The small card laying on top makes my throat ache as I read it:
Margot,
Our story has always been my favorite. I can’t wait to write the next chapters with you.
Love,
Ethan
Beyond that, the pages are filled with his handwriting. The paper crinkles slightly as I run my finger over the works, feeling the tiny divots that the pen left behind. They’re letters, dozens of them, but they aren’t full of sappy professions of love or wistful, melodramatic pining. They’re our story. I sink into my office chair and begin to read.
The first one makes me smile through the mist of tears already fogging my vision. He writes about when we first met. He was the CFO at the time, and I was hired as his assistant.
I thought you hated me at first. You were so reserved and aloof those first couple of weeks. Truthfully, I was sort of intimidated by you. It was obvious that you were smart, and I’d seen just enough of your sarcasm shine through to know that you wouldn’t tolerate idiots. For the first time in my life, I had to wonder if I was, in fact, an idiot.
Cue the cheese incident.
You’d been in my office taking notes during a virtual staff meeting. After you left, a guy from our team named Tim wandered into my office, going on about something that he didn’t agree with during the meeting.
Then he glanced down, paused, and said, “Oh, cheese.”
Without warning or even an inkling of self-awareness, he reached down and popped this little orange cube that had been sitting on the corner of my desk into his mouth.
I had no idea what it was. I’d never seen it before in my life. All I knew was that there was absolutely no reason there would be a small cube of cheese on my desk. Even if there were, only the least self-aware human on earth would waltz into my office and randomly eat it without permission or warning.
Tim’s face turned sour a second later. He coughed, sputtered, and demanded to know what it was, having now realized that it is most definitely not cheese.
That’s when you walked in and asked, “Did I leave my eraser in here?”
“I think Tim just ate it, actually.”
I’ll never forget the look on your face or the tone of your voice when you looked over at him and simply asked, “Why?”
Tim cupped his hand under his mouth and spit out a gob of the eraser. “I thought it was cheese!”
Fuming, he deposited the chewed up eraser, along with a generous pool of his own saliva, onto my desk and stormed out of the room.
At that point, I knew that you might think I’m a bit of an idiot, but at least I wasn’t the guy who ate your eraser.
You looked at the wet, chewed-up eraser then up at me, and we both started laughing so hard we could barely breathe. Your laugh was so bright and unguarded that it caught me by surprise. And after that, it became a daily challenge for me, trying to make you laugh.
There was nothing romantic about it at the time. I knew you had a serious boyfriend. I just liked being the reason you laughed. Every smile and every laugh felt well-earned, like you didn’t hand them out lightly. And before long, I realized that it wasn’t all that hard because the same things that made me laugh, made you laugh. The cheese incident may have been our first inside joke, but it was far from our last.
Pressing my fingertips to my lips, I laugh through the tears.
I flip through page after page of similar stories: the first time we went to lunch together, the first time we travelled together for business, the night Jeremy and I broke up, the dates—both real and fake—that followed, and eventually, the night we broke up. All the snapshots of us told through his eyes and forever preserved in this book.
By the time I reach the end, my cheeks are wet, and my heart feels both cracked open and stitched back together.
I know exactly what I want and where I need to be.
The building is quiet and dark as I walk down the hall, clutching the journal to my chest. The glow of his office illuminates our little corner of the tenth floor.
When I step inside, Ethan looks up from his desk. He doesn’t say anything right away, just studies me with those hazel eyes. There’s a hint of nervousness in his expression, a tightness in his jaw.
“You read it?” His voice is careful.
“All of it,” My throat is still raw, but the words are steady.