I Wish You The Best

37 - Delilah

The crumpled-up letter I promised to open in private chafes against my palm as I walk inside. I had put it in my purse all those months ago and never took it out. I don't know why it's taken me so long to read it. In the beginning, I just didn't want to entertain the idea of Mason anymore, now I'm fully entertained and a little scared.

My dad left for the day to meet some friends so I'm alone at home. Clara and Ryan are working and Tish is studying for finals, so it's just me. I promised Mason I'd pick him up from the airport when he got back, which is in two hours.

I need to read it.

I've already got a made-up mind with a lot of questions and doubts, but not enough to steer me away. Not anymore.

I turn the lamp on in the living room and sit in the same rocking chair my mother used to sit in with me in her lap and her hands moving my hair into a braid. There are little pieces of her everywhere and I absolutely need every part to hold me together.

It's times like these I'm reminded of how I can't just go to her for advice. I can't tell her about my silly boy—men— problems and have her tell me it'll all be alright.

But I know that's exactly what she'd say. The heat from the vent tickles across my skin like a blanket when I unravel the wrinkled paper.

It's a torn-out piece of notebook with Mason's handwriting, rushed and frantic. He always had neat handwriting so just knowing it's a mess guaranteed the feeling he put into it.

I read the first words.

Dear Delilah,

I'm sitting in the car outside the place we called home for the last two years and it feels like I'm tearing my own skin off. You're upstairs right now needing me but my being there would only make it worse, because I'm the reason you're hurting in the first place, like a double-edged sword.

So instead of stabbing us both I'll write it all down and one day, hopefully soon, I'll give it to you.

You see us growing apart like it's a bad thing, you see the future as a glowing red warning sign, but I see it as the beginning of our life together. I've always tried to be the rational one in our relationship, always trying to ease your fears. I've mastered how your mind works yet I'm still in training to get you to see it. Your fears are my fears but they don't hurt me the same.

You see me going off and getting drafted as the end of us, I see it as the start. I see us starting our lives for the first time on separate paths but the best part is that we'd do it together.

It all seems so crazy right now and so uncertain. I know we had a tense conversation early this month that led to our doubts eating away at us. I know that both of us have felt that drift, and it's killed me. I want to tell you all these things but it'd just be rubbing salt in the wound.

If being apart is how you're going to see we need to be together, then so be it.

I will never stop loving you Delilah McKenna. If it's one day from now or never again, I want you to know that fact. I want to be with you through the ups and downs and the what-ifs. I want us to grow apart together because that's the only way we're going to make our careers work. I want to watch you become the best PA ever to walk this planet and do it because you love it. I want to play professional football and have my last name on a jersey that warms your body, I want it all. And I know that's selfish, so selfish because I know you struggle with it all.

So I'll wait for you. I'll be there when you're ready. We'll unwind our lives from one another, live them separately and it will kill me everyday, but I'll take that knife for you always.