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From: Ginger Davies
To: Rhys Baker
Subject: We’ve arrived
We got back to London a few hours ago. We’re fine. Leon got a little antsy and was crying. He’s not used to travel, but he’ll get some sleep tonight, and he’ll be fine.
It’s hard to say what it feels like, writing you an email, Rhys. It’s so weird and so natural at the same time. Sitting here in bed right now, with Leon resting next to me in his cradle, I’ve been remembering when I used to write you in my dorm room. It seems like so long ago, but really, it hasn’t been that much time, right? How long? Seven years? Give or take. I guess we’re the ones who are constantly changing, and sometimes you don’t get around to assimilating everything. I remember the old days sometimes. They make me nostalgic. I wish we could write an email to ourselves in the past, you know? Then everything would be so simple. But I guess that would make life boring.
So anyway, I’m up to my old nonsense here.
Tell me how things are with you.
From: Rhys Baker
To: Ginger Davies
Subject: RE: We’ve arrived
You don’t know how bad I wish I was there recreating this scene: you lying in bed, probably with a book or manuscript on your nightstand, right? And Leon next to you, close. I don’t know, maybe it’s better if I don’t know what you’re doing when you’re so far away.
I spent the day packing my bags, talking with the real estate agent who’s going to sell my house for me, and dealing with some loose threads for the album, which will be out in a few months. I’m catching a plane to NYC, and I’ll fly home from there. I’m fucking nervous, Ginger, even if I should have gotten used to the idea by now. It’s just hard after all these years.
If we really could send an email to ourselves in the past, the way you said, I think mine would be so long, I’d get bored reading it. Remember, I was an idiot back then. I still am, actually. Joking aside, I’d just have too much to tell myself.
When your email arrived, I want you to know I just sat there looking at it in my inbox for a while before opening it, enjoying the feeling of getting another message from you after so long. For me, you’re still that same girl who used to write me every night from her dorm room…
From: Ginger Davies
To: Rhys Baker
Subject: RE: RE: We’ve arrived
Don’t make me get all emotional.
It’s normal for you to be nervous, Rhys. You will be until you see him, talk about things, and get that weight off your back. Everything will be fine. I know it. If he wants to see you, if you’re important to him right now, that has to mean something. We could have wound up like that, you know? Not talking for a bunch of different reasons, and then in the end losing touch. It happens all the time. Time passes and it gets harder, I know that; it happened to me too. When we weren’t talking, I still thought about you all the time, I wondered what you were doing, and I thought about contacting you, but I’d always put it off till the next day. And then the next day I’d do the same thing again. And eventually the distance itself became an insurmountable obstacle.
Let me know when you land, okay?
Kisses (sincere ones).
From: Rhys Baker
To: Ginger Davies
Subject: Just now
I just landed in New York.
I’ll write you when I can, Ginger Snap.