Folklore

Letters

August pov
Dear James Warner,
You broke my heart. Your the first boy to ever break my heart and I have to say it doesn't feel great. I had stolen someone else's boyfriend. And it was all I could think about. For a while I couldn't stop thinking. Couldn't stop thinking about you, about Betty, about everything. When I thought about those things too much it felt like I couldn't breathe. But now I'm beginning to realize that while you may have loved me, it was never half as much as I loved you.

So this is a goodbye letter, James. This is a goodbye letter because I'm sick of being in love with you. I figure that if I write it all out then I can move on. And I hope that this letter gives you closure, because as much as I want to hate you, I can't. So this letter is for closure. But. But, I also want to tell you about the moment that I knew I was in love with you.

The moment I knew I was in love with you would probably be hard to pinpoint because I think that from the moment I saw your bright smile and green eyes I had fallen in love with you and that every moment after that had just made me fall even harder. But I do know that the night in the car was a defining point for me. I'm not sure if you remember it very well because it wasn't like anything special had happened that night. It had been raining and we were sat in my car, just talking. We did a lot of that. Talking. But that time it was about something different. It was about my dad. I told you everything about him, all the things that made me love him but not like him very much. You told me that if he couldn't see how remarkable I am then he was out of his mind. After that we sat in comfortable silence.

I know that that night didn't mean much to you but to me it felt like the world had stopped for just a little bit. It felt like finally somebody understood. It felt like I had just caught a break. That night had meant everything to me.
And it still does, except now there seems to be a grey tint to that memory. Because now everything we had feels like it was a lie, because it was.
I love you James but I hope with every bone in my body that the love I have for you will go away. Maybe not soon, because I know that can't happen, but just at some point. I want it to go away because I want to be able to listen to love songs without them being about you and I want to be able to eat ice cream without thinking about if you like the flavor I'm having or not. I want it to go away because now I can't look at the beach without feeling like the atmosphere around me is suffocating me. I hope that one day it will all go away. And that one day I can wake up without thinking about you. So until then all I can do is imagine the wave of relief that will eventually crash over me when I get over you.
Until then, James, I love you. Goodbye.

With all the love in my heart, Augustine.

James pov
The day I got Augustine's letter may have been one of the worst days of my life. But I guess I deserve that. It had also been Christmas Eve when I got the letter. I was on my way over to Betty's house for dinner. I was pretty sure her mom was still mad at me but I was still invited. My mom had told me to get the mail before I left and that was probably the worst thing I could've done.

I thought that it would be earth shattering to hear her voice on the phone when she called, like it would feel like everything around me was crumbling when I heard her trembling voice.

Except she never did. Call, that is. She never called me. Instead she wrote me a letter and somehow, someway, that was so much worse than anything I could have expected. I think that if she had visited it would have hurt less than that letter did. It hurt more than anything because she didn't hold back like she sometimes did when she was talking. She put every thought, feeling, and heart aching emotion in that letter. That's why it hurt so much. It hurt because I knew that I had done that to her.

I couldn't stand that thought, so for a little bit after receiving that letter I decided I would stop thinking for a while. Just about all of it. But after thirty long minutes of not thinking I came to the conclusion that it didn't solve anything. And because I knew that I deserved to have to think about all the pain I caused to the two people I love most in the world.