These things on my letter aren’t tears. They are splotches made by this soda can — oh, what the hell. Of course they are my tears. I’ve shed what seems like a million of them. Seeing you at the rare holiday and never being able to touch you. Hardly ever getting a response from you, despite the fact that I’ve written my damn hand off. All of those things eat away at me as if tiny insects are nibbling at my skin, sucking my blood until one day I will wake up a hollow shell.
And I don’t get it. I see the longing in your eyes. I know that look because I see it every day in my mirror, but you keep rejecting me, pushing me away. I can’t take it any longer. When I had to have my shunt replaced, I know that was you in the room. I felt you. You were gone when I woke up, but I didn’t need to ask my parents or yours who sat with me through the night. I SMELLED YOU even in my sleep. Yet you left. Why did you never even speak to me once? Why haven’t I felt the touch of your hand or the press of your lips against me? I don’t have the answers to these questions, and they haunt me. You, our love, our past is haunting me.
My friends say that it’s completely unhealthy for me to be hung up on you. I think even Nick has given up hope that you’ll ever come around. He’s not even apologizing or explaining things away anymore. Like “Nate’s on a mission” or “He talks about you all the time” or “Just give him space.”
I’ve waited so long for you. And for what? To be given what reward? To turn twenty-two and not have you around? It’s been six years! Six. I’m so dried up, I don’t even remember what it feels like to interact with other guys. I’ve turned away men in the prime of my dating life because I believed in the words “It will always be Nathan and Charlotte.”
I’m just done, Nate. Done.
I love you. I will always love you, but for my sake and probably for yours too, I have got to move on.
Yours,
Charlotte
Part Two
24
Nathan
It’s been three years since I received Charlotte’s last letter. It was the first letter she didn’t sign with love. The paper is crumpled from my reflexive anger when I first received it. It was anger directed at myself. But it’s also worn due to the many times I’ve read it and re-read it. I know it by heart. I know all her letters by heart. I’ve written her back a thousand times in my head, but only a few words have ever made it to the page. I couldn’t describe to her what I felt like in those early days. How much I hated myself. Greta. Women. Everything.
I trace the splotches, her tears, like a morbid tic-tac-toe. I’ve started so many letters to her and wanted to kiss her so many times. It was fucking awful to see her and not touch her. As she grew older and more beautiful, each visit home was more painful than the torture they did in Special Forces to prepare us for capture. So I went home less and less, until I just stopped going home altogether.
I stayed away, telling myself it was better for her to find someone else. That she’d be happier. That the whole “Nathan and Charlotte” thing was a child’s dream. I thought that she’d give up over time, but she never did. She held on so long. And the longer she held on—the more amazing she showed herself to be—the more I realized I didn’t deserve her, no matter how much I wanted her.
It’s been nearly two years since I last saw her in person. Mom and Dad and Nick have learned that if they want to see me, they come to me because I can’t go back to Chicago.
I pull up her profile on my phone. It’s still the first entry. Every new phone I’ve ever gotten, I’ve punched in her number first and added her picture. I’ve got recent ones that Nick furtively sends me. They are still good friends, maybe even best friends, but Charlotte would be so angry if she knew that 99 percent of the pictures of Nick takes of the two of them are for my eyes.
“Who’s the hottie, Monk?”
Some new recruit peers over my shoulder at Charlotte’s smiling face. I turn the phone screen face down and give him a glare that has new seamen crying in their boots.
“Don’t even look at her. He’ll kick your ass,” calls Bride. He’s a teammate of mine. I can’t wait until we get off this fucking ship. Most of the time we fly in and out of these carriers, but right now we’re cooling our heels, waiting on orders to see whether we’ll be going in to rescue some rich guy and his wife who were kidnapped in the Mediterranean.