The letter stayed on my kitchen table for two days before I could bring myself to answer it.
It was not an ordinary letter, though to anyone else it would have looked unremarkable: white envelope, a name written in hurried script, a fold so precise it seemed to carry its own kind of gravity. To me, though, it was both relic and omen.
I tried to live with it as though it were harmless. I moved it from place to place, believing that a change in scenery might soften its meaning. First, it lay flat against the oak wood, where the grain of the table seemed to cradle it. Then I slid it into a cookbook on the counter, pressed between the pages of recipes for sauces and stews, as if flour and butter could somehow smother the ache it stirred. Later still, I tucked it beneath the vase of dahlias on the windowsill, but the petals sagged and leaned as though the flowers themselves sensed the weight of what it carried.
It was absurd, really—an envelope commanding the silence of my house. Every time I entered the kitchen, my eyes found it. Every time I tried to ignore it, the words I had not yet read seemed to burn brighter in my mind, a phantom script branded onto me.
When I finally slit it open, I half expected smoke.
I'd like to see you—if you'd want that.
Sixteen words. Nothing more.
And yet they throbbed in me like a second heartbeat, impossible to quiet.
Did I want that?
The question refused to leave me. I carried it into the garden when I pruned the roses, into the shop when I stood in line for milk, into the quiet of night when the clock ticked loud against the walls. The letter made me restless, a ghost sitting at my shoulder, a whisper that would not dim.
By the third night, I gave up pretending.
The table was cleared. The letter lay open before me, edges soft now from my restless handling. I pulled a sheet of paper close, the pen poised between my fingers. For a long while I could only sit, my hand suspended in air, as though the first mark would unlock everything I had locked away for years.
What could I possibly say to Adrian—the man who had once been my entire world, who had walked away with promises that dissolved into silence? What words could bridge the wide and aching chasm that time had built between us?
At last, my hand moved. Three lines spilled out, brief and trembling, the only truth I could manage:
Adrian,
Yes. I'd like to see you too.
Elara
That was all. No questions, no recriminations, no careful embroidery of meaning. Just three lines, as spare as breath.
When I folded the page and slid it into its envelope, my hands shook. My lips brushed the flap instinctively before I pressed it shut, as though a kiss could steady what my words could not.
The next morning, I walked to the postbox. The sun was low, turning the roofs to amber, the air sharp with autumn. I clutched the envelope as though the wind might try to steal it, as though the world might conspire to keep me from releasing it. When I finally let it drop into the red slot, I felt both lighter and unbearably exposed, like a wound uncovered to the air.
Then, of course, the waiting began.
Days stretched long, filled with small tasks I could not concentrate on. I found myself listening for the postman's steps, ears straining for the metallic clink of the slot. When no reply came immediately, I rehearsed indifference, telling myself that I had prepared for silence all along. But my heart betrayed me. Each time I passed the door, I caught myself pausing. Each time I glanced at the table, I imagined another letter lying there, heavy with possibility.
In those waiting days, the house seemed different too. The rooms were quieter, the shadows deeper. I caught myself in moments of stillness, remembering—not just him, but the life I had once dreamed of. Our Sunday afternoons in the café with the blue door. The way he tapped rhythms on the table with impatient fingers. The warmth of his laugh, unguarded and boyish.
And always, circling back, the memory of the kiss we last kept.
It was the final moment before everything unraveled. He had leaned toward me, the night pressing close, and kissed me with an urgency I didn't yet understand. I had thought it a promise then, a vow written in the language of lips and breath. Only later did I realize it had also been a goodbye. That kiss had stayed with me longer than his absence. Even now, it seemed to live inside me, waiting to be answered.
When the reply finally came—another envelope, his handwriting spilling across the front, my name inked in urgent strokes—I stood in the hallway and tore it open without even taking off my coat.
Elara,
Thank you. I wasn't sure you'd answer, or that I had the right to ask. Would you meet me? There's a café on Rosehill Street—the little one with the blue door. You used to love their lemon tarts. Tomorrow, three o'clock. If you come, I'll be there. If not, I'll understand.
Adrian
The little café with the blue door. How long had it been since I thought of that place? Years had worn away the edges of many memories, but that door remained vivid. The chipped paint, the squeak of the bell, the taste of lemon sharp against sugar.
I could see us there: two young people sharing a pot of tea because coins were scarce, laughing too loudly, stealing sugar cubes from the dish. Once, he had saved for weeks to buy me a lemon tart, presenting it like treasure. I had laughed then, kissed him across the table, whispered that it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done.
And now, after all this time, he wanted to meet me there again.
I pressed the letter to my chest, my pulse fluttering beneath it, and I understood: my life was about to change.
