Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
Sean,
Leia asked me today if it’s better to be the one left or the one doing the leaving.
You’ve read how Bennett and I started dating, but that question made me think about how we ended. How someone can be the center of your universe, and then one day, poof, they’re gone.
It’s scary, looking back and realizing that. You wonder if you had held on tighter, had put more effort in, instead of letting it all slowly drift away, could things have been different?
My dad was transferred to Iowa the summer between my junior and senior year. Iowa is far from Nebraska, but to two teenagers, it might as well have been the other side of the world. There’s no way two teenagers in love could realistically see each other or make a long-distance relationship work.
But we na?vely thought we could.
The day I left, I stood in my driveway, all my friends huddled on the sidewalk as the movers packed up our house, and all I could do was cry and cling to Bennett.
When my parents told me we had to go, Bennett pulled me into his arms, flush against his body.
“I love you,” he whispered in my ear.
My fingers tightened around his shirt. I wanted to kick and scream and tell my parents I was staying. Yell that they were ripping me away from everything I loved. Forcing me to start over in a new town with kids I didn’t know.
“I love you.” My voice cracked, and his cheek brushed along my temple.
“You’re going to love it there. You’ll see.”
We hadn’t talked about how we’d stay together, just that we would. It was just assumed. We made promises to write. He said maybe he could get his parents to let him and Emmett drive up before school started again. At the time, I believed all of our fictions.
It was only supposed to be one year apart. I’d try to go to college near him, and we’d reconnect as though the year apart had never happened.
“I’ll write you as soon as we get there. A letter for every day we’re apart.”
He didn’t say anything, but his arms tightened around me.
“Laney,” my mom said from behind us.
He loosened his grip, but I clung tighter, desperate to make the moment last.
“It’s okay. We got this.” He held my head, kissed my forehead, then stepped away from me.
I believed him because I was seventeen, in love, and certain I’d found my soulmate. Time wouldn’t change what we had.
I have to admit—it was ridiculous and foolish of me to think that.
He kissed me one last time before we had no choice but to say goodbye.
Poppy hugged me tightly before I climbed into my parents’ car.
Everyone I loved, besides my family, stood on that driveway and watched us drive away from Willowbrook.
I hated my dad for taking the job. For making us move.
At first, the letters came daily. Not long or exactly romantic, but sweet. He’d tell me about his day and how much he missed me. One of them was about a dream he had of us taking Cedar out and dipping into the creek, him making love to me on the bank.
We texted too, but phones were different then. After I went over our data plan the first month, my dad restricted my texting.
I found a group of friends soon after school started. Bennett got a job at a pizza place in town, and our letters grew further and further apart. Days turned into weeks.
Starting over in a new town was hard. And having the person I loved most back in the place I still thought of as home made everything more complicated. I constantly felt split in two.
My new friends grew tired of hearing about Bennett and all the memories I couldn’t let go of. Every month, we drifted further apart.
One night, I called him. He was out with Emmett and some friends and was completely distracted and wasn’t really paying any attention to our conversation.
After I hung up, I wrote him a letter, breaking up with him.
I addressed it, stamped it, and mailed it before I could think twice. It was for the best.
And that was that.
I didn’t see him for many years. Not until I walked into that breakroom one day.
Which started a whole new chapter for us—but that’s a story for another letter.
I can answer half of that question now.
Leaving is easier, but you still feel like the one left behind, just in a different way.
That doesn’t mean the love stops. It leaves you with a thousand what-ifs.
I realized young that life is a book with chapters, and as you move through them, you change and evolve.
Delaney