HIMYF

She stood up from reaching over and filling the cat bowl.  The same way she always did, every night after another exhausting day at work.  She kept her shoes on, and skipped across the over grown lawn to the mailbox, the same way she always did.  She grabbed the bundle of junk mail, and fingered through a few envelopes of bills that would be left unpaid well past their due dates.  A smaller envelope fell out of the mix and onto the wet grass in front of her.  The handwritten barely legible address scribbled across the front of the letter made her heart drop to the bottom of her stomach.

After they had ended, she had checked the mail frantically every day.  For days that turned into months, that turned into years.  Eventually, she stopped searching for that poor penmanship and was excited to find anything that wasn't a catalog subscribed to by her previous roommate or a final notice from which ever utility she had neglected that month.  Over time she had made peace with the fairytale love story of his parents never becoming their own.  She didn't even know that with all her heart, she was still holding onto the hope that someday that letter would arrive.

When she got back inside, she threw the stack of papers on the table, including that one small envelope, and walked into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine.  It felt like her mail had eyes of it's own that night, eyes that followed her around the house until she finally worked up the courage to glance back in it's direction.  God Dammit.  It took all of the strength she had left to let him go the first time.  And there he was, folded and tucked between the local 'savers' advert.

Why now?  Why after she finally felt whole again, did this appear on that damp Monday night?  Falling straight out of her fingers, and down to her feet. Staring straight up at her, like it had separated itself from the pile to make itself more known than it would have already been.  She had defended her feelings for him for so long after he had left, struggling for the words to make anyone believe that their breakup was a mistake.  That he had left something so real, and so good.  And trying so hard not to remember the hope in his voice when he told the story of the letter that was once sent from his own father to his own mother.  Maybe timing was everything.  But just because this letter showed up on this day didn't mean it was the right time, either.  Or that she could undo the months of heartache, begging for the warm happy ending she was rediscovering had never left her at all.

She took a deep sip of red wine, and let her fingernail slide under the fold.  The envelope opened with ease, and the college ruled paper neatly tucked inside took her breath away as she slipped it out.  It was one piece of paper, barely filled, with the words etched in lightly with blue pen.  The words, though faint on the page, screamed into her face.  She read left to right, over and over again for what felt like an eternity.  She stared at his signature one last time.  Then promptly folded the letter back up, tucked it back inside the envelope, and threw it back down on the coffee table with the rest of the day's mail.

She looked back down to her shoes, conveniently still on her feet. And as quickly as she had locked the door behind her on her way in, she locked it on her way out.  She got into her car.  And she drove to him.