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“One of us should, don’t you think?”
“Sure. I’ll just go home and work from there for the rest of the afternoon.”
“Good idea.” I should just let the conversation end there, but I don’t. “You do realize you’d have to obtain a Bachelor’s in finance or real estate or at the very least get your real estate license and then broker enough deals to warrant a promotion. If you’re serious about staying on at the company.”
“Yes, Wes. I do realize it. I spent all afternoon and evening looking into it and thinking about it. I’m serious about a lot of things.”
“I just think we should wait. If you want to stick with this job and you want your dad’s respect and you want your trust fund money, then you should not get involved with me. Not now.”
She glares at me. “Not get involved with you? After all the things you said over the weekend? Sorry—all the things Other Wes said over the weekend.” She shakes her head. “I can’t believe you said that about us. In front of clients.”
“They couldn’t care less, believe me.”
“Well, you obviously still care a lot, about the past. So here.” She holds the Ziploc bag out for me.
“What’s this?” I take it from her. There’s an envelope inside, with my name on it. It looks like crime scene evidence.
“This is the other letter I wrote to you five years ago,” she says, her voice trembling. “This is the letter I was going to leave for you, inside Fanny’s cat carrier, but then my dad saw me, and something about the way he was looking at me… I don’t know. Like he thought I was making a huge mistake. He was standing there by the garage, watching me leave the carrier on your front porch. And when I put the letter back in my bag, he sort of nodded and went into the garage and drove off. So, I wrote that note, and that’s the one I left for you. But I kept it. I’ve had this letter with me every single day, and I’ve wondered what might have happened if you’d read it. Every. Single. Day. And now I’m giving it to you. Read it. Don’t read it. It’s all up to you. I just can’t carry it around anymore. Because I don’t want this to be about the way I behaved in the past, but if you’ll never get over it, then I don’t know what else I can do about it.” She turns on her heel and stomps over to her car.
“Lily,” I say.
“I’ll see you at the office in the morning, boss man,” she says before getting into her car and slamming the door and driving away and leaving me alone in a parking lot with the Other Letter.
And I don’t want to read it.
And I’m dying to read it, but I know what will happen if I do.
And I know there’s probably no scenario where at least one of us doesn’t feel like shit now, whether I read it or not.
And it’s a tragedy, because we were so fucking close to having something good.
