Mia reads every entry in order, one after the other, never breaking, never stopping. I listen intently to every word she breathes, every pause she takes when things get too hard to read, to continue. I listen to her sniffles, to the cries shed for a twenty-year-old girl reaching out to her younger self. The warnings. The advice. The sympathy and regrets.
Jamie writes about Zeke and Gina and Esme and even Dean. She doesn’t mention them by name, but I know who they are.
For hours, Mia reads out loud the words of the girl I’m hopelessly in love with, changing from sitting to lying to pacing to stomping, her emotions switching with every new story or recollection. And I’m right there with her, riding the rollercoaster, wishing Jamie was beside me so I could hold her hand through all the ups and downs, the twists and turns.
At some point, Jamie writes about me. Like the others, she doesn’t mention me by name, but I know. So does Mia. Because she sits beside me and takes my hand in hers. Twenty years of friendship, and it’s the first time she’s ever needed to console me.
The sun’s almost set when she turns to me, her phone to her heart, her eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “This is the last one.”
I clear the lump in my throat. “When was it written?”
“This past Tuesday,” Mia says, glancing up at me. “She’d already left by then, right?”
I nod.
“You want me to read it?”
“Yes.”
Mia huffs out a breath, squaring her shoulders before bringing the phone to her eyes.
“Dear Younger Me. There’s something I’ve been meaning to talk to you about, but the timing never seemed right. It seems that I’ve covered almost all the important things that life might throw your way, but there’s one thing I haven’t covered yet, because, well… I don’t think anyone or anything can ever really prepare you for it.
Are you ready?
Love.
There it is.
Four little letters.
One simple word.
Love.
Love is both a blessing and a curse, and as much as I want to tell you that you’ll only ever experience one side of it, I don’t want to lie to you. Love is going to hurt you and betray you, and that’s okay because love is more than just a word. Love is an emotion that’s meant to be felt.
Feel it.
Accept it.
In every way.
Because love exists all around us, it doesn’t just come in the form of a person you hope to spend the rest of your life with.
Love can be someone you meet who you connect with right away. Someone who wants to share hours of her time with you, daily, laughing and talking and getting to know you.
Love can be a six-foot-five Goliath of a man attached to twenty-year-old clay pots because he loves his family’s legacy as much as he loves his family.
Love can be something so small as your fifty-year-old male driver knowing you’re going through a rough time and blasting Taylor Swift on the car ride to the airport because he thinks it will help.
Love has many forms—it can be a simple act of kindness, or it can be deep and profound. And while society will make you believe that true love has no end, here’s the best part: Love doesn’t have to be infinite for it to be real.
This is the last entry I’ll be writing to you, Younger Me, so I’m going to leave you with this… something I once wrote in the pages of a sketchbook filled with hand-picked daisies:
You are privileged and honored to have been loved by Holden Eastwood. Even for a couple of months. A few weeks. A single day. Even if you didn’t know it at the time. Love has the ability to change you. To heal you. Let Holden heal you.”
30
Jamie
It’s kind of amazing how many things people can accumulate in a lifetime. Not that I can judge Esme and her husband, Wesley. I’m a third their age and live alone in an RV, so I tend to collect memories, not material possessions.
After his death, Esme had donated most of Wesley’s things, so I’ve spent the past week packing mainly her stuff. It’s been… honestly, it’s been hard. Thankfully, the ladies from her church have dropped by a few times to help, and they’ve been a literal godsend. They’d organized trucks to take away the furniture and donate it to people in need. So now, I’m standing in the living room surrounded by trash bags and boxes—the only things left of a married couple’s entire lifetime together. I think I’ve packed close to fifty boxes. When I emptied my RV, everything I wanted to keep fit in two.
The two boxes had arrived earlier in the day, and they’re still in the entryway. While I wait for my dinner to arrive, I grab a knife from the kitchen to slice open the tape.
The first box I open has some clothes. The second has what material possessions I’ve collected the past four years. Mainly dumb things I thought I needed at the time—touristy things, license plates from different states that I’d planned to do something crafty with but never did.
I sit down and pull out the items one by one, trying to invoke a memory, something to hold on to, but nothing comes. Not until I reach the bottom of the box and pull out a clear Ziplock bag with four tiny clay pots. Eyebrows drawn, I pull out the business card with the Eastwood Nursery logo and flip it over to read the handwritten note.
So you can take a piece of our legacy wherever you go. - Big H.
I stare at the words for longer than I should, and with each second that passes, the emotions I’ve forced deep, deep down come closer and closer to the surface. For an entire week, I refused to cry, refused to acknowledge the hurt or the fact that I still wake up every morning searching for a pendant that I no longer possess.
I try to breathe through the pain—the ache caused by a longing for something I can never have. I reach for my phone, stare at the many texts from Maggie that I’ve left unanswered. “It’s easier this way,” I whisper, convincing myself of another lie.
A knock on the door has me dropping my phone, saving me from more heartache. I get to my feet, calling out, “Coming!” as I grab a few bucks for the pizza guy.
I swing open the door, and my heart catches in my throat because the person standing on the other side isn’t here to give me a pizza…
He’s here to give me my most prized possession. “You left this…”
It’s been a good twenty minutes since Holden got here, and we’ve barely said two words to each other. Soon after he knocked on the door, the pizza arrived, and now we’re in the kitchen, him leaning against the fridge, me sitting on the counter, struggling to eat slices of pizza that taste like cardboard. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe his presence has killed my tastebuds, and the giant lump in my throat is making it hard to swallow. I can’t look at him. Every time I do, I catch him staring at me. It’s unnerving, and I hate it. I hate that he seems to have this control over me. He smells so good. Shut up. He makes a noise, and I snap my eyes to his. “What’s that?”
“I just… cleared my throat.”
“Right.”
I sip my soda.
He drinks water from the tap.
There’s one slice of pizza left.
“Question,” he states, and my legs start swinging on their own. “Why did Esme leave me the house?”