Love Letter

Ian:

Lynne is driving me crazy. I had thought something was going on last night, but after ignoring my text message about having lunch with me and then my voice mail for dinner, I did not know what to think. I had never cared this much about someone having lunch or dinner with me, but I was going crazy inside the small cabin. It did not help that Amanda and Kevin had decided to take a trip up to the ski resort for the next few days. I had no one to distract me, and I wish I had kept cable hooked up to the cabin instead of deciding not to pay for it. I also did not want the distraction. I was quickly sucked into TV show marathons and wanted to stay clear of that. It now seemed like a terrible idea at this point. Calling Amanda was a bad idea since she told me to step back and give her space.

"Ian, you have done probably some of the most romantic dates ever for her... She probably just needs a little time to think," she said. But I did not want to give her time to think. I did not want her to believe that she should push me away. I did not want her to overthink anything going on; it was that plain and simple. My thinking was logical.

When the clock shows eight o'clock, I am already driving over to Lynne's house to drop by and see what is going on. Knocking on the door, Lisa opens the door, smiling when she sees me.

"Isn't Lynne with you?" she asks me after I step in asking for her.

"No, I thought she was here," I say. I let Lisa know I would check her room and be on my way if she was not there. Looking in the living room, I see the twins and a figure playing Xbox on the TV. Stepping into the living room is when the mystery figure turns, and I can see that it is Luke. Just my luck.

Tissues were all over the bed and the floor. My gut sank when I thought she had been sick, which is why I had not heard from her. I step closer to the bed, picking up some of the tissues and putting them in the trash bin, and that is when I see my first ever novel lying on the floor opened next to her. She really was not careful with the spines for someone who loved books. Lynne is under the cover, and I cannot see her face. I sit down next to her on the bed and shake her gently. When she awakes – she looks confused, and I wonder if she thinks it is a dream.

"Ian?" she asks, sitting up and feeling around on the end table for something. Grabbing her black rim glasses from underneath another pile of tissues, she sits up, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "What time is it?" she asks.

"Eight-thirty give or take," I say.

"Oh no," she says again, just like she had done the night before.

"Late night?" I ask.

"You could say that," she says quietly, still coming out of her sleepiness.

"Get showered," I say, sitting against the wall. She looks uncomfortable when I say this, and I wonder what now could be wrong. "What now?" I sigh.

"Um... I'm a little indecent," she says, looking down at the blankets that are covering her legs. My eyebrows shoot up quicker than I could think not to. I could not say that I was not happy to be in this predicament. I was about to say I could step out if she would like, but she was already scooting off the bed when she stood up and revealed tiny red and green sleeping shorts. My eyes swept her legs since this was the first time I had seen this much of them. She is halfway to the bathroom when Luke steps in, ruining the small victory for my eyes.

"Oh... Hey," he says awkwardly, not liking the scene he is seeing in front of him.

"Hey," Lynne says, scampering quicker to her bathroom and shutting the door. I sigh after leaving in the same room as him, not wanting to talk. I had been driven crazy all day and night, wondering what was going on with Lynne and thinking the worse, so I did not want to be driven crazy by a guy who was fighting for Lynne too late in life. Hoping that my silence will make Luke go away, it does not. With how nervous he is acting in Lynne's room, I am sure he had not been in her a lot. Probably so he would never find out what her family was really like. The house, the money, was a nice cover-up to hide their deepest darkest secrets.

Lynne steps out of the bathroom with a silk robe wrapped around her that reveals more than the shorts. Her face goes red, and I can tell she thought we would both be long gone waiting for her downstairs. She steps into the walk-in closest, leaving us both alone again. I did not like that Luke had seen everything I had. I wanted to give him the same speech he had given me when he showed up at my cabin. Recalling his speech gets me rived up, and I know I need to let it go. If I had missed getting to know Lynne, I would regret it too.

"Hi," Lynne says, this time stepping out of the closet looking straight at me. She either did not realize that Luke was still in the room or did not care. The other thought that goes through my head is that she knows he is there and likes the idea of driving him crazy jealously. I would think that would be the case if I was in New York City dating one of the girls I had a relationship with, but I knew this was not the case with what I knew of Lynne. Luke mumbles an excuse about some round in a game and steps out.

"Hey," I say back to Lynne. She walks over to her desk, picking up her phone. She looks at it before walking over to the bed by me plugging it into the charger. Her phone was dead... she did not even know I had called or texted her. Relief, even more, floods over me. She had kind of spent the night with me once again, even though she did not know it. It was my words that she had fallen asleep too. It makes me happy at first, and then my conscience allows guilt to wash through like a flood. Leaving nothing behind...

"So, what is the plan for tonight?" she asks.

"I don't know? What do you want to do?" I asked, not having a game plan made up when I had jumped in my car and just started driving.

"Well, I am pretty tired from the all-nighter I pulled. I seem to be doing that from time to time," she says.

"Oh really?" I ask, shocked.

"Yeah... I would like to say that books led to all-nighters, but then I would be lying. The last time was the night before my last final. I was so nervous that I ended out pulling another one of his novels," she says "his novels" while pointing to my book on the floor. "off of my bookshelf in NYC. I ended up reading the whole thing that night, even though I had promised myself I would go to bed an hour or two after I had started reading it. I mean, I did okay on my final, so it is not that bad to use books as a buffer." She said her words flowing together, and she was babbling without thinking about what she had said.

"As a buffer?" I ask, widely curious.

"You know for... To be able to think," she says quickly.

"Explain," I say eagerly.

"I don't know; it's like when life gets confusing and complicated, it's just nice to retreat into something that isn't confusing. To know that there will always be a start, middle, and end. Well, unless they leave you with a pretty annoying cliffhanger," she explains.

"What was confusing and complicated about last night?" I ask; she starts looking elsewhere than me, so I add, "I mean there were grilled cheese sandwiches... drawing.... Toy Story 2..."

"And you," she says, her eyes landing on mine.

"And me," I say.