It had been 21 weeks since it happened. She flexed her fingers, tired from writing out a long, hand-written letter. It was the last of them, though, so carefully she folded it in on itself, slipped it in an envelope, sealed it, and stamped it and pulled the shoebox from underneath her bed. She smiled softly, then, and while it wasn't really what you could call a happy smile, it was a smile. Amongst several scattered mementos (a bus ticket here, a movie ticket stub there, a few pieces of gaudy quarter machine jewelry) was a stack of 20 more sealed and stamped envelopes. She pulled them out, and rooted around the other bits and baubles in the box, producing a string of red ribbon. She made sure the letters were in order, and tied them neatly with the ribbon, placing them back in the box.
Slipping the lid back on the box, she tore a few small pieces of tape from a roll laying at her feet and sealed the box too, and on a scrap of paper she scrawled a quick note.
This was the only way I could think to say goodbye that would be good enough. I'm sorry it took so long. I was never the punctual one.
My heart belongs to you, still. I hope you have a good life.
Gingerly holding the box under her arm, she hopped in the car and drove, navigating carelessly and by memory. While it had been 21 long weeks since she had driven this way, she knew the directions as well as she knew her house in the dark. She parked in front of an inoffensive house in a culs de sac of equally inoffensive houses, and unbuckled her seat belt, taking a deep breath before stepping from the car. Her steps were deliberate as she walked up to the porch, set the box on the welcome mat,rung the doorbell and turned away, walking back to her car.
Before she could open her car door, she heard a creak behind her and looked back, like a tic that hadn't faded away yet. He blinked at her, looked down at the box, and bent over. She moved to turn away and leave, but he shook his head without looking up all the way as if to say 'Not yet, you're not going anywhere'. She sighed and leaned against the car, fidgeting with her naked fingers.
He sat down on the porch, languid and graceful, and peeled off the tape, careful not to rip it. Pulling the letters out, he set them aside and sifted through the debris of their past that sat in the box. His fingers lingered on a smilie face ring from the machine in the local 7-11, and a goldfish keychain from the county fair, half of a broken tea saucer from a day they'd spent in the city. Looking up at her finally, he shook his head, his expression set and angry.
"Why are you giving all of this back?"
She shrugged, and sighed again, fingers on ne hand pulling at her ring finger awkwardly.
"If you really wanna know?" she called out, unmoving. "Just read them." she nodded to the letters and got in her car and drove away.
Puzzled, he pulled the neat bow from the letters and put it in the box, trying not to remember the summer dress that ribbon used to belong to. And he read. Hours he sat on the porch in the fading summer sunlight, barely aware of cars passing or cicadas and crickets performing an orchestra in the background. His hands shook, just slightly, as he read the final lines of the last letter, written in the late hours of the previous night and the very early hours of that morning.
I am giving you back all of my happy memories of you, because they are not what I need to remember. I need to remember the bitter things, the things that hurt and stung, because otherwise I'll just miss you forever. You are bitter enough for the both of us, and I thought it might serve you well to remember that, once upon a time, you made somebody happy. You were somebody's world. I will not forget the happy things, because there are as much a part of me as my left hand, or my right ear. My hands feel naked without all those stupid cheesy rings. But they are still hands. I don't feel right without you, but I am still me, and I will continue to be me without you. You were happy once. I know. I saw it. Please be happy again someday. I can say goodbye to you forever after these 21 weeks of purgatory if I know you'll remember to be happy.
My heart belongs to you, still.
He sat a few hours more than, into the twilight hours of the night and day, carefully refolding every letter and replacing it to it's proper envelope and retying them with the ribbon pulled from the lace-up back of a red summer dress. He stared into the box and remembered every moment, and remembered moments that never happened because he never gave them the chance to happen. And he stood,clutching the sealed again box like some sort of delicate animal, and he walked.
It had been years since he'd walked this way, once they'd gotten cars, they'd given up on walking anywhere, driving was faster and less tiring, but if you walk somewhere nearly every day for years as a child you never quite forget the way. He'd sat so long on the porch that by the time he walked the half an hour or so to her house it was nearly dawn. And he remembered that she'd always loved sunrises more than sunsets, because sunrises were beginnings and sunsets were endings. But endings are beginnings too, he thought quietly, because things have to end before other things start.
Considering the hour, he did not knock on the front door, instead opting to climb up the tree and perch on the spit of roof below her window, like he used to when they were kids and he would run to her house in the night when his parents fought. With some effort, as he was not as short and light of foot as he was in middle school, he lifted himself to her window sill and knocked, four small knocks followed by a pause and then four more small knocks.
She wasn't sleeping when she heard the knocks. And she knew he probably knew she'd be awake. There are some things you just don't forget. She pulled herself out of the nest of blankets she formed and pulled one of them around her like a cloak and walked to the window. She knocked back softly, for old times sake, before opening the window, looking sort of unsure but mostly sadly resigned.
"Hey." she said, her voice low and quiet.
"What are you doing here?"
"Would you believe me if I said I wasn't sure?" she shook her head. "Okay, yeah I expected that much. If I promise to explain, can I come inside?" she nodded and stepped out of the way, pulling the blanket tighter around her. He nimbly stepped through the window and settled himself onto the chair in her corner. She retreated to her bed again, still too unsure of the situation to not put distance between them. Oh how the tables have turned, she thought bitterly.
"Talk." she nodded at him again.
"I read all your letters. And you're right. I want to tell you right off the back, everything you said in all of them is right. Except one thing. In the last one. Well, it was right when you wrote it. but I don't think it's right anymore. And I was thinking on the way over here, because it's almost sunrise and when we were kids and had sleepovers you would drag me out of bed at ungodly hours and make me sit on the roof with you and watch the sunrise. And you always said the sunrise was better because that's how things begin. But here's the thing, the sun can't rise if it doesn't set right? It has to get dark before it can get light again, it has to end before it begins."
"I'm... not sure what you're getting at."
"I don't need memories. I need to live. We may have been a sunset, ending in a spectacular explosion of colors and pent up feelings. But if we set, why can't we rise too? I know we can't just start up where we left off. I hurt you, I hurt myself, and everything was kind of a mess and I don't know how we went from what we were as kids to what we were when we were together. but we can sort of start over. Not completely, we've known each other too long for that. I don't need a bunch of happy memories of who I used to be and who you used to be when sitting right in front of us is a chance to be those people again."
"So after the disaster of the past year of our lives, together and apart. You're asking me to just... forget. And try again." she looked at him dumbfounded. He shook his head vehemently.
"No no no not at all. I know you can't do that and to expect it of you would make me a terrible friend and person. All I'm saying is we can't be what we used to be. But we can't start over either. But if we take all the broken bits and sift out the stuff that's still okay, maybe we can build something on what we've already got that's better. I don't.. I don't wanna be my parents. I don't wanna to grow up old and bitter and perpetually frowning. And I know you don't wanna grow up to be like your mom, always looking over her shoulder to count all her regrets. If you can walk away from me now, satisfied that we've run our course, please, do. I want you to be happy, and if I know you're okay with this, I'll be okay in time. but if any part of you will regret not giving us another shot, I'm begging you to let us try again."
She stared at him, her thoughts reeling. He was right, of course. They may have ignored and avoided each other for months and the months before that were a slow crash and burn of hundreds of unresolved issues coming to a head, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know her better than anyone. She twisted her fingers around the place on her finger that was bare now but wasn't that morning. Could she walk away from her best friend right now, and just move on from years and years of shared history, abandon it just because things got kind of hard, and never regret or think maybe she did the wrong thing? No. She really, really couldn't. So she nodded, slowly, and stood up, blanket still pulled around her shoulders and shuffled over to him. Gently, she wedged herself between the arm of the chair and his side, and laughed slightly.
"What are you laughing at?" he asked, bewildered both by her sudden move and the laughter.
"Do you remember when we were little, and the reason I got this chair when I redid my room was because it was big enough for both of us to sleep in? And we didn't really stop sleeping in it, even when we got too big, until our parents decided we were too old to have sleep overs with the opposite sex." she leaned her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes, listening to the careful beating of his heart. It sounded the same as it always had, from when they were too little to care about cooties, to when they laid on the hood of her car to watch the sunrise the last night of summer before senior year started. He still looked perplexed.
"Is you coming over here and acting normal again a yes? I'm really confused."
"Of course it's a yes. You really think I could ever give up on you?" he chuckled and shook his head slowly.
"No, I guess not." he leaned down and pulled up the box, lifting the tape and digging around till he found the plastic ring with the chipped yellow happy face ring. He grinned, crooked and tired, and handed it to her. She tilted her head at him. "You've been pulling your fingers all day." he shrugged. She laughed and took it from him, sliding it back on her finger and leaning her head into his chest.
"There." she said softly, the length of the day finally creeping into her voice. "Back where it belongs." he nodded, his eyelids heavy.