Letter Eleven
Spending my birthday in jail is a special kind of depressing. More depressing, I mean, than it usually is.
Since my birthday falls on a Tuesday this year, my gift was a visit from you, but seeing you in that blue linen suit knocked something loose inside me, and that promise I made to Michael? About not hurting myself on my birthday anymore? I wanted to break it.
It’s not like he’ll ever know.
You leaned forward, smoothing a hand down the front of your navy tie, and whispered, “Happy Birthday.”
I ripped my gaze from your beautiful blue eyes, staring instead at the ugly white cinderblock wall over your shoulder. “I always figured twenty was the magic number, you know? That I’d finally be free. And now I am.”
“You call this free?”
I shrugged, thinking of the purple envelope I’d received during mail call that morning.
Thick. Heavy. A birthday card, probably.
Likely filled with origami hearts. They’d already opened it—they open everyone’s mail here—but I only put his meager offering with the others: in a neat little pile under my bed. “Free of him.”
You cleared your throat. “Your dad—”
“Don’t,” I snapped.
“Elliot, he’s—”
“I said, don’t.”
“Yeah? Screw your don’t. It might do him some good to hear your voice.”
“I won’t talk to him,” I said, but truthfully? I’d expected to see Nic sitting at that steel table beside you today, and when he wasn’t, the disappointment crushed me. He expects me to accept a stupid card in lieu of his presence?
Fuck that.
I guess I finally am free of him.
But it doesn’t feel as liberating as I thought it would. It feels like having the floor pulled out from under my feet. It feels like I’ve been deserted. Again.
“But he—”
“Keep going, and I’ll go back to my cell,” I warned.
Your jaw clenched.
“Why the suit?” I asked, desperate to change the subject. “Aren’t you headed back to the beach after this visit?”
You shifted in your chair. “We left the beach a long time ago. It didn’t—um—” You stopped. Passed a hand over your mouth. Stared over my shoulder. “It didn’t feel right. It wasn’t the same…without you.” Little shrug. “So I’ve started an internship at the firm.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. I have loads of free time—now that I’m not staying with you. It gives me something to do.”
“Hence the suit,” I said.
“Hence the suit.”
“Funny how that’ll work out exactly the way I said it would. You’ll take what was supposed to be mine.”
Your gaze flared, more resentful than angry. “I don’t plan on taking anything from you.”
“But you will. Because that’s over for me, Casey. That’s done.”
“It’s only over if you decide it’s over.”
“It’s over no matter what. So take it. It’s yours.”
“No. I don’t want it without you. We’re meant to be a team.”
“We were never meant to be anything. Why would you even want that? After everything I’ve done?”
Finally. I threw it out there. The question that’s been burning a hole in my chest since the first time you visited me in here.
But you only looked away. And that pissed me off.
“Why are you here?” I demanded. “Shouldn’t you be angry?”
Your gaze snapped back to mine, sharp enough to wound. “I am angry.”
“Why aren’t you angrier?”
“Who says I’m not?”
“You don’t act like someone who’s angry.”
“Believe me,” you said darkly, “I have my moments.”
I shook my head. “You’re only here because you feel responsible. You’re letting guilt override your anger.”
“I am responsible. What I said to you that night—”
“Was justified. I deserved what you said, and I’d also deserve it if you never came back.”
You leaned forward, eyes on mine, drawing your hands into fists on top of the steel table. “When you care for a person, you keep showing up—even when you’re angry. Even when looking at them makes your chest ache.”
Your comment made my chest ache. “Please. When someone’s hurt you as much as I have, it’s foolish to keep showing up.”
You leaned back, smoothing down your lapel, your hand tattoo flashing at me. “You think I don’t know what you’re doing? If you want to hurt yourself, you’ll have to do it some other way, because I’m not playing into it.”
“Oh, come on. Let’s talk about how crazy it is that you haven’t cut me out of your life yet.”
Your gaze drifted over me, counting the signs. The set jaw. The rigid posture. My fingernails digging into the backs of my hands. All signs I wanted a fight.
“We could do that,” you said, “and I’d definitely have to agree with you. I could also tell you the full range of emotions I’ve experienced since you left. That, in addition to feeling angry, I feel saddened. Betrayed. Disgusted. Fooled.”
You allowed those brutally honest words to sit between us a moment. Just so you know, disgusted and fooled nearly undid me.
Until you added, “I could even confess that, at times, I’ve wanted to hate you, to walk away and never look back.
I’ve wished that were possible for me, because it would make my life a hell of a lot easier.
But what good would it do for me to hate you?
For me to hurt you back? For me to cut ties and abandon you here in jail?
My anger will never be as strong as the anger you’re capable of internalizing.
My hatred—if I were capable of feeling hatred for you at all—could never compare to the self-loathing you live with every day.
And I don’t need to punish you, because you’ll take care of that all by yourself.
” Your gaze dropped to my hands, which were trembling as I dug my fingernails even deeper into my skin. “Kind of like you’re doing right now.”
You were right, of course. You’re typically right about most things.
Blinking back tears, I had to look away.
“Hey,” you said, drawing my gaze back to yours.
“When you leave this place, we’ll talk about what you did, and I won’t hold back on my anger, I can assure you of that.
But for right now—during the sixty short minutes we have together—I’m leaving my anger out there.
” You pointed to the row of windows at the edge of the room.
“If all I get with you is one hour per week, I don’t want to spend it being mad. That’s just a waste of our time.”
“So you’re putting your anger on pause.”
You nodded. “Let’s call this a neutral space. Out there, you’ve stomped my heart into the ground and I’m so fucking mad at you—at what you did to us. But in here? I’m strangely…removed from all that. Being near you—after six long days of suffering your absence—seems to have that effect on me.”
“Even when I’m a being a bitch?”
“Even then,” you said gently. “So let’s make the most of it, yeah? We’ll sort out the past later.”
Later. It felt like a gift, Casey. One too good to be true. But if there’s one thing I can count on, it’s your ability to give grace to a person when they least deserve it.
Unable to speak—thanks to the giant lump of gratitude forming in my throat—I simply nodded. Yes.
“You know,” you said, gaze dancing softly over my face, “if you’re struggling, you can say that. We can talk about it. You can tell me anything, no matter how unpleasant you think it might be for me to hear.”
But I’m already doing that. Through these letters.
And, anyway, if I were to tell you how badly I’m struggling in this place—how much I miss home and privacy and all the people I haven’t seen in months—I’d start ugly crying, and you wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing about it, because touching isn’t allowed. So I only said, “I know.”
Trying to keep it together, I fixed my gaze on your tie. A blue so bright it matched your eyes. Blue like the ocean, which I’m missing for the first summer of my life.
Since I refuse a cake on my birthday, my dad always carves out a good chunk of the day where I’m forced to spend quality time with him, just the two of us.
He gets misty-eyed, tells me how grateful he is that I exist, and—whether it’s intentional or not—makes me feel like a total bitch for depriving him of the opportunity to celebrate me. His one and only child.
At least, that’s what he used to do. This is the first birthday in my life he hasn’t bothered to do so in person.
On my eighteenth birthday, Nic took us out in his prized Mercedes Roadster—the gift his dad gave to him on his eighteenth birthday. He’d gotten something much more practical for his sixteenth.
After Nic gave me my first (unsuccessful) lesson driving a manual transmission, we stopped by that ice cream place I loved. You know, the one where you’d sampled my acaí bowl that time, called it “dessert for lunch,” and insisted on making me a proper lunch when we got home.
I ordered a scoop of cookie dough, my dad ordered plain chocolate, then we chose a wooden table in the shade, where a soft breeze ruffled the skirt of my sundress.
While I ate my ice cream, Nic poked at his, staring off into the distance, lost in thought, his expression nostalgic—but not in a good way.
Never in a good way. Every year, he looked sort of…
heartbroken, and I often wondered why. Was it heartbreak over the present way I handled my birthday, or heartbreak over what I’d done to ruin it in the past?
When his gaze finally slid to mine, he pushed a strand of hair out of my face and tucked it behind my ear. “You know how much I love you, right?”
I nodded, chopping a chunk of cookie dough in half with my plastic spoon.
“Are you sure we can’t—?” He lowered his voice to a hopeful whisper. “Just this once?”
I shook my head. “I don’t want a cake, Dad.”
“But eighteen, honey, it’s—”
“I said, no.”
Nic nodded, jaw clenched, then went back to staring past me. There were real tears in his eyes, and it pricked my heart. It made me feel like shit.
Glancing down, I stabbed another chunk of cookie dough. “Sorry I’m such a disappointment.”
“Hey,” he said, lifting my chin, forcing me to look at him. “You’re not a disappointment. You’re the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m so glad you’re mine.”
Tears filled my eyes, and I wanted to ruin the moment. I wanted to say, Then let me be normal. Let me be free.