Page 21 of The One You Chose

From: [email protected]

Subject: re: Jeremiah

Hi Lina,

That is a beautiful name. Just unique enough.

No, I won’t be alone on Christmas. I’m going back home to see my mom for the long weekend. She has a group of friends and they all come over to the house and we make a big night of it. My Ma’s friends don’t have kids themselves, so it’s just going to be me and a bunch of sixty-year-old aunties. It might sound weird, but I enjoy it now. (I didn’t appreciate it when I was seventeen, I can tell you that.)

What about you? What do you do for the holidays?

~J

I loved learning about Lina. Connecting the stories she told me in her emails with the phenomenal women I met weeks before. Over the weeks she had told him about her family, the annoying younger brother she loved and protected. The older brother who once made her track coach cry. She told me about the kids in her classroom and how hard and yet rewarding her job was. She told me funny anecdotes about her best friend and roommate. I told her about growing up, always moving around. How I lived with my cousin for most of my freshman year while my dad was in and out of the hospital. I told her about the funny things the animals did at the shelter. How the social media manager was going to be launching a TikTok soon with the different animals. We talked and talked and I knew without a doubt that this was the woman for me.

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Subject: re: re: Jeremiah

I’m glad you won’t be alone. On Christmas Eve, my whole extended family gets together at my Aunt Cathy’s house to do a gift exchange. It’s wild, with at least one person ending up in tears (typically but not always one of the children) and my other Aunt Bea getting too drunk and falling asleep by seven.

The next day I open stockings with my parents and younger brother, Payton. My older brother, Trey and his wife, Dulcie, typically come up to join us, but Dulcie is expecting their second baby in January and he didn’t want to leave her. So they’re doing a small thing at their place in Phoenix.

<3

Lina

I stared at the little heart emoji next to her name. Every day, I refreshed my email, hoping for a new email from her. Knowing now that it was my Lina, made everything fit together. I just had to strategize on how to tell Lina it was me after all.

For weeks I'd think I saw her in every storefront window. The reflection of a dark-haired girl at the coffee shop, to end up wrong.

She stepped out of Sluy’s Bakery, the leg of a human-shaped donut shoved in her mouth as she was stuffing her wallet into her purse. I halted, the bags of dog toys from the local pet shop banging against my legs.

Her hand shoved in her purse she looked up to see me standing in front of her. Slowly she pulled the rest of the donut out of her mouth. Her cheeks full, she smiled as she chewed.

“Hey, Lina,” I said, not even trying to keep the surprise out of my voice.

“Ith!” She said, her words garbled by the donut. Chewing quickly, she swallowed down the hunk of dough. “Fitz, hi.”

There were so many things I wanted to say, but I couldn't form the words. Instead, I pointed to her hand. “That’s a big donut.”

Real smooth talker, aren’t you?

She glanced down at her mutilated treat. “Oh, yeah, they’re a local thing. Dough Boys. The big controversy is, which part do you eat first? Do you eat the head and put it out of its misery or do you bite off all the limbs and let it suffer?”

“I can see what camp you’re in.”

She pulled off an arm of the donut and offered it to me. “What can I say? I have a bloodthirsty streak.”

I popped the donut in my mouth, chewing slowly. A rush of dough goodness filled my mouth. It was quite good. A long silence stretched between us.

She motioned to the shopping bags at my legs. “Getting some last-minute shopping done?”

I trained my face to look blank. What could I say? Was this the right moment to tell her they’re donations from the pet store and I’m picking them up because I work for the Humane Society? Oh, and by the way, my first name is Jeremiah.

“Uh, kind of, yeah. Just some stuff for work.” I coughed and glanced over my shoulder. “Are you hungry?”

---