color me in gold (lips like petals on my throat)

segue.

"I'm gonna head out, buy some things, yeah?"

"Mmm," Brett says, tapping violently away at his keyboard. Resolutely not looking anywhere else.

Eddy pauses near the doorway, no doubt glancing over his shoulder at him. "I'll be back in a bit. Won't be long," he says, and then there's footsteps receding down the hallway, the distant sound of a door closing.

"Mmm," Brett says. His eyes are still glued to the laptop screen, noise in his ears.

(And here's where he makes a mistake, really. When it comes down to it, it's his own fault for being so distracted—those parting words don't register until it's far too late.)

*

In truth, he doesn't know what he'll do when the words have all been read.

There's only a few letters left; he can count them all on one hand. As much as he should probably be moving things along faster with the upcoming move almost upon them, Brett can't help but spend a day or two—or three, or four—in between new letters to reread the old ones. He cherishes them. Memorizes them. Treats them like scripture, like holy texts. It's a little sacrilegious, but hell if he knows anything that moves his world more than Eddy's words.

He's got his clues, more or less. He's inching closer and closer to the heart of the matter, of the goal he's set out before him, and really, it—it scares the shit out of him, no lie there. So many what-ifs. So many ways this could all go wrong, and he comes out of this unable to return to the person he once was when he began. Already, his world has shifted on its axis, for better or for worse, and he knows it.

God, but Brett's learned to hope, and it's such a bastard feeling because he can't trust it.

(He hasn't discarded the dreaded Hypothesis, not yet. Not quite. All in the name of fairness, of course.)

Maybe—maybe. There goes wishful thinking again. What a fucking stupid word. It's distracting and terrifying and wholly soul-draining, is what it is.

There's four letters left. The finish line is so close, he could almost taste it.

(But.)

He can't help but feel there's something still waiting to give way.

*

From the first line, he already knows what this letter is about.

Darling, if you ask, she ended things.

It's been a while since I've written to you. Some distance, as the self-help gurus say, would do me a world of good. It hadn't worked, of course, and I never thought it would, anyway. I feel like you'd be happy to hear that. How does it feel, knowing you've bested every self-inflicted challenge I've set before my heart? I'm getting resigned to the fact that nothing and no one will ever compare to you.

Not that you'd ever know. I'll trade telling that secret for this one: she wanted more, and I couldn't give it to her.

I know full well what it means to be in love with someone I can never have. But I don't know what it would be like to be in love with someone who loves a person I can never be. You look at me, and I know you see me. I look at her, she says, and she can tell I'm looking for someone else. Hoping for someone else in her place.