Page 80 of Returned Mail

Chapter Twenty-One

George

Mail arrives at dusk.

I know because I’ve started pretending not to wait for it, while I totally wait for it. That’s a bad sign.

Waiting used to belong to Monica. Waiting used to mean checking for her name, her handwriting, some proof that the life I’d left behind still had a place for me. Now I know better. Now I wait for different handwriting.

Mia’s.

And that should probably worry me more than it does.

The original date I was supposed to go home has already passed. It came and went without much ceremony. So I don’t think about going home much anymore.

Now, I think about mail day, which is worse.

I’m halfway through cleaning my rifle when Mack comes jogging over with a small box in his hand. “Your accountant wrote back.” He says, holding it up. My hand stills on the rifle, and I hate that my body reacts before I can tell it not to. Mack notices. “Careful,” he says. “Your face almost did something.”

“Give me the box.”

“Romantic.”

“Mack, the box and fuck off.” He hands it over.

My pulse kicks once, hard. I tell myself it’s because I sent a photograph of myself to a woman I’ve never met and have spent the better part of three weeks regretting it.

Which is true, mostly anyway.

I wait until the tent quiets down to open the box. I don’t know what to expect, but I know what thing. The camera is here, which only means two things: she sent it back because she wants nothing to do with it, or because she wants me to have it for future…I shake my head and just open it.

“Stop imagining things, and open the fucking box.” I slide my thumb under the flap. Inside is a letter, like always, but a photograph slips out before I’m ready. It lands face down against my thigh. I stare at the back of it, just two words in her handwriting.

“Your turn.”

I stop breathing for a second, then I turn it over.

Fuck.

I was not ready for that.

She’s by the window, my window. Well, not anymore. Now it’s her window, ours? What the hell do I know. Still, I recognize the light before I fully process her face. The angle of it. The way it comes in soft from the side and catches the edge of the room. I know that window. I know what time of day it is from the way the floor glows behind her.

Then I see her.

Hair loose around her shoulders. Mouth curved like she got caught in the middle of a laugh. Not looking straight at the camera, not quite, but close enough that it feels like she almost did and then got nervous. She looks real. That’s the first word that comes into my mind.

My eyes go back to her mouth.

Bad idea.

Then to her hand, worse… I look away, then look back. Because apparently I’m a fucking idiot. She’s beautiful. But it’s the laugh that gets me, that almost-smile. Like she was nervous and amused and brave all at once. My chest tightens.

I pick up the letter because if I keep staring at the photo, I’m going to forget how to act like a grown man.

George,

First, I need you to know that “the apartment, I mean. Mostly” was deeply annoying.