15. Mia #2
Sit in that stupid kitchen you insisted on painting twice and actually tell each other the truth. No pretending things are fine when they're not.
My eyes move to the kitchen, and I see it, the soft gray, the white, the wood tones. I wonder which shade was the wrong one. I wonder who painted over it. I wonder how many versions of a life can stay inside one room after the people leave.
I don't want to keep feeling like I'm an extra in my own life.
I miss you.
Even if it doesn't feel like I'm allowed to say that anymore.
—George
The page lowers slowly in my hands.
For a long time, I don't move.
I sit surrounded by seventeen opened letters and feel the full weight of what I've done.
Then I look at Monica's. It lay there, still sealed, returned, and waiting, but I don't want to open it anymore.
That's the strange thing. Before, I wanted the answer.
Now I'm afraid of it. Because whatever is inside that envelope, George never got it.
And now I know enough to understand that matters.
I reach for Monica's letter. My hands are steadier this time. Not because I feel calm, but because I've crossed too many lines today for my body to keep pretending this is accidental. The flap is loose at the corner. I slide my thumb underneath.
I open it, and unfold the page. Monica's handwriting is different from his. I start reading.
George,
I've rewritten this more times than I want to admit, and every version ends in the same place.
I can't do this anymore.
I stop. “Oh fuck”.
The room goes still around me, and I force myself to keep reading.
I know things between us haven't been right for a long time. I kept telling myself we were going through a hard season. That deployment made everything worse. That when you came home, we would find our way back to each other.
But every time you came home, I found myself waiting for a different version of you.
My anger rises fast. I shouldn’t feel this way. I have no right to feel this angry. Yet, I am. I’m fucking piss at her.
Then the next lines knock it sideways.
I never knew who would walk through the door. Sometimes you were quiet. Sometimes angry. Sometimes you looked at me like you loved me but couldn't remember how to reach me.
And I kept adjusting.
I swallow.
I learned when not to ask questions. I learned when to give you space. I learned how to sleep beside someone who was somewhere else. I learned how to stop taking silence personally, even when it felt personal.
Her anger has nowhere clean to land. I wanted Monica to be cruel. It would be easier if she were cruel. But this isn't cruel. It's exhaustion. I keep reading.
I told myself that loving you meant understanding.
Then understanding became waiting.
Waiting for you to call, for you to write, for you to come home, for you to talk. Waiting for the man I loved to come back to me even when you were already standing in the same room.
My eyes burn.
Not just for George now, but for her too. And I hate that. I hate how complicated it is. I hate that I can see him in his letters, reaching. And I can see her in hers, exhausted from being the place he kept trying to reach back to.
I read on.
I can't keep building my life around waiting for you to come back and wondering who you'll be when you do.
I know you didn't choose every part of this. I know there are things you carry that you don't know how to put down. I know you love me in the ways you know how.
But I have spent years trying to convince myself that should be enough.
It isn't.
The sentence lands quietly, and that almost makes it worse.
I need a life I can actually live while it's happening. Not one I keep postponing until the next homecoming, the next deployment, the next promise that things will be different when there's more time.
There is never more time, George.
I care about you. I think part of me always will.
But I don't want to be angry at you anymore.
And I don't want to become someone who resents you for being exactly who you have always told me you are.
So I'm leaving.
My stomach drops. Even though I knew.
Somehow, I knew.
I've arranged an approved sublease for the apartment. The original lease remains in place, and the building has everything it needs while you're deployed. You won't need to handle anything from there.
I look around the loft. At the window, the kitchen, the floor where George's letters are scattered around me.
Me.
I'm the sublease. I'm the person who moved into the life she left behind. A strange, cold feeling runs through me.
I read the rest.
I'm sorry.
I hope one day you understand that I didn't leave because I never loved you.
I left because I couldn't keep disappearing inside a life built around waiting for you to come back. We could talk later, but for now, I’m choosing me.
—Monica
I lower the letter.
The loft is still silent around me… There are no villains in the room. That might be the worst part. There are just letters. Seventeen from a man trying to reach someone. One from a woman trying to leave before she disappeared too.
And me.
Sitting in the middle of both, knowing things I should never have known.
For a moment, I want to hate Monica. I really do. Because George never got this. Because he kept writing. Because somewhere, maybe, he still thinks silence is the answer. Then I look at her letter again.
I learned how to sleep beside someone who was somewhere else.
And the hate slips out of my hands. All that's left is this heavy, awful ache.
George didn't get his goodbye. Monica may not know it came back.
And I have no idea where George is. No way to know whether he is still deployed.
No way to know whether he is safe. No way to know if Letter Twenty-Four was followed by Letter Twenty-Five.
I gather the pages slowly, one by one. My hands feel clumsy as I try to organize this mess I made. I put George's letters in order. Then Monica's. I should feel satisfied. I wanted to know, and now I do.
I know enough to understand that knowing is not relief. Knowing is worse.
The thought arrives before I can stop it, “Someone has to tell him.” I go completely still.
No, absolutely not.
Not me.
I don't know him.
I shouldn't know any of this. I have already done enough wrong for one lifetime. But the thought stays.
Someone has to tell him.