Page 89 of Smash

Dear Rafe,

I stopped. His name looked odd in my handwriting, and I realized it might’ve been the first time I’d ever written it. That alone spoke volumes about how fast and furiously things had gotten out of control. My fingers tightened around the pen as I continued.

I have never felt as heard by anyone as I am with you. People listen. But you hear me. There’s a difference. You always seem to know the parts of me I’m trying the hardest to hide.

My eyes stung, but tears didn’t fall this time.

When I’m with you, I don’t feel like I have to smooth out my edges or make myself into someone who is worthy of love. I don’t feel like I need to be strong, as you make feeling vulnerable seem like truth, rather than a weakness.

I paused, ashamed to admit the next part. And when I set the pen back to the paper, I felt my pulse fluttering in my wrists.

Every time I came near you, something in me sparked awake. My heart forgot how to beat normally. Everything in me felt electric—my body, my mind, my soul. I yearned for you.

I pressed my lips together, fighting another wave of tears.

I’ve never felt more alive than I did in the moments with you. I should’ve been strong enough to walk away, but I couldn’t. I wanted you so badly. Even now, knowing how wrong it was and how many lives I’ve upended, and with Calder sleeping in the next room completely broken, I still want you. More than anything.

I stopped writing, horrified by my honesty, and closed my eyes. All I could see was Rafe, hovering above me. I felt him so strongly that I had to wonder if he was downstairs staring up and seeing the same thing at this very moment. He felt close enough that I could almost convince myself I heard his heartbeat.

I need you to know, what we shared meant something to me. Not just because it was forbidden. But because you made me realize what being alive is supposed to feel like.

I’m not asking you for anything. I don’t have that right. I just needed to admit that when I think about you, I don’t only feel guilt. I feel longing. I feel grief for the loss. And most of all, I feel awake in a way I never knew possible.

I closed the notebook and hugged it against my body. Both letters had been written in the dark like confessions no one would ever read. My eyes felt gritty. My body heavy. My heart was still tender and achy, but at least the thoughts in my head had stopped clawing quite so hard.

Eventually, I tucked the notebook under the couch cushion, curled on my side beneath Calder’s blanket—facing away from the bedroom door—and sleep finally came. Not gently. Not peacefully. But more like surrender.

CHAPTER 25

Three nights later, after going back and forth to work like a zombie all week, I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to talk to Calder. I’d been waiting for him to cool down, but each successive day of silence only widened the distance between us. So after work, I stopped at the grocery store for the ingredients to make his favorite dinner, figuring my best shot might be to get him to talk to me over a meal.

Chicken piccata. It wasn’t fancy, but it was one of his favorites. The first time I’d cooked it for him, we were in college. He’d closed his eyes and asked if it was too soon to propose. At the time, I’d laughed, but now the memory made my heart ache.

I changed out of my work clothes and spent the next hour pounding chicken cutlets, battering them in flour, and browning them in the skillet until the edges turned golden. I made the sauce from scratch, too, stirring too often in an attempt to keep my mind busy. Garlic. Broth. Wine. Lemon. More lemon because Calder liked it a bit zestier than the recipe called for. The apartment filled with the smell of home. Or at least what used to be a home.

I set the small table, though we hadn’t eaten together in a week, and then stood there, realizing how desperate and hopeful it all looked.

By seven, the food was all done and keeping warm on the stove. By eight, the sauce had grown too thick, so I added another splash of broth and stirred it back to life. By nine, I felt like a complete idiot, and I decided to check his location on my phone—something that a week ago would’ve felt normal, because we’d shared locations since college, but now it felt intrusive.

I’d hoped to find his little dot moving, maybe coming down our pretty block in Brooklyn at this very moment. But it was in Midtown. At first, I thought he was still at work. But when I zoomed in, I realized he was a block away from his office.

At a bar.

My stomach sank.

What an idiot I am. Thinking I could just make dinner and he’d come home and we’d sit down and have a civil conversation. I pictured him in the suit he’d left in this morning, tie now off, shoulders slumped, staring into a near-empty glass instead of coming home to see me, to the dinner I’d made like a bribe.

I sighed and set the phone face down on the table. The kitchen smelled delicious, and the stove light glowed over the covered pan, but I had absolutely no appetite. So rather than fooling myself any longer, I packed everything away and cleaned up. Calder might not even know I’d made this effort if he came home in the state he had been lately.

I walked to the window and looked out at the dark street below. A couple passed hand in hand, laughing at something I couldn’t hear. A delivery guy balanced a pizza box as he got off his e-bike, and I watched him climb the stairs to the brownstone across the street and buzz one of the apartments.

Then I heard it. Music. Faint, but there. Coming from downstairs.

Rafe.

My pulse reacted before the rest of me did.

No.