Page 73 of Returned Mail

But one night, after too much wine and a rainstorm that makes the window stick again, I write…

I think I stayed with someone for six years because leaving felt like admitting I had wasted the time.

I regret it the second I put it in the mailbox.

For eighteen days, I panic. Then George's answer arrives.

I don't think loving someone is a waste just because it ended.

I sit down on the stairs because I don't make it back to the loft before my knees forget their job.

But I know what you mean.

I press the letter to my chest before I can stop myself. Then immediately pull it away.

“This is normal behavior,” I whisper to myself in the stairwell.

It is not.

Tonight, months after his first letter to me, I stand at the window just before seven. I notice how light changes slowly. There are some gold tones over the floor, and the light is soft along the walls.

I think about him standing here before me.

Not in a romantic way. Well, that is what I tell myself to calm down. Just in a human way. Two people, staring at the same window, going through different heartbreaks.

I write him that night.

Sometimes I stand at the window the way you said you used to. I think I understand it now. It makes the world feel manageable. Like no matter how overwhelming life gets, there's still something steady to look at.

I almost don't send it. It feels too much like admitting he has changed the way I live in this place. But it's true.

His reply comes three weeks later. The envelope is more worn than usual, like it had a rough trip getting here. I open it sitting on the living room floor.

Mia,

It's strange. The window never fixed anything when I was there. I think I wanted it to. Mostly, it just gave me somewhere to stand when I didn't know how to be in the room.

But now, thinking of you there, it feels different. Better. Like maybe that place can be a home for someone after all.

I stop, and my fingers tighten around the page. I feel like I just stop breathing. “Oh shit.”

This is starting to feel like…something.

Something I don’t have a name for, maybe not yet, or maybe not ever, but it is something.

Something that waits for me in the mailbox and follows me through my days. Something about it makes me feel closer to a man I've never seen before than to people I've known for years.

That thought scares the fuck out of me.

“George,” I whisper to the quiet loft, “what the hell are we doing?”

Chapter Nineteen

George

Time moves differently out here.

Some days stretch so long they feel like they're bending. Others pass fast enough that I blink and the sun is already dropping behind the ridge.