.
You'd carry me to bed when I fell asleep on the couch, murmuring half-dreamed things like "my angel" or "mine.
" You'd hold my helmet with this careful tenderness, like you weren't just keeping it safe—you were keeping me safe.
You made me feel like I was the one.
Until you didn't.
And I've never had that before, not with anyone. I've never been all in like that. You were my beginning, middle, and I thought, God, I truly thought, you were going to be my end. I poured everything I had into us. You were my home and my harbor. My be-all and end-all.
You rarely said "I love you" the way I wanted to hear it.
I asked once, maybe twice, and then stopped because I didn't need it.
Not really. Because the way you kissed my forehead goodnight, or made me ramen at 2 a.m. when I couldn't sleep, that felt like love.
The way you tucked my cold feet under your thighs on the couch, or traced little circles on my back when I was sick, that was love, too.
So I stopped needing words. I stopped needing anything that wasn't you.
And then came the accident.
I thought I lost you. My world caved in for a moment. I couldn't breathe and couldn't exist in a version of life that didn't have you in it.
I didn't know I never truly had you to begin with.
But when they said you were going to be okay, it was like the first breath after drowning.
I wanted nothing more than to rush home, hold you, care for you, give back even a fraction of what you'd given me.
I came home, still shaking, needing something to do, to hold, to care for.
I went to grab your favorite hoodie. The underwear you like.
Something, anything to wash and fold and tuck away for you.
So I did. I unpacked your hospital bag. I looked for your softest hoodie and the underwear you always liked.
That's when I found the letters.
Pages and pages, tied with string, tucked in the back of your drawer like a secret altar to a ghost I didn't know existed.
They were beautiful, Arlo. Romantic in the way books and movies can't quite capture.
I held them in my hands and for a second, naively and foolishly, I thought they were for me.
And I broke a little right then, because you'd never said those things to me, but maybe you could write them down. Maybe this was your way.
Curiosity, or fear, won and for that, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to invade your world like that. I was scared. You had just come home from the hospital, and I needed something to hold on to.
So I read them.
Every single one.
They were hers.
Every word. Every metaphor. Every soft devotion. You wrote to her like she was a religion and you were a man reborn every time you touched her name. With every letter, I felt myself unraveling. Like each sentence pulled a thread in the tapestry I thought we were weaving together.
And the worst part?
One of those letters was written after we were already living together.
While I was there laughing in the kitchen, folded into your body, curled up in your bed.
You were mine in every way I knew how to define it.
You write it while I was already in your life.
While I was already in your bed. While I was learning your rhythms, your silences, your skin.
I was there. Loving you and building a life with you, and still, your heart was writing letters to her.
Still comparing. Still loving.
I didn't even know I was competing. I didn't know I was a placeholder in a love story that already had its ending.
You told me you weren't much of a romantic with words, and I believed you. But now I know the truth.
You are romantic. You are poetic. You are passionate.
Just not with me.
In that moment, I realized you never loved me because there was no room in you left for me. She haunted you. She still does, and I was losing a battle I didn't know I was fighting.
You used me to fill the hollow she left behind, and maybe you didn't mean to, but it doesn't make it hurt less.
I would have done anything, anything, to be the heroine in one of your letters. To be written about the way you wrote about her. But I wasn't. I was a placeholder. A soft patch on an old wound that still bleeds.
I wish I could say I've stopped loving you, but I don't think I ever will.
You are the sun in my sky, even if I was just a cloud passing through yours. Maybe distance will help. Maybe one day I'll be able to breathe again without this ache in my chest. Maybe time will dull it.
I hope so.
Now, Please don't be alone.
I've told your friends to check on you. I asked March to bring you groceries and make sure you take your medicine. I know you hate being fussed over, but I couldn't leave without setting those things in motion. It's the last bit of loving you I'm allowed to do.
I wish, God I wish, you had loved me even a fraction of the way I loved you. It would have been enough. More than enough. But that's not the story we were given.
I hope one day the love of your life comes back to you. I hope she walks through the door and you hold her the way you held me that last night like the world was ending, and she was the only thing keeping it together.
You deserve to be happy, Arlo even if it will never be with me.
I'm sorry if this seems cowardly. I just... I couldn't say any of this to your face. I'm not that strong. You are the one person who can look at me and unmake me. You're my weakness. My kryptonite.
But I will love you forever.
Think of me when you see that little ramen shop by the pier—the one where we laughed until we cried because they forgot our order twice and then brought us free mochi.
Think of me when you see falling cherry blossoms, when you hear the humming of old motorcycles, when you find stray bobby pins tucked in the cushions.
And know that I'm thinking of you too.
With all the love I was never allowed to give fully—
Your Berrie