Page 41 of More Than Pen Pals
I laugh.
“Any other rules?” he asks.
My smile disappears. “Yes. No mention of Glenn, how I’m doing with the breakup, or our feelings for each other.” I point my finger back and forth between us. “If we need to talk about any of those things, we do it with other people.”
He nods, but I wonder if he has anyone to talk to. My heart clenches at the thought he might not. I make a mental note to ask Wendy if she knows.
“Are we telling other people we’re writing to each other?” he asks.
“I’ll definitely tell Aunt Star, and I doubt I can keep it from Wendy. Sorry.”
Ash shrugs. “I’m half convinced she works for the CIA.”
“Wouldn’t it be awesome if she does?” I smile at the thought.
He smiles back. “There’s one kink in this plan.”
I tilt my head. “What’s that?”
“If you send letters to my house, my whole family will know.”
I suddenly feel nauseous. “And you don’t want them to know?”
“Not yet.”
“You’re not planning to tell them about me?” That hurts more than I want to admit.
“I will eventually,” he says. “I need to find the right time to explain it all, although I’m not fully sure what to explain.”
“I get it.” I do, but I don’t love that he’s keeping me a secret from them. Then again, I don’t plan to tell my family about him yet, either, except for Aunt Star. “But Randall knows, because of the ordeal at lunch yesterday.”
“Yes,” he admits, “which is fine. Unfortunately, Jay knows, too. You know—the other guy at lunch. He has said nothing to me about what happened, but I can’t imagine he never will. If I don’t mention it again, hopefully he won’t, either.”
“So where do I send your letters? To your office?”
“No!” He nearly shouts. “Sorry, didn’t mean to be so loud. I’ll get a P.O. box. How about I write the first letter, and I’ll get the box set up tomorrow so it’ll be ready by the time you write back?”
He really doesn’t want anyone else to know about this, but I can’t exactly complain. “That sounds great. So do I get to ask you a question now that you’ll answer in the letter?”
“Yes. And I’ll be quiet so you can think of a fantastic one.”
There’s a thousand things I want to know, but one question has been niggling at me since Wendy first mentioned it yesterday. “I don’t need time. I already know. Why are you doing legal work for a PR firm?” I refrain from asking the second part of the question: instead of doing something to help people, like you said you wanted to do?
“I want to answer now.”
“Against the rules,” I say, although I want to know the answer immediately. “Also, when we see each other in person for work reasons, we can’t discuss anything but work—nothing personal and nothing from the letters. All questions, answers, and comments must stay on the page.”
twenty-two
“One final pen pal rule,” I tell Leslie. This one is going to hurt, but it’s for her own good. “Letters can be one page only. And you can’t write tiny. Use your normal handwriting.”
Leslie’s jaw drops. “Why?”
“Because you don’t need to spend all your time writing letters to me. That won’t help with the Glenn situation. In fact, with that in mind, here’s my final, final rule. Only one letter from each of us per week. And a final, final, final rule: you can spend no more than thirty minutes writing it. I’m trusting you to follow the honor system on that.”
She pouts, and she’s so adorable I almost give in, but not quite. The rules are restricting, but these letters can’t be a free-for-all if I want her to have the time and space needed to truly get over Glenn.
“One page front and back?”
