“You’re both the assholes.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He kept his identity a secret from you. That was an asshole move. You didn’t tell him about the letters. Also an asshole move.”
“I feel like faking his identity was a little bit worse than some innocent letters.”
“Innocent? Then explain all those sexy letters and the secret meetup you were trying to plan.”
“It wasn’t a secret sexy meetup. I just wanted to meet the person I had been writing to all this time. And I feel like he should get another asshole point for totally ignoring those letters. He led me to believe he wanted to meet me, then stopped writing back.”
“Maybe he wasn’t ignoring them,” she says. “Maybe he was responding to your invitation by showing up at your door.”
“Which leads us back to him being an asshole for not telling me who he was. Can we give him a third point for that?”
“Only if you get another point for lying to him about all those trips you went on. And another for the ‘bad in bed’ comment.”
I sigh. “That puts us at an even score.”
“Not everything has to be a competition. Save the one-upmanship for the mean letters and just be real with him.”
I stare through the window at my building. Luca and Ben walked past a while ago toward the other diner. Maybe Anne is right. This shouldn’t be a competition. I don’t want it to be. I just want…
I pause, thinking about what it is that I want. I miss writing letters to Luca, but even more, I miss what I had with him when I thought his name was Jake. I hate that the reason I have neither now is because they’re the same person.
I guess I just want it back. All of it.
* * *
I’m still thinking about Luca when I get home. I pull my box of letters out of the closet and look through them. I had wondered for a long time if Luca held onto any of the letters I sent him. I didn’t see them the first couple of times I was in his apartment, before I knew who he was. I wonder if he keeps them in a box in the closet like I do. Maybe he plans on burning them.
No matter how angry I am with him, I know that I could never bring myself to destroy the letters. I imagine that I’ll keep them with me through every move. I’ll probably still have them stowed away in my attic when I’m an old widow. I’ll be ninety-seven years old by then, and my late husband will have never known what was in the box. When I pass away, I’ll leave my mansion to my grandchildren – yes, I plan on being rich and living in a mansion by the time I’m that old. My grandkids will go through my house, choosing which things to sell and which things to keep when they come across my box.
They’ll think for a moment that they’ve stumbled upon Grandma Naomi’s secret stash of love letters until they actually read some of them and realize that no, these are not love letters, but something far juicier. This is hate mail. Grandma Naomi had an enemy who wrote awful letters to her for decades. But why did she keep all these letters? Perhaps she was afraid that one day this person would track her down and poison her. The grandkids would then take the letters to the police station and have an investigation launched on what was once believed to be a death of natural causes. My body would be exhumed and a new autopsy would be performed.
This is the type of thing that I might have written in a letter to him. I’m suddenly hit with the realization that we might never write to each other again. I don’t like the thought of that. I leave the box of letters in my living room and go downstairs. I’m not sure what I’m expecting to find. It’s not like he’s going to leave another letter in my mailbox at this point.
When I get to the lobby, I spot Luca standing next to the elevator. Ben isn’t with him anymore. He watches me for a moment after the doors open, then pulls his gaze away and steps inside. I force myself to get inside the elevator with him. We stand side by side, facing the door.
“Luca, I’m sorry,” I blurt out when the doors close.
He turns to face me, and I do the same. He frowns. “For what?”
I’m annoyed that I have to explain myself. I’m not annoyed at him, but at myself for bringing it up. I sigh. “For what I said the other day.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Can you be a little more specific?”
The elevator feels hot. I wonder if it’s too late to take back my apology. I decide to tough it out. “I may have implied that you were bad in bed. I didn’t tell Anne that you were, if that’s what you were thinking when she made that comment earlier. I had only told her what I said to you.”
He stares at me, his expression unchanging except for a tiny hint of a smile at the corner of his lips. I hate that he thinks this is funny while I’ve been stewing over it.
“You don’t have to apologize for that,” he says. For a moment, I think that’s all he’s going to say. But it isn’t. “You were just mad.” His gaze wanders down my body before returning to my face. “I know that you liked it.”
I’m so mad and embarrassed that I let out an actual growl. This only serves to amuse him more, and the hint of a curved lip becomes a full-fledged smile. His smile makes me hate him even more, because damn it, it looks so good on him.
“I hate you,” I say.
He tries to frown, but he can’t seem to undo the smile. “Why would you say that?”
