7. Chapter 7
Addy
Boomer was dragging me through the park again. Despite my misgivings about his success in dragging me through the dirt a while back, he hadn’t succeeded — yet.
Sasha’s letter was burning a hole in my pocket.
I’d read and reread it countless times already. At this point, I almost knew it by heart. What was it about this, about him, that was so intoxicating? Was it the excitement? The sense of danger?
I snorted. Danger. Right. There was literally no chance I’d ever get close enough to Sasha to be in any danger. Not to mention, if I did, there would probably be a pane of Plexiglas between us.
Not like I’d ever visit him or anything. The prison where he was held was a seven hour drive from where I lived … and I only looked it up out of curiosity. Not for any other reason.
Kind of rich of him to talk about ‘consequences’. An amused scoff escaped my lips, making Boomer lift his nose from the ground to peer up at me. He’d recently been to the groomer, and he looked ridiculous — more like a ferret than a dog.
Provisional arrangements don’t come with warranties. They come with consequences.
I repeated the words mockingly in my head in a deeper voice, since I had no idea what he sounded like. He sounded so melodramatic. Then again, consequences probably entailed something more serious in his world than in mine.
In my normal and completely ordinary reality, consequences were kind of my thing. My whole life seemed to be one big-ass, inconvenient consequence after another.
The fact that you stopped to apologize to a man dressed as a pickle…
Why did he focus on that? My insides twisted uncomfortably. Out of everything he could have taken note of, he chose this. For some reason, he seemed to be able to look right through me, which made no fucking sense at all.
No one had ever noticed this particular aspect of my disasters before. Usually, people simply laughed at the messes I made, but they never paid attention to the aftermath. To the choices I made after I’d fucked up.
The fact that you stopped to apologize to a man dressed as a pickle…
Sasha had noticed, though. He noticed that despite leaving chaos in my wake, I controlled what I could and always took responsibility for my actions. I wasn’t sure what to make of him noticing this little detail.
If he’d noticed this, what else had he noticed amidst the pages upon pages of word vomit I’d sent him?
How much of what you do is choice, and how much is momentum?
I’d bristled when I first read that question. What the fuck was that supposed to mean? What kind of question was that?
I didn’t do any of these things on purpose.
I almost tripped over Boomer’s leash when he decided to cross to the other side of the path.
Well … sometimes I did.
Why did he have to go and ask me real questions? Plain rude to call me out like that.
You're not 'alarmed' because I’m not interested in frightening you. That tends to come later.
Somehow, the idea that he wasn’t trying to frighten me was more unsettling than if he were. There was a quiet deliberation behind his words that made my skin prickle, teetering on the edge between discomfort and exhilaration.
What would it look like if he actually tried to scare me? This thought lingered against my will, echoing through my mind and refusing to disappear.
That tends to come later.
Later than what? I was too fucking nosy for this shit. What the hell did he mean?
I shook my head, trying to banish the letter and Sasha from my thoughts.
Giving Boomer’s leash a gentle tug, I attempted to coax him toward the park’s exit.
I’d been following his fluffy booty for over an hour, lost in my thoughts.
A strange warmth had spread to the very tips of my fingers.
I wasn’t exactly flustered, but I was more aware of my thoughts and where they were leading than usual.
It was probably a bad sign to feel more grounded today after receiving Sasha’s letter than I had all week. Definitely more grounded than I had felt after my mom finally texted me back this morning, after almost two weeks of sitting on read, and informed me my cousin was getting married.
Not to invite me, but simply to inform me they were getting married.
After Dad’s death, Mom had barely coped. She couldn’t bear to see the bakery, our home, the restaurants he used to take her to for date night or the park where we used to have family picnics.
Basically anything reminding her of Dad … which unfortunately seemed to include me. Mom moved back to England, to be closer to her sisters, and I was partly glad she didn’t stick around to witness all of my failures.
She was desperate to leave this place and the painful memories behind, and I couldn’t blame her at all. If I lost the love of my life to a heart attack at forty-two, I probably wouldn’t take it well either.
While she didn’t say there was nothing holding her here anymore, I knew it to be true. And that was fine. I wasn’t angry. Maybe a little hurt, but she deserved to do what made her happy.
I had been an adult for years — at least in theory — and had refused to leave the bakery, while my sister had long since moved out of state with her husband.
I never had enough money to visit my mother in England, and I had no illusions of her ever coming back to see me. This led to the current status quo: daily texts turned into random ones every couple of weeks and weekly calls turned into calls for birthdays and holidays … if either of us remembered.
It would’ve been heartbreaking had I not been aware of the fact that her reactions to how my life turned out would have been even worse.
I was glad she didn’t have a front-row seat.
Glad no one was left to remind me not to be myself, because my current circumstances were the result of doing just that.
I blinked, tearing my thoughts away from this rabbit hole I had no intention of going down.
I guess I’ll be expecting another letter soon.
Instead, my mind fixated unhelpfully on Sasha’s final words. It should’ve come across as presumptuous and cocky, but instead it struck me as him warming to me and letting me in, if only slightly.
I coaxed Boomer out of the park and retraced my steps back to his parents’ house, lost in thought.
This was still safe.
They were just words on paper. We were hundreds of miles apart. He still didn’t know what I looked like, and he couldn’t see the way my hand kept fluttering to my pocket, making sure the letter was still there.
It was safe because he was locked up, living a life vastly different from mine, full of rules, restrictions and cold metal.
This was safe. Controlled. Hypothetical.
I was good at hypotheticals.
Thumbing the edge of the folded paper sticking out of my back pocket, I kept walking, but my thoughts were still consumed by him.
It wasn’t merely the words I had memorized, but also the way he structured his sentences. I imagined him telling me all these things, talking to me in a deep, gravelly voice. I imagined where he’d pause, taking note of the way he didn’t soften anything.
Are you always this honest, or only when you don’t expect it to matter?
I scoffed.
Of course it didn’t matter. That was the fucking point.
It was why I was able to say things in these letters I never said out loud. Why I didn’t have to turn them into jokes to simply outrun the weight of them.
These were nothing but letters.
Ink and envelopes and a man I didn’t know — and never would.
I’d never find out what his voice sounded like, what his hands looked like or whether he tended to wear a stoic or amused expression. Somehow, I could imagine both.
Boomer looked at me questioningly as I paused, my steps halting.
“Sorry, bud. There’s a lot going on up here right now.” I pointed at my head as if he had any idea what I was talking about.
My chest had tightened, but it wasn’t exactly fear, it was more like … awareness? Something quiet, creeping up on me and seizing my insides in its grip.
This is still safe. He can’t ever reach me.
I sucked in a sharp breath when an unbidden and unexpected thought slipped in right after.
… although I kind of want him to.
April 2nd
Hi Sasha,
I’m choosing to interpret “consequences” as theoretical for now. Otherwise I won’t stop thinking about it. Actually, too late, I already am.
Are we talking immediate consequences? Long-term? Does it involve mild discomfort or character-building regret?
Got to tell you, I’m not really known for learning out of my mistakes.
I do own up to them, though. You’re right — forty-seven minutes is a long time. Long enough to realize no one was going to fix it for me.
So I stayed and apologized to the pickle because he was trapped mid-air and everyone else was yelling. Someone had to acknowledge the absurdity of it. It felt rude not to.
I usually stay.
You asked if I’m always this honest. Usually, I’m probably not. I tend to edit myself into something more manageable.
Another disaster, since we’re apparently doing this now: I once told a cop that a friend and I had gotten lost on our way home, which is why we were somewhere we absolutely should not have been at 2 A.M.
I can’t go into too much detail, since I’m not sure if prison security reads these letters (if you do, hi guys, I swear I’m not a criminal!), but we weren’t lost. We were exactly where we meant to be, following her cheating ex-boyfriend.
The cop believed me and we scared the crap out of the double-timing shitbag.
Zero regrets, I’d absolutely do it again.
I don’t think I’m ignorant. I think I just assume I’ll be able to deal with whatever comes next. So far, that’s been mostly true.
We’ll see if it holds.
— Addy