The Worst Best Friend: A Small Town Romance

Me? I’m smiling like a lovestruck fool.

And I’m not expecting it when I jump forward over a year to a note that’s more than a few sentences.

Shelly,

I doubt you’ll ever read this, but it’s going down on paper. How many times did you tell me to put my experiences on paper “for posterity” when I called you a history dork? Fuck it, I listened.

We saw our first dead people today.

His name was Hamid. He served us tea often when we’d pass through his village. He had eighteen grandkids.

They slaughtered them all except the two older ones. His wife, his sons, his entire family.

Remember those WWI books you had your nose stuck in last summer? The ones you tried to tell me about and I pretended not to listen?

It still couldn’t have prepared me for this.

I wonder if those dudes in the trenches ever got desensitized or if they were just always sad?

Something tells me I’d better figure it out real damn fast.

I miss Marty. I miss Dallas. I miss you.

I’m starting to breathe hard, but I see West nodding in my peripheral vision, urging me to keep going. I flip through a few more pages as the dates grow farther apart.

Happy eighteenth birthday. I haven’t sent you shit and I’m not sure I ever will. Since you won’t see this, I’ll tell you why I keep writing.

This is my fucking therapy.

This is me being very, very glad you’re safe at home and I’m here.

This is me wishing I was home to give you crap while you stuff your face with Thelma’s cookies. Wishing I could see the light in your eyes before you leave Dallas behind for a lifetime of learning and fun.

This is also me wishing for crazy shit I shouldn’t—and knowing it won’t do you a lick of good, so for you, I’ll always just wish you the best.

Crying.

I have to stop and wipe my eyes while I page forward to the very last letter. It’s just a few months before he came home.

Shel. Shelly. Rachel.

Would you even recognize me now?

Would you bother trying after I blew you off, never sending a single damn one of those stupid-ass letters?

I imagine you’re happy and well wherever you are, that pretty head just getting smarter and prettier like a sharpened knife.

I’ll bet you’re too busy learning to think of me, and honest to God, you shouldn’t.

Because I’m not the same fresh-faced idiot who left Dallas and left you hanging with a promise I can never keep.

Because I’ve seen so much fuckery I get what that writer you love with the weird Russian name meant when he said, “The darker the night, the brighter the stars.”

Except mine have gone out forever, and I’m too chickenshit to even tell you.

All I know is, I’m coming home soon, and you’re not.

I guess this is a goodbye you’ll never hear, a farewell to this godforsaken place and good people and everything I thought I knew.