Dear Luca,
You’re making it sound like twenty-five is a long time away. It’s not. I turn twenty-five next month, and I’m not single by the way. Also, how are you going to give me a half-ass proposal in one sentence and insult my name in the next, and expect me to say yes? You must be drinking salt water again.
Love,
Naomi
She sets the letter on her lap and looks up at me. Our faces are so close that if I leaned down just a little, I could reach her lips.
“This was only a few years ago,” she says. “Weren’t you already engaged to Penelope when you tried to make that married-by-twenty-five pact?”
“No. I was trying to get away from her when I wrote that letter.”
She’s quiet for a moment. I can tell that she’s thinking. I hold my breath, waiting for her next words. “You were with her for a long time. You two met while you were in the military. That’s what Maxwell said.”
My body tenses. I don’t like talking about Penny. Naomi starts to pull away, but I put my arm over her shoulder, and she stops moving. “We dated casually for a while. We were one of those on-again-off-again couples,” I say. “I never wanted to commit to her.”
“Then why did you propose to her?” She doesn’t take her eyes off mine. I hold her stare.
“I didn’t.”
She frowns. I can tell that she thinks I’m lying. I wish I hadn’t broken her trust by hiding who I am.
“She used my credit card to buy herself a ring, then started planning our wedding,” I continue.
Naomi rolls her eyes, then leans away from me to pull one of the most recent letters out of the stack in front of me. It’s the last one that I wrote to her before Penny and I moved to Texas.
“That’s what you said in this letter,” she says. “Do you actually expect me to believe that’s what happened?”
I sigh. I’ve never had to tell anyone the full story before. Most people are willing to accept that I almost married someone who was crazy enough to fake an engagement. Naomi deserves to hear the truth, though.
“It was a misunderstanding.”
“How?”
“I’m getting to that.” I take a sip of water to clear my throat before I continue. “Penny and I got out of the military around the same time. She knew that I would never commit to going home to Dallas with her, so she followed me back to San Diego. I didn’t know until I ran into her at the university. I guess she thought that she could win me over. I avoided her for a few weeks, but she was pushy. She managed to run into me on a daily basis. She wore me down. She lived in a dorm, and I had my own apartment. She started to spend more and more time at my apartment until one day I realized that she had moved in. When I confronted her about it, she offered to pay half the rent. I was living on the GI bill, and my apartment was expensive, so I caved. After a while, she started introducing herself to all my friends as my girlfriend.
“It was hard to argue with that. We were living together, we went to the store together, we drove together to school. Her family even came to visit us a few times. She talked about moving to Dallas when we were done with school, so I thought that it would be over by then. Turns out she wanted me to move with her. I was in vet school, which took longer than her degree, so I was able to put that conversation off for a while. I guess I should have just been honest with her. I used to tell her all the time that I wasn’t ready to commit, but I guess after a while I assumed that she knew I still felt that way. I was wrong. She overheard me talking to Ben one day, and she thought that we were talking about her. She thought that we were going to get married.”
“How did she get that from your conversation with Ben?” Naomi asks, frowning. “What were you talking about to make her think that?”
“That’s…” I hesitate. “That’s not important. After about a year, I guess she grew impatient with waiting for me to propose, so she started planning our wedding and used my credit card to buy herself a ring.”
She turns her whole body on the couch so that she’s facing me, her eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t make any sense. I feel like you’re missing an important detail.”
I shrug, hoping to drop the subject. “She was crazy.”
“It’s what you were talking about with Ben, isn’t it? Were you cheating on her?”
“No. No, no.”
Her face turns serious. “Don’t lie to me again, Luca. What were you talking about with Ben that made her think you two were engaged?”
I realize that if I tell her, she’ll think I’m batshit crazy. If I don’t, she’ll never trust me again. I have to tell her. I pinch my lips together, bracing myself. “I was talking about you.”
“Me?”
“Ben always knew about the letters. He’s the closest thing I had to a best friend. He used to give me shit for writing such mean things to you in fifth grade. In middle school, I thought I was hot shit. I had a new girlfriend every other day. Same in high school – the first couple years, anyway.” I pause, letting out a sigh. “You’re going to think this is pathetic.”
