50. Summer #2
Do I cross your mind the way you do mine?
When an Oasis song plays, do you ever wonder if it was one of my favorites or imagine me lying in bed, staring at the stars through my window?
When you’re out with your new friends, have you ever scanned the crowd and thought ‘Maybe he’s here?
’ Or am I just the ghost of a fleeting friendship to you, while you remain unchanged, untouched, unbothered?
Because the harshest reality—the one I can barely bring myself to accept—is that maybe you meant it.
The anger. The distance. The silence. Maybe I was always just a friend.
Maybe you never once imagined the life that could have unfolded if the miles between us didn’t exist. Maybe you’ve stayed the same, while I have weathered something that’s left me undone—something that’s altered the way I see myself, the way I see the world, and you.
And if that is the truth—if you never think of me at all—then that is the worst of it. Because I think of you. Too often.
I wish I could sit quietly in the corner of a café and conjure you into existence—craft you from my words and longing. I’d write you into the world, ink to paper, body to soul, as if my words could bind you to me.
As if I could write us the way I wish we were.
And I’d keep writing, Hayes. I’d never stop.
Chase at twenty-four.
I heard your song on the radio today. I pulled over on the side of the road for a while.
Tears stream down my cheeks as I read his final entry.
Chase at twenty-seven.
One year before I came back to Ocean Grove.
I’ve started this letter a hundred different ways in my head, and none of them ever seemed right. But I think I just need to say what’s true, even if it never lands the way I hoped it would.
I loved you.
Quietly at first.
Then deeply—so deeply it scared me to death. And maybe it scared you too.
But there was something about you I couldn’t turn away from. Like my soul recognized yours before the rest of me caught up. I saw who you were beneath the guardedness. I saw softness and depth, and I wanted to be someone safe for you. Someone you could be real with.
I wanted more, Hayes. Not in the sense of expectations or demands—I just wanted all of you. The version that showed up fully, stayed present, and chose me with clarity. I would’ve met that version of you with everything I had. But I can’t keep waiting for someone who isn’t coming.
So, this is me letting go. Not because I didn’t love you. Not because it didn’t matter. But because I’ve finally accepted that what I wanted from you was never mine to have. I think maybe the kind of love I offered asked something of you that you weren’t ready to give.
I will never regret loving you. I will never regret hoping. I only wish it hadn’t hurt so much to realize that the love I held wasn’t enough to bring you back.
I want you to know that you’ll always be a part of my story. You’re my favorite chapter. I’m just sorry we didn’t get the ending we deserved.
Wherever you are, I hope you’ve found peace. And I hope you know—you were loved. Fully. Honestly. Bravely.
Always.
My hand flies to my mouth to trap the sob clawing up my throat.
Addie reads the final entry over my shoulder, sipping intermittently from her wineglass, wholly focused.
I close the journal, dangling it loosely in my grasp as I try to process what I’ve just read.
Chase wrote to me. For years.
Addie snatches the book from my grip.
“Hey!”
“You missed a page.”
“No, I didn’t.”
She flicks to the very back, picking delicately at the corner where two pages have stuck together. She peels them apart gently, holding up the journal, turning to me with one eyebrow cocked. “See?”
I stare at the page she’s holding open. “What does it say?”
“Huh,” she says, tilting it toward the light, squinting. “The handwriting is different.”
Something cold moves through me, inch by inch.
I pluck the journal back. I don’t recognize the script, but it’s a little wobbly. My blood suddenly runs cold. “Oh my God.”
Addie looks at me with an expression that says Well?
“It’s from Felicity.”
Addie places her drink down gracefully. We lock eyes.
“Read it, Sum.”
I gulp, nodding. Then, I read.
Hi, Summer, honey,
If you’re reading this, the box found you. Knowing my luck with anything involving the post office, I wasn’t entirely sure it would. But I had to trust the universe.
I’ve been sitting with these journals for a long time now.
Chase doesn’t know I found them, and he certainly doesn’t know I’m sending them to you.
He kept them in the bottom drawer of his old bedroom desk—I’ve always been a snoop.
He was nineteen when I stumbled across the first one while I was cleaning his room.
I'm sure he’ll be furious when he finds out.
Too bad. I won’t apologize for it. I refuse to let you two be separated again.
Over my dead body. Quite literally, as it turns out.
Now, I know this is cheeky of me. Especially considering you can’t answer back. But what’s the fun in dying if you can’t have the last word?
I want to thank you for coming back to Ocean Grove.
I know you came out of necessity rather than from your heart, but I’ll be forever grateful regardless.
Even as the light in my own life was dimming, you illuminated something in my son.
You brought him back to himself. And in doing so, you gave me something I didn’t know I still needed—the chance to feel hopeful again, right at the end.
Do you know how rare and precious that gift is?
I want you to know that witnessing what you and Chase have was something I’ll carry with me wherever I’m going. I saw two people who had convinced themselves that the right thing and the safe thing were the same thing. They’re not, Summer. They almost never are.
I know you’re afraid. I could see it from the very beginning, even when you were young.
I’m sorry life dealt you such a hard hand so early.
But you’ve taken that hand and turned it into something extraordinary once already, with that iron will and quiet determination of yours.
I have every faith you can do it again, except, this time, with your whole heart.
Love is frightening. I know that. I spent years watching my boy carry a version of that same fear.
But here is what I know, after forty years of loving one person completely: The love that frightens you the most is almost always the love that’s worth the most. The thing that makes you want to run is usually the very thing you should run toward.
You came back to Ocean Grove to close a chapter. I think you found the beginning of the one you were always supposed to be living. Don’t close it. Please.
I hope you found what you were searching for in your time away.
But you have both been patient enough and brave enough and lonely enough.
It’s time now. Go home. Not to a place, but to the person who has been writing you unsent letters for ten years, in the hope that one day he wouldn’t have to.
You are two halves of one heart. Go home to your forever.
And Summer? One more thing—you would have made a wonderful daughter. And I hope you know how incredibly proud I am of the woman you are.
All my love, now and from wherever I end up,
Felicity
Addie makes a sound I’ve never heard her make before, but it matches the same one that pours out of me.
She’s pressing her fingers over her lips, eyes streaming, her Chardonnay abandoned.
“That woman knew exactly what she was doing,” she manages around her blubbering.
I wipe my face with my sleeve and reach for my cell. Just as I do, a small, folded note slips from the journal. A fresh wave of tears spill over when I open it.
“What is it?” Addie asks.
My hands tremble as I stare at the note. “It’s the recipe to her lime soufflé.”
I unlock my phone and my thumbs fly across the keyboard.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
I lock eyes with her, hard and determined.
“Booking a flight.”