I sit for another five minutes, mapping out possible futures in my head. None of them are good.
Eventually, I force the door open and step into the wet. The heat is immediate, a slap to the face. I walk to the lobby, nod at the guy behind the counter—he’s reading a fishing magazine and hardly looks up—and take the stairs two at a time to the second floor. Room 211. I know she picked it because it’s an odd number. Melissa never liked symmetry.
My hand hovers before I knock. Three short, one long, out of habit, and I hear her laugh on the other side before she even opens the door.
When she does, it’s like stepping into a time warp. The room smells like her, sharp and sweet. She’s in jeans and a loose T-shirt, hair wild and damp like she’s just showered. She looks tired, but it suits her, carves something vulnerable into the architecture of her face.
“Nate,” she says, the word almost a sigh. “You came.”
I step in, keep my hands in my jacket pockets. “Melissa.”
She steps back to allow me entrance, then smiles with half her mouth, and sits cross-legged on the corner of the bed. There are two coffee cups on the side table, one lipstick-stained, the other pristine. She gestures for me to sit. I hover near the dresser instead, watch the way her ankle bounces with nervous energy.
“Why did you really come?” I ask. “Why now, after all these months?”
She leans forward, her hands pressed together like she’s praying. “I keep thinking… what if I made the wrong choice? What if I let something good go, and I’m too stubborn to admit it?” She shakes her head, hair swinging. “I can’t get you out of my system. I thought I could. I tried. But I can't. We hadten years together, Nate. Ten incredible years. That doesn’t just disappear.”
I let out a slow breath. “No, but we left it behind for a reason, didn’t we?”
She smiles, but it’s sad, all teeth. “You remember our first apartment? The one with the leaking pipes and the neighbor who played bagpipes at 6 a.m.? We fought every day about who would get up first and make coffee. But then you’d bring me a cup in bed anyway,” she says. “Even after the worst fights. You always did.”
I look down at my hands, still raw from nerves. “People break habits eventually,” I say.
“Not always,” she says and slides up beside me. I feel the heat of her knee through my jeans. She rests a hand on my arm, feather-light, the way you’d touch a sleeping dog. “What if we tried again? What if we gave it a real shot, without all the bullshit this time? Without all the expectations?”
“No, Mel. I’m not the same man you used to know. I’ve changed. I’ve moved on. Don’t you think it’s time you did the same?”
She nods, lets her hand fall. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe it is time I moved on. But I had to be sure. I had to see you, because I couldn’t really remember what it felt like. All those years, all those fights and the love…. I guess I was just hoping that seeing you could remind me of why we let each other go.”
“We? No, don’t romanticize it. It was you who let me go,” I say as the truth rolls off my tongue.
She winces as if I’d slapped her, her fingers fluttering to her cheek as if to stem the blow. “Yes, I suppose I did. But you didn’t put up much of a fight, either.”
I can’t argue with that. I didn’t fight because some part of me knew she was right. We were not meant for each other anymore.We had been drifting apart, and holding on tighter would only have dragged us both down.
“But what about now?” she asks. “What if things are different.”
“They’re not. Nothing’s changed except our distance from the past.”
She looks away, and I know she’s disappointed. I can see the slight tremble in her lower lip, a telltale sign that she’s trying not to cry. I want to reach out to comfort her, but I refrain. Some wounds need air to heal, not soothing words or tender caresses.
“What if I told you I changed my mind about everything? What if I said I wanted kids?”
That stops me, as if she’s jammed a stick in the spokes of my mind. For years we fought over the shape of our future, the great divide between my longing for a family and her allergy to permanence. I thought I’d heard every permutation of this argument, but I never expected her to change her mind. “You’re just saying that because you miss me. Or because you think it will change my mind, but it won't. Besides, I have someone now who wants what I want, who sees the future the way I do. I’m not going to derail that for nostalgia.”
“Then why’d you come here, Nate? If it’s so damn perfect, why are you here?”
“To give you these.” I fish the letters from my pocket, creased and soft around the edges, and slide them across the laminate of the dresser.
She looks at them, her face tight and pale. “You kept these?”
“Didn’t know what else to do with them, until now. But I no longer need them,” I say.
She doesn’t pick them up, just stares at the pile. Then, finally she rakes them in, holds them to her chest. Like they’re a diagnosis or a prescription or maybe both. “I guess that’s it, then.”
“Yeah, I guess it is,” I say, rising from the dresser. “I should go. I’ve got someone waiting on me, and I promised I wouldn’t be late.”
She doesn’t stop me. Just nods, her chin quivering slightly as she finally meets my eyes.