Page 10 of Love Me Gently

Atlanta…here I come.

Six

Trina

Then

Tears speckledthe letter I finished writing, folded, and tucked into an envelope.

I talked to my parents every week, and up until last week, no one had mentioned Cole. Every one of my friends hated me after we broke up. They told me I’d destroyed him, but no one knew I’d destroyed myself right along with him. At graduation, I wanted to cry and reach for him and apologize. The blank stare in his eyes when our eyes met as he passed me in the aisle of our high school gym was the only thing that stopped me. By the time I left for New York, I didn’t have anyone left in my life other than my family, and even if it was my own fault, it still hurt. I boarded my plane in July with a small amount of savings in the bank, enough for a few months of rent in a shared apartment I’d found online, and with my parents’ reluctant blessing and help. I tried not looking back, but some moments were harder than others.

When my mom accidentally mentioned Cole’s name last week, I soaked up every small bit of information I could learn from her. I missed him most of all. He’d been my best friend for so many years it hurt to not be able to pick up the phone and call him when I received my first callback on an audition, or when I’d gotten a small, teeny tiny part as a back-up dancer in a community theater play. It paid nothing, but I was waiting tables to make ends meet. The apartment I shared with Stella was barely affordable even with both of us working almost full-time at an Italian restaurant, and my room was smaller than my parents’ bedroom closet back home.

Some days I woke up with fear choking me, telling me I’d made a horrible mistake.

Other days, the pulse of the city beneath my feet filled me with immeasurable hope and anticipation. I clung to those days like a lifeline.

I had to make it. I had to achieve my dreams because I knew if I didn’t, breaking up with Cole and everything else I’d done would all be for nothing.

When would it go away? That aching, searing pain that pierced my chest when I thought of him, when I thought of what I’d done. It wasn’t only losing Cole that hurt like someone punched a hole in my chest, it was the grief from the choice I’d made. Telling myself it was for the best didn’t make things better, and I told myself that a thousand times a day.

I’d ruined something more special than Cole. I’d ruined more than one or two lives, and as the months passed, the guilt grew thicker, even though I tried to fight against it. Mostly, I stayed busy, doing everything I could to keep my mind off the past and keep pressing forward.

Except for these letters I couldn’t stop writing.

I tugged the letter back out and reread it. The uncertainty I already felt grew into a tumultuous storm in my stomach. This was stupid. Cole was the last person who would want to hear from me. Reaching out to him only hurt us both. Before I could crumple it into a ball and toss it into the garbage, I scribbled his address on the envelope and sealed it shut.

A pounding thump hit my door, and I quickly hid the envelope in my desk drawer.

“What is it?” I shouted.

“Dinnertime, sunshine, let’s roll,” Stella said from the other side of the door.

We always grabbed a quick meal before we went to work. Stella had helped me land the job when I showed up at our doorstep, all innocent and exhausted—both mentally and physically from the trip.

At twenty-one, she might have only been a few years older than me, but she seemed decades wiser. She worked all day and did online schooling at night, insisting she’d end up better than anyone else in her family had ever done, even though she never told me what that meant. I would have been lost without Stella. She took me under her wing, taught me how to use the subway until I was confident I could get anywhere I needed on my own. She gave me tour after tour of the city my first few weeks when I was there and had even printed off a map, highlighting areas no single young woman should walk through alone.

Our apartment, as run-down as it was with paint peeling off walls and a heater we had to bang periodically to make it kick on now that the weather was turning absolutely frigid, was on the edge of a decently nice area of New York, and a really scary area, so we rarely went out at night alone.

Safety in numbers, Stella always said.

“I’m coming. Just give me a minute.” I pulled my hair up into a ponytail and glanced down at the letter.

Mail it. Don’t mail it. Mail it. Don’t mail it.

I grabbed it, dug through my purse and slid a stamp onto it, and shoved everything back into my purse.

“Everything okay?” Stella asked as we walked toward a nearby diner that sold filling, but inexpensive food. I lived on their patty melt sandwiches these days. “You’ve been more mopey than usual.”

“I’m not mopey.” I grinned and shoved my hip against hers, laughing as she stumbled over a crack in the sidewalk. “I’m missing home, I guess. It’s almost Christmas.”

“You’re not going home? I thought your parents were going to help you get a ticket.”

“They were.” I was lying through my teeth. I had no desire to return home. Not yet, not for Christmas when everyone would be home from college. “It didn’t work out.”

“Aw, that’s too bad.” She slung her arm over my shoulder. “I’ll make this a Christmas you’ll never forget. I promise.”

“Thanks, Stella. You’re the best.”

---