Love Letter

Ian:

Jimmy called, letting me know that he was right. I received an email after our phone conversation from Lynne. I knew she was going to realize who I was. I was banking that she wouldn't give up her job over a guy. She was clever with her signature titling it as Miss Bettendorf as if I didn't know her favorite color down to her middle name. I wanted to see her.

I type out Address Now to Amanda, and a minute later, I am heading toward Manhattan.

I knock three times, waiting for a response, and it is silent. I knock again, and in mid-knock, the door opens, revealing a much smaller Lynne than I remember.

"Ian," she says, opening the door up. I step in, look around the apartment, and relax, thinking we are alone.

"Lynne," I say, stepping toward her. She puts her hand up in front of me.

"Don't," she says, stepping back. She walks into a room off of the side of her living room and is carrying out a few books. I know by the titles that they are my novels. It had been five months, but the look in her eyes told me that it felt like it was just yesterday when she found out what I had been doing.

"I feel foolish I hadn't figured it out sooner. I kept thinking that there was something familiar about your writing that night. Funny thing I had it sitting in my room this whole time. So you prey on women to fall for you, and then you write about them. How have you not been discovered yet?" she asks. I am opening my mouth to talk, but she cuts me off, "you gave me ice skates. I thought that was magical, but in this one, you give the girl a horse – yet I didn't think you rode a horse before or on this you propose out at sea after you had been there for a month."

"Lynne, you have to know those are all fakes – from my imagination. Those are just stories I created in my head," I say.

"You are right; they are fake because you are a fake," she says, looking at me straight in the eye, not wavering like it had been the first few times we had met.

"What can I do to change this?" I plead with her.

"Nothing, it is done. Now I have work to do, boss. I'll have those notes sent over to you in an hour or sooner," she says, all glaring gone and her attitude changing like I am just her boss.

"You are still working on it?" I ask, surprised.

"I have to... and not because I need the job but because it will be published one way or the other." She says, shrugging. I am ready to leave when she stops me. She steps into her room and brings out a white box handing it to me while saying "here."

It is the iPad I had given to her at Christmas along with the black shorts. "Lynne, I can't take this back," I say.

"Sure you can. It is inappropriate for a boss to give me luxurious gifts like this."

"Then see it as an office tool – you will need it with all the emailing we will be doing back and forth," I say, stepping out of the apartment leaving the box on the coffee table.