Page 166 of Only After We Met
If we really could send an email to ourselves in the past, the way you said, I think mine would be so long, I’d get bored reading it. Remember, I was an idiot back then. I still am, actually. Joking aside, I’d just have too much to tell myself.
When your email arrived, I want you to know I just sat there looking at it in my inbox for a while before opening it, enjoying the feeling of getting another message from you after so long. For me, you’re still that same girl who used to write me every night from her dorm room…
From: Ginger Davies
To: Rhys Baker
Subject: RE: RE: We’ve arrived
Don’t make me get all emotional.
It’s normal for you to be nervous, Rhys. You will be until you see him, talk about things, and get that weight off your back. Everything will be fine. I know it. If he wants to see you, if you’re important to him right now, that has to mean something. We could have wound up like that, you know? Not talking for a bunch of different reasons, and then in the end losing touch. It happens all the time. Time passes and it gets harder, I know that; it happened to me too. When we weren’t talking, I still thought about you all the time, I wondered what you were doing, and I thought about contacting you, but I’d always put it off till the next day. And then the next day I’d do the same thing again. And eventually the distance itself became an insurmountable obstacle.
Let me know when you land, okay?
Kisses (sincere ones).
From: Rhys Baker
To: Ginger Davies
Subject: Just now
I just landed in New York.
I’ll write you when I can, Ginger Snap.
107
Rhys
Nothing had changed, and yet everything had. At least when I looked harder and noticed the details. The rosebush was no longer in front of the window, the garden seemed neglected, the paint on the columns out front had faded, and the wind had blown the leaves across the porch steps. Nobody had bothered to rake them on the random Wednesday I decided to go home.
I still had the keys my mom had given me the last time I visited, but I didn’t dare use them. Maybe I didn’t think I deserved to. I rang the doorbell and waited until she opened up and greeted me with a fragile smile and a warm hug. She smelled the same as always. That comforted me. Still recognizing that scent.
“My little boy…” she took my arm.
“Where is he?” I asked nervously.
“He’s sleeping. He usually tries to rest before lunch. Come to the kitchen. You must be starving. I’ll make you something.”
I nodded, but before I could step forward, she hugged me again, and we stayed like that in silence for a few seconds. Later, she opened the refrigerator with shaking hands, and I noticed new wrinkles onher face, a dullness in her eyes. They were tired, her body was thin and shrunken, and yet she still seemed full of strength and energy. Not the kind someone’s born with, but the kind a person finds because they have to.
“You want chicken? Vegetable soup?”
“Mom, maybe we should…”
“Or something sweet?”
I took a deep breath and shut the fridge. We looked at each other.
“I’m not hungry. And we need to talk.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
She started wringing her hands, and I grabbed them and felt her tremble. Looking down at her, seeing her so short beneath me, her misty eyes looking up into mine, I started to see everything differently. From her perspective, as someone who had been beside me for so many days, even before I learned to walk, someone who had cared for me when I was sick, who had celebrated all those birthdays with me…
She tried to get past me, but I stopped her.