Reaching into the box, I retrieve the burnt letter Rachael had given back to me after Maritza refused to read it.
“Here,” I say.
Our eyes catch and she hesitates before taking the folded paper from my hands and gazing over the faded, smudged ink.
Dear Maritza,
I almost died today.
And I don’t say that because I want your sympathy or I want you to worry about me. I say it because in those deafening seconds when I thought it was the end for me, I found myself thinking about one person and one person only.
You.
Something happens to a man when he’s on the brink of death, and truth be told, it’s as cliché as it is profound. You look back on your life, namely your regrets, and you realize you only had one shot—and either you made the most of it or you didn’t.
It’s that simple.
I haven’t even touched thirty and sure I’ve served my country, but what else have I done? Pissed away the best years of my life on women and beer? Walking around with a chip on my shoulder because my life didn’t go the way I thought it would?
Like I said, I almost died today. And in a way, I did die because I’m not the man I once was.
For the first time in my life, I’ve realized what I truly want and that’s meaning. I want a girl to miss and a girl that misses me. I want the corny letters and care packages. I want to come home and wrap my arms around you, swinging you around in a gymnasium around all the other guys reuniting with their family. I want to get to know you. I want to make you smile and do ridiculous things together. I want to push your limits and I want you to push mine. I want to get in fights with you and I want to have crazy makeup sex when they’re over.
There are so many more constellations I want to show you, Maritza.
Just months ago, I lost myself in your smile and I found myself in your kiss. You were the one. I was just too afraid to say it. If only I’d told you sooner, maybe you’d be mine right now.
I guess what I’m trying to say is … wait for me.
Yours,
Isaiah
P.S. I could never hate you.
When she’s finished, she folds the letter and presses it against her chest, staring at me with through glassy, squinted eyes.
“You knew me all of nine days …” her voice is broken, tapering into nothing.
“I spent more time with you in those nine days than I’ve spent with any other woman in my adult life,” I say. “Well, aside from Cassie.”
“Who’s Cassie?”
“We dated all through high school,” I explain, rubbing my hands together. I don’t talk about her and I can’t remember the last time I said her name out loud, but I promised myself that if Maritza gave me another chance, I’d tell her anything she ever wanted to know, bullshit-free. No filter. “Summer after senior year, she showed up with this positive pregnancy stick in her hand. We were both scared shitless. Within a couple of weeks, I’d gone down to the nearest Army recruiter and enlisted myself.”
“Oh my God. That’s a little extreme.”
I shrug. “It was either that or working minimum wage jobs to support us, hoping someday maybe we could go to college if the stars aligned. Plus, I was just a kid. An eighteen-year-old kid who didn’t know anything about anything. I was terrified and I just wanted to do right by her.”
“That’s really sweet.”
“Yeah, well. I came back from basic training, wanting to surprise her. Ending up getting a bit of a surprise myself,” I say, rubbing my lips together as I pause. I can still picture this clear as day. “Walked in on Cassie and Ian in bed together. Damn near murdered him that day and had Cassie not been there, shrieking and pregnant, I just might have. But I let him go. And Cassie confessed that they’d had a thing for quite some time—the better part of our senior year, actually. And not only that, but she said the baby was his and that she’d lied about how far along she was so I wouldn’t know.”
“Jesus.” She cups her hand over her mouth. “So you were betrayed not only by the girl you loved but your twin brother.”
I shrug. “I expected that sort of thing from Ian. He was always chasing after everything I had, wanting everything I wanted. He was so jealous of me it drove him to do stupid shit all the time. It was like his life mission was to see how many times he could get me in trouble with our parents. He once pretended to be me and showed up at my work acting crazy and yelling at customers just to get me fired, and it almost fucking worked.”