Page 43 of Only After We Met
From: Rhys Baker
To: Ginger Davies
Subject: Let’s negotiate
You first. You still haven’t told me about your fascinating emotional conversation with Dean before you went back to the dorm. Don’t make me beg.
From: Ginger Davies
To: Rhys Baker
Subject: RE: Let’s negotiate
If I tell you, will you explain what you meant by hitting the nail on the head and give me a brief report on what your former life was like? I hate how we always get lost in other subjects.
From: Rhys Baker
To: Ginger Davies
Subject: RE: RE: Let’s negotiate
Deal. You tell me about Dean, I’ll tell you what you want to know.
20
From: Ginger Davies
To: Rhys Baker
Subject: My part of the deal
Okay, it was a gray morning—it always is—and I had been in the office with Dad (I’m trying to make this read like a novel so it will be more intense). I felt weird there, thinking about how I’d be there next year, watching the hands of the clock move on the wall. I don’t know. It was probably a little bit of everything, now that I think about it. Plus my period had just started. I don’t know if you care, but I’m including that because I think it’s a good explanation for why I was so sensitive. It got worse when I got home and I saw Dean’s parents were already there. I never told you this, I don’t think, but they’re great. We hugged,blahblahblah, and we sat and ate at the table together. My sister showed up a little later. All of a sudden, I looked at him and I felt…something. Grief. I remembered everything we’d been through together, afternoons playing, all these moments from when we were growing up…
Don’t you think it’s sad how sometimes you lose touch with a person who at one time meant everything to you? It’s weird. I know they say life takes turns, people come and go, and whatever, but maybe we shouldn’t pretend that’s just normal. It scares me to think human beings can up and change like that.
Anyway, my eyes started stinging (I’m not the type to just cry like that; usually it’s gradual, I try to avoid it, but eventually it overwhelms me), and I got up and went to the bathroom. He came not long afterward and asked if we could talk. We wound up in my room sitting on the bed. It’s weird to think how things change sometimes, you know? That was the same place where he kissed me one afternoon five years before, when we were doing our science homework. And now we were there talking about our breakup. It’s crazy. Ironic. How little you can predict things.
I guess I understood him. And I forgave him. Especially because I realized what hurt wasn’t so much losing him as a boyfriend, but just giving up all those years of friendship and the trust we had. That hit me, seeing him there, at home. I remembered all the important things Dean had walked all over just because he didn’t have the courage to give me the explanations I needed, you know?
But it was strange… I didn’t feel sad…
I even thought how, if things hadn’t happened in exactly the way they did, you and I would never have met. Fate is funny like that. I mean, imagine if Dean had wanted to talk to me, and it had dragged on for two or three hours. I’d neverhave caught that plane. I’d never have felt so lost, because at least I’d have had the answers I didn’t get at the time. You wouldn’t have seen me struggling with the ticket machine. Even if a traffic light had turned red and I’d gone down to the station a minute later, we wouldn’t have seen each other. Don’t you realize how fragile it all is? The thread is so thin, it’s almost scary to touch it.
So to sum things up: it was better than I expected. I blew off some steam, he explained himself, he told me I seemed different (I liked that), I realized bad things sometimes bring good things with them, and before I left home, after packing everything in my suitcase, I took down basically all the photos of Dean that were still up on the corkboard in my room. Don’t ask me why I left them there all summer. All I know is that until I brought that stage to some kind of close, I wasn’t ready to stuff them into a box. I left just one, from the day we graduated from high school, because I still had good memories of that moment, and he was a part of it, after all.
We’ve decided we’ll have coffee one day. Who knows? I’m not saying I’ll do it tomorrow, but maybe a time will come when I’m in the mood for it.
I’ll bet you regret saying you wanted to know all the details. Well, too late, Rhys. And now you owe me a big, long email revealing your deepest, darkest secrets. Don’t be stingy with the deets.
From: Rhys Baker
To: Ginger Davies
Subject: RE: My part of the deal
Right, I think I get what you mean about Dean. And honestly, when I thought he was an idiot who didn’t deserve you, I hadn’t considered that he was your friend. Or all the stuff you experienced with him. I know what you mean about people forgetting things quickly, but didn’t you ever think maybe that was a survival mechanism?
Because some things…just hurt too much.