“What the fuck, Penny?”
“These letters are from this year, Luca. How are you going to tell me that these are from elementary school? Why have you never told me about her before?”
“There’s nothing to tell,” I said. “Did you even read these letters?”
“You’re cheating on me with her.”
“Okay. You definitely didn’t read the letters then.”
She picked up a couple of letters and read only the closing. “Love, Naomi.Love,Naomi. Love, love, love!”
“So, what?”
“So, you’ll say that to her, but I have to practically beg you to say it to me.”
“I’d like to point out that she was the one who wrote ‘love’. Not me.”
“Oh yeah? Then what’s this?” She pulled another letter out of her pocket and threw it at me. I picked it up and looked at it, confused. It took me a moment to process that this was the last letter I had sent to Naomi – the one I had mailed out a month ago with my new address. Penny must have intercepted it. “Love, Luca,” she read aloud. “How can you say that to her, but not to me?”
I wanted to argue that it was just the way we had always closed our letters, but that didn’t seem quite as important anymore.
“How long have you had that letter?” I asked.
She looked down at the letter in her hand, then back up at me. Something flashed in her eyes. I had never seen her look so angry. “That’s not really the point here, Luca.” She enunciated each word carefully, waving the letter like someone might wield a knife. “I guess we have the post office to thank for kicking this back today. You shouldn’t even be writing to her in the first place. We’re getting married in two months, for crying out loud.”
“I never agreed to marry you,” I said.
“Are you kidding me?” She held up her hand, shoving her ring finger in my face. “What about this?”
“You bought that for yourself,” I said.
“We’ve been planning this wedding for months,” she said. “The venue is already paid for. I have my dress. You can’t just back out now.”
“If you would just calm down, we could talk about—”
“It’s because of her, isn’t it? That’s why you don’t want to marry me all of a sudden.”
“Her? I haven’t heard from her in months.”
“Stop lying to me. I thought I had put an end to this months ago, but it’s obvious now that you never stopped writing to her. Where are you keeping the rest of the letters?”
“I’m not lying to you. And what do you mean, you put an end to it?”
“You’re full of shit. I saw what she wrote to you about our wedding. That’s why you’re trying to back out now.”
I had a sinking feeling in my chest. I thought about the letter that I sent to Naomi – the one she never answered. “What are you talking about?”
“You told her that we were getting married.”
“I did. She never wrote back.”
Penny smiled just then, but it wasn’t a happy or even a friendly smile. It was demonic. It was creepy as hell. She pulled another letter out of her back pocket. I stood up, dropping the other letters to the floor, and took it from her. It was a letter from Naomi that I had never seen before. It was dated seven months ago, only a few days after I told her about the engagement.
Dear Luca,
I think you should dump that poor girl before she makes the mistake of marrying you and realizes what a true scumbag you are. Come hide away with me if you need to. You know where I live.
Love,
